First garlic harvest

Jason and Silas pulled the first garlic last weekend. It’s early for garlic around here. This Early Portuguese was in the Little Tunnel all winter. We’re saving these heads for seed garlic, which means we’ll break them open and plant the cloves.

A lot of the outdoor garlic has curly scapes. We’ll cut those soon for CSA members. Scapes, which are the start of a blossom on a garlic plant, have a delicious flavor. They must be cut to prevent the plant from focusing its energy on a flower, rather than a nice garlic head. This is our first truly serious dive into garlic growing.

~ Stella

How we water now: 1-inch water line & improved germination

Previously, the farm’s direct seeding, rather than transplanting, didn’t boast a great success rate. By “the farm’s,” I actually mean Jason’s. And I’m not saying that to throw him under the bus. Farming, we’ve come to learn, means spending a considerable amount of time solving one problem or another. And when it comes to problems on the farm, Jason’s the one who typically does the legwork to figure them out.

So it went with the germination. He tested hypotheses (old seed, bad seed, too little water), but the subpar germination issue persisted. After awhile, he suspected the water system. So let me quickly walk you through how we water. Pond water is ushered up a big hill via buried, 1-inch line. It’s pushed up by a submersible pump with electric power. When the water reaches the gardens, it travels to the beds through 1/2-inch lines. These are connected to Senninger Xcel-Wobblers that sit atop waist-high plastic stakes. For a 125-foot bed, we use five wobblers, and provided a spider hasn’t turned a sprinkler head into its own personal high rise, the wobblers work well.

However, this system was only throwing water on about four beds at a time, and since we didn’t immediately have a limitless supply of sprinklers (on a budget here, folks), this meant constantly moving water lines. To move a water line, we take the wobblers off the stakes, pound the stakes in where we need them, and reattach the wobblers. We also drag the water line to its new location. The process is a nuisance, so we accumulated more wobblers over time, but the system was still inefficient. We knew the wobblers weren’t at fault. And despite the water’s uphill climb, the water pressure seemed fine, too.

After some tinkering with the pump filter, Jason got the wobblers to throw water over up to six beds. Still, the germination problem persisted.

Then, Jason installed 1-inch lines in all the high tunnels. As soon as he put those in, he noticed drastically improved germination in the tunnels. Seeds germinated faster and uniformly.

When he emailed Dubois Agrinovation in Québec, his suspicions were confirmed by a “conseiller en irrigation.” Actually, I could have skipped this entire post, and just reprinted the guy’s email. “If you have 5 Xcel wobbler on line. Need 1’ pipe.”

So Jason began the conversion process, swapping out the 1/2-inch line with 1-inch line everywhere on the farm. We went from throwing water on four to six beds, to throwing water over six to eight beds. But the most important thing is that more gallons per minute are being hurled on the beds.

The best example of this new success is radish germination. With the bigger water line, radish seeds germinated and stood three-quarters of an inch tall within three days, and popped up in uniform lines. It seems like this is one problem Jason can check off his list.

Jason first noticed the improved germination in the Big Tunnel, which had new 1-inch water line. In this photo, there are radishes on both sides of cucumber plants. Within three days, these radish seeds were already three-quarters of an inch tall.

~ Stella

Swiss chard planting

I planted Bright Lights Swiss chard the other day. This is one of my favorite crops. It’s eye-catching pretty when full grown.

We’re trying the Swiss chard in landscape fabric this season. It’s fallen victim to all manner of critters in the past. Fingers crossed since it’s such a gorgeous and delicious crop.

This is Bright Lights at full size. When friend Angelica saw a bunch of this variety, her succinct response stayed with me: “Nature is amazing.”

~ Stella

Tomato progress: Outdoor tomato planting

Over Memorial Day weekend, Jason laid landscape fabric for the outside tomatoes. He planted four beds, each about 125 feet long, and we still have one more bed to do.

This is the first time we’ve had tomatoes in the far northeast corner of the gardens, and it feels strange to traverse the whole farm to reach them.

We noticed that voles snipped down a few plants. We just need them to get a little sturdier and outgrow the voles.

~ Stella

Sleep tight, little farm

Work is done for today. See you in the morning.

~ Stella

Tomato progress (lean & lower method) - May 10 & May 29

This year, we’re trying the “lean and lower” system with vining crops in the tunnels. You can read all about that here. Here’s a look at how the tomatoes are doing. First, is a photo from the Big Tunnel taken May 10, 2021.

May 10, 2021: At this point, we only had tomatoes in the tunnels. There’s too much of a frost risk outside. Most of the tomatoes were still too small to clip to the string.

Here’s the same row, about three weeks later. They were all big enough to clip, and some of them now have two clips. So far so good.

May 29, 2021: Many even have blossoms.

~ Stella

Only bunny allowed in the greenhouse

You’re looking at what must be one of the luckiest bunnies in the world. Adopted by a lettuce farm. Meet Riley.

~ Stella

Weeding beans with the wheel hoe & collinear hoe

The beans in the high tunnel germinated well, and outpaced the weeds for a time. (This is likely thanks to new 1-inch water line. I’ll write about that very soon because we’ve noticed a huge difference.)

When the beans were about 2 to 3 inches tall, we pushed a wheel hoe between each row and down the pathways. This tool does a fantastic job of uprooting relatively small to medium weeds.

After working over the beds with a wheel hoe, we used a collinear hoe to get in close to the baby beans. A collinear hoe has a long, thin blade that’s collinear to the earth. It’s a precise tool, unlike traditional, heavy, clunky hoes. It is one of our favorite tools. The hoe linked above also lets you stand upright. If you have a home garden, you may want to consider a collinear hoe.

But a word of caution. While wheel and collinear hoes are wonderful tools, you have to pace yourself, just like with any garden task. If you don’t, you risk injury. Slow and steady wins the race against weeds.

We also weeded these beans at least twice by hand, mainly to pluck out stubborn grass. To keep the grass from taking root again, we remove it by the bucketful. (All those clipped bits of grass are from when Jason used the weed trimmer along the sides of the tunnel.)

In the past, we’ve basically gone through this same process only to have deer mow down every last bean. The only beans that would survive were the ones that happened to be weedy enough that the deer didn’t notice them. What a relief to go through all this work and know they’re protected in the deer fence.

~ Stella

Growing cilantro

This is the farm’s cilantro patch. The coriander plant thrives in cooler weather.

We’re starting the CSA in the second week of June, and this cilantro will probably be ready to cut then. We’ll clear-cut the mature stems, leaving short stubble that will produce a new batch.

Cilantro is the herb name for the plant’s leaves. The plant itself is coriander, and its seeds are the spice of the same name. The entire plant is edible, including the roots. Cilantro leaves and stems are best fresh, since the flavor all but vanishes when dried.

Jason starts cilantro from seed in the basement, under grow lights, and we transplant the little clumps in very early spring. Cilantro thrives in cold weather, while heat makes it prone to bolt, or go to seed.

Some cooking websites say cilantro doesn’t store well. This definitely is not the case with fresh-cut stems. We cut cilantro when it’s cool, in early morning, before the plant absorbs field heat. If you put the cool stems and leaves (unwashed) in a baggie or container with a good seal, they’ll last for plenty long. Just wash before use, and chop the leaves and stems together.

While cilantro calls to mind salsa and guacamole, it adds another layer to many dishes, like a bowl of pho. However, not everyone is a fan. Some people appear to have a genetic aversion to the herb, and it smells like soap to them.

Coriander seems to have been grown by the Greeks since at least the second millennium BC. The plant journeyed to the Americas in the 1600s.

~ Stella

Potatoes & mortality

A farmer may farm for much of their life, but only get so many tries at many things.

Take potatoes. They go in the ground in spring, and won’t come out till fall. A farmer can read about potatoes and BS about them all they want, but still only get one crack at them a year.

This rather jarring reality was put in number form for Jason in a farm documentary when a spud grower noted that a farmer may have 30 years to grow potatoes, but that’s only 30 tries.

If you’ve gardened on any scale, even pots on your porch, you know that the trial and error nature of growing makes that number seem small.

Accepting that the number of tries we’ll get at farming is finite brings both a feeling of peace and a sense of urgency. Mortality can be a real motivator.

While we’d love to have more than 30 years to farm, and, well, roam the planet, there will come a final season someday. A yearly reminder of this comes in the form of the frost.

On the farm, early spring to late fall passes in a blur. One minute, you’re standing in the gardens, with new buds all around, hopeful and excited, then suddenly you’re walking through your own frozen breath, awash in a sense of relief that the season is over, a melancholy you can’t quite put your finger on, and a hot desire to start all over again.

When our last season comes, we hope we’re long into our years, wrinkled and gray-haired. We hope it’s still the two of us, and we can even pass the farm on. We know we can’t count on any of this, but we are here now. There’s the two of us to work the land, and engage fully in this life we have with our son. There are no seasons to waste.

~ Stella

Alright, enough of that. Here’s some potato pics:

Jason, Silas, and Grandpa Gary recently planted spuds. Grandpa stopped by, saw what we were doing, and offered to help. At age 73, he hikes his property regularly, doing a mile loop. About a quarter-mile of it is uphill.

We planted two red varieties this season: Red Maria and Chieftain. We also did two yellow potatoes: Belmonda and Keuka Gold.

We have two potato patches this season. We did four rows on the north side of the Big Tunnel, and four rows to the south of the tunnel.

Here’s Patch No. 2.

P.S. The farm documentary was “To Make a Farm.”