Mon, Nov 28, 2011 · Filed under Autumn, Planning
[From Nov. 24, 2011] Well ahead of the pack, Veseys takes first new seed catalog of the year. They’re a pretty marketing-oriented company, they get their stuff out early—this actually arrived a while ago, but I only got my hands on it now! Which is fine by me. I haven’t been this, well, EXCITED with that new-catalog feeling in a couple of years. That’s good. There is a lot of proper, well-ahead-of-time planning to do, expectations for 2012 run high! Whatever the weather!!
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Fri, Sep 09, 2011 · Filed under Cooking & Eating, Summer, Veggies
Here’s a fairly unusual heirloom tomato: Yellow Stuffer. The name pretty much says it all, it’s an almost completely hollow tom, ready to be stuffed! As you can see, there are very few seeds in very little gel. I’ve grown these for a several years—this season, only maybe half a dozen plants—mainly for fun, all from the same original packet of seed. In a good year, they’re quite…striking: big and blocky, looking like a bell pepper. This year, they were just OK, not really sized up too big. I haven’t done much with them besides taste—they taste like…tomato—but I imagine with their thick walls, they’d be perfect to stuff with just about anything, and left raw or baked. Interested? Yellow Stuffer is indeterminate and late, about 80 days, and the seed is easy to find. There are quite a number of other stuffer varieties out there as well—here’s a
good article all about ‘em. And that’s that!
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Wed, Aug 31, 2011 · Filed under Fieldwork, Summer, Veggies
Almost missed this time around, last seen here four years back: a few of the Yukon Gold potatoes have fruit this year. These are poisonous little, green tomato-like fruit with seeds that you can grow into…potatoes. You can find out more about ‘em in this POTATO FRUIT blog post from 2008, when I first ran into then (it’s the most commented post on Tiny Farm Blog!).
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Tue, Jun 21, 2011 · Filed under Fieldwork, Spring, Veggies
Next up in our crazily extended and seemingly neverending SPRING planting schedule: potatoes. We have what’s become my standard line-up: Yukon Gold, red Chieftan, and russet Gold Rush (above). Still haven’t decided how we’ll plant them this time around, trenched or shallow, but they should go in soon! This season’s nerveracking tiny farming adventure continues…
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Thu, Jul 29, 2010 · Filed under Animals, Farm lab (research!), Fieldwork, Seed starting, Summer, Tools, Veggies
Another successful carrot germination event, with trusty, open-pollinated, heirloom Touchon, and our latest refinement in cover. Although this landscape fabric looks like the stuff we started with last year, it’s a heavier grade that doesn’t tear and become useless after one or two outings—it should last FOREVER, or, hopefully, for at least 10 uses, at which point, the cost will be near zero. This germination, in mainly hot, sunny weather, is exactly one week after seeding, with no watering in. Pretty good! Deprived of light, the seedlings are already stretching—I might’ve taken off the cover a day or two earlier if I’d checked—but they’ll be fine. And if you’ve used an Earthway seeder, and ever doubted the incredible amount of seed it can dump down, don’t (see above): I’d rather see all those carrots pushing up than too few, but the waste from overseeding is quite severe, and major thinning is in order, adding to the labor. Still, it’s all part of the joy of farming largely by hand… :)
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Thu, Mar 18, 2010 · Filed under Seed starting, Veggies, Winter
If you’re journaling your gardening seasons, on paper, online, or simply in your head, you just HAVE to take note of the very first seedlings to emerge. Of course, you can’t actually catch the VERY first one, unless you’re kind of mono-focused and a little…obsessive. But a few always come up at about the same time, and a little ahead of the pack. On this tiny farm, I’m there to snap ‘em.
This season, the Red Globe onions take the prize. There is garlic out in the field from fall, here and at another location, and tiny tips may already be poking up, especially with the UNSEASONABLY mild, warm and low-snow winter we’ve had so far. For 2010 purposes, though, I’m not stalking the garlic patch, only peering at the plug sheets.
So there we are, four days after first seeding. Some seed exposed at the surface did show up yesterday, the white radicles looking unnaturally glaring and exposed, but today’s the day for “proper” first seed action. They still work!
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