The seed…
Keeping up with the early start, I got out the seed from its storage chest to take a look. With the tiny farm’s growing HISTORY (hey, Year 6, coming up!), keeping the seeds sorted for freshness is an ever more…serious … Read the rest
germination
Unruly heirlooms
Left to their own devices, these heirloom Touchon carrots grew all over the place, an assortment of shapes and sizes. They’re in a bed where the mid-summer germination was spotty, and uneven spacing no doubt had a lot to do … Read the rest
Return of spinach
Fall spinach is finally ready to pick! The first five beds are pretty sparse—really poor germination in the dry heat of August—but what’s there is looking…succulent. The scattered new plantings of spinach, radish, mesclun and spicy brassica greens make parts … Read the rest
Oats
Promptly the day after the first rain in a while, OATS is surging up. Actually, strips of oats in one section planted a few days ago are appearing, the rest to hopefully follow just as vigorously. Oats anywhere but in … Read the rest
Mesclun on my mind
Mesclun remains the mainstay crop on this tiny farm. What I grow is perhaps not strictly “mesclun”, it’s nine varieties of lettuce with no other, more exotic greens—arugula, mizuna, and so forth—mixed in. Also, at times if it gets away … Read the rest
Burlap method strikes again!
The carrots-under-burlap germination method is now 3 for 4, with this fine performance: solid rows and almost no weeds! The third attempt failed miserably with three different varieties, mainly due to underwatering (the extra drying effect of a very windy … Read the rest
Meet the beans!
The first planting of snap beans is coming along quite well. Although the rows look nice and full now that they’re growing out, germination hasn’t been great this year, with annoying gaps that still have to be cultivated. If it’s … Read the rest