June 27: Blueberries, grapes, corn, cukes herbs, and potatoes

So excited to find first few blueberries ripe...and grapes are growing bigger each day--just need to turn purple now!

Kayli and her Fawn 2 girls cut the tall stalks of sorrel and lovage so now the herb garden looks so much neater!

 And Connor and the Hawk's Nest boys brought up a dozen or so buckets of old manure to put around the potato plants, after we found a few spuds breaking the surface of the ground and turning green,  so we needed to bury them deeper.

Last weekend I finally got the old strawberry bed dug up and the cucumbers and corn I'd planted in the greenhouse on June 6 planted into the ground, in holes in landscape fabric I laid down.  (I cut the fabric and marked the holes with chalk and cut them on a table, before laying the fabric int he garden.  A much easier way than I've done before!)   Monday's super storm messed it up a bit but I was able to move it back into position.  (Also blew the cover off the greenhouse!)   Lots of rain this week so everything is growing like crazy!

June 23: Woodchips, lavender, garlic scapes, and the first raspberry!

After I moved the black plastic tarp from the top of the garden to the lawn at the bottom and the woodchips got dumped on it because the truck couldn't safely make it up the incline at the top of the garden, I bought another $32 piece of black plastic, laid it at the top of the garden, and Dan and Jeremy used the bucket tractor to move all the chips to the top of the garden where i wanted them.   My plan is to have a big woodchipped area there, with a pile of woodchips to use throughout the summer and into next spring perhaps.   The campers and I started putting them on the permanent garden paths (I've measured out the garden into permanent 4 foot wide plots and 2 foot wide paths).  It makes the garden look so meat, and now it's easier to tell the kids:  only walk on the woodchips!

As you can see, the tomatoes are growing rapidly in this heat.   The big bush on the left is tarragon.  Kay's junior farmers helped me put in some tarragon transplants that I'd dug a month ago into the back of the herb garden...my plan is to do away with this big bush of tarragon once the new ones get well established---probably by next summer, maybe this fall.

The herbs are growing beautifully.   The basil is also loving the heat!  The calendula at the front of the herb garden are floweing...all yellow so far, no orange yet.  The towering sorrel and lovage flower stalks are getting cut down this week.    Next the to herb garden is a row of carrots (in the box), 1 zuchine hill, peppers, brocolli, swiss chard, beets, and radish.   the farm campers helped to plant more radishes, and pull a few, and to put in more of Amy's pepper seedlings.  Behind them, you can see, the beans are growing abundantly.

The lavender is beautiful!

 The garlic has scapes (seed heads, which we've begun cutting) and I ate the first delicious raspberry....lots more on the way!

The strawberry patch is almost picked out.  The kids made jam again on Saturday, this time with a recipe with much less sugar.   They also made bread (containing some wheat they ground into flour themselves...plus a lot of traditional white flour--we'd tried it with half and half during staff training, and it turned out like a rock!) and they hand-churned cream into butter.  they all said it all tasted great at the camp earthday breakfast this morning.   Camp has a special focus on ehalthy food this summer.   The SOL campers went to a strawberry farm and picked strawberries on Saturday, and also went to 2 farmers markets and bought delicious green peppers and cantaloupes. 

June 17 - Wheat, apples, peas, and woodchips... oh my!

So excited to se that the wheat has started to head out!  So beautiful!  Excited to actually use it for bread at the end of the summer.

And the little apples are bigger everyday.   The tiniest apples dropped off on their own.  I had thought I might need to thin them, but now I think that what's left is perfect!

And the pes!   I like the snap peas best, more than the sugar pod variety.

I also picked the remainder of the strawberries from the old patch.  Cut them up and put them in the freezer.  Tomorrow I start to dig it up so I can put in the corn and cukes from the greenhouse.  But that old patch yielded 11 quarts of strawberries!  I think that was worth delaying digging it up.

Finally the woodchips got delivered today!  I've been trying to get woodchips for the last month.  But the driver couldn't back up the hill where I wanted them dropped, so here they are on a big tarp on the lawn...alot of woodchips!  I'm disappointed in the quality of them.  I realize now that woodchips are better in the late fall, winter, and early spring when they aren't mixed with leaves, which will just turn to mush.  So much to learn!

June 12, 2013: Camp Staff in the Garden

The farm camp counselors and CITS worked in the garden with me today.   What a great team they were!

 Kayli and William and Maria weeded the extremely weedy garlic and onion patch and then cut the flower stalks off the onions.  They tasted the flower buds and decided to collect them to eat!
Rachel and Kaylin and Michaela weeded the lettuce/pea beds and potatoes and pulled off all the willows branches that had sprouted from the willow trellis.

  

 

Connor and Titiana wired the young apple trees to 3 t-posts, threading the wire through some old pieces of hose so that we wouldn't hurt the trees.  Then they planted cantaloupe and watermelon seedlings to replace the ones that had died, and also planted one hill of pie pumpkin seeds.  Then they picked another 4 quarts strawberries (from the new bed) which we all ate for lunch

Last night I made another batch of strawberry jam from the 3 quarts of strawberries I picked yesterday from the old bed, plus froze 2 small packages of berries. 

I've been trying to keep track of the berry harvest.  So far I think we've picked 8 quarts from the new bed and 9 quarts from the old bed (so glad I didn't dig it up yet----and the cucumbers and corn are sprouting in the greenhouse just waiting their turn to be part of the garden, after the old strawberry patch is dug up) The old bed's production will end in a week or so.  I hope the new bed will produce for a few more weeks--I'd love to stillhave berries for the 4th of July!. 

Strawberries!!!!

 

Picked 5 quarts of strawberries yesterday (3 quarts of big berries from new patch, 2 quarts of small berries from old patch) and then 2 more quarts today (small ones from old patch---didn't even touch new patch today!)  They are sweet and tender, not woody like berries from the store, and not sour.  I have 2 or 3 with everymeal!  Tonight the camp counselors made 4 pints of strawberry jam from 2+ quarts of the small berries...yum!  Supposedly I was teaching them to make jelly, bread, butter, pickles, salsa, herb tea, and dried apples and raisins tonight.  But in reality, they are a terrific staff and just jumped right in, read the recipes, and didn't need much guidance at all....I think that's a pretty good predictor of a great summer of camp ahead of us!

June 6: The Fruit Garden

The fruit garden was created by Conor Johnson as his Eagle Scout project in Oct. 2011.  He cleared the area, and built rasied beds with railroad ties, then filled the beds with a layer of newspaper and well rotted manure.  That fall we planted blueberries and raspberries.  Last summer, we added grapes, strawberries, and dwarf apple trees.  And covered everything with landscape fabric and woodchips.  In 2012, there were a precious few strawberries, blueberries, and grapes, no apples, and quite a few raspberries.  This year, there's LOTS of everything on the way!  Here's one of the two grape vines; they have several clusters of tiny immature grapes already!

(Correction, added 6/7:  Realized today that I was not seeing grape clusters, but rather clusters of flower buds, because today I noticed their pollen stamens.  Hopefully, they get pollinated and so that the grape clusters will be next!)

 The dwarf apple trees had lots of blossoms and now tiny apples are forming!  I did a little research and found that we should remove some of the apples to give the little trees a chance to get stronger.

 The blueberries have been a challenge as they are supposed to have acidic soil.  We've layed pine needles on four times already, and each June have cooked up the lemon rinds from SummerFarmFest's lemon shakeup concession and added the "tea" to the bushes. 

Lemon Rinds!

Last year we also grew cantaloupe and one teeny watermelon in the raspberry patch.  This year I started some from seed but they didn't make it.  So I've bought some seedlings and will add a couple of cantaloupe, watermelon, and a hill of pie pumpkins to the vacant end of the long apple bed.

The strawberries are abundant and delicious!  Since I don't want to dig up the old patch for a couple of weeks, i.e. until we harvest all its berries, I planted corn and cucumbers in flats in the greenhouse today, so they won't get such a late start after we dig up the strawberry patch.

June 5: Herbs!

The perennial herbs have grown so big in the past 2 weeks!

The tallest is french sorrel.  I need to keep cutting it!  To its right is Lovage, also starting to flower. 

And to its left are the chives, with their darling ball-shaped purple flowers. 

The green leafy mass in the foreground is all lemon balm, which I have already cut back and dug lots of out of the garden this spring.  To the far left, just out of the above photo is the sage, shown below, with gorgeous purple flowers.

June 5: Veggies growing abundantly!

The beans are up!

 The chard is growing well and is delicious sautéed in olive oil with asparagus, onions, garlic, and mushrooms!

Tomatoes aren't growing too fast.  I know they'd like it to be warmer.  They're planted on black landscapefabric as a weed barrier.  Waiting for woodchip delivery to hold down the edges and mark the paths between.

 

 The lettuce is magnificent!  Peas are slow are sparse.  Too late to plant more.  The willow sticks I cut and used as a trellis support are all sprouting!  Weeds are growing too!

 The potatoes were slow to start but now are growing like crazy...I counted about 45 plants!  Need to be weeded!

June 4: Strawberries and Asparagus

June 4, 2013:  SO much has grown since I last posted two weeks ago on May 23.  When I look at the photos from then, compared to now, I am amazed!  Most importantly, I have finally managed to weed the two awful perennial plots at the top of the garden--the asparagus and the 2010 strawberry patch.  "Weed" is a relative word here----since I was working around the plants---the asparagus because despite the weeds, it's bountiful year after weedy year, and the strawberries, because even thought I intend to dig them up and plant corn and cucumbers, I couldn't bear to destroy them right as they were about to bear luscious red berries.  So I'll plant the corn and cukes int he greenhouse in pots, and wait 2-3 weeks to dig up the plot!  Here's the strawberry plot now:

These strawberries from the old plants look --and taste--so good!  Of course, compared to the new strawberry plot's abundance, these are few in number.   There are so so many on the way in the new plot.  Here's an example:

The asparagus was a much bigger challenge.   The plot is perhaps 7 years old.   It is totally intertwined with tough tough grass and huge dandelions, plus bindweed and other assorted weeds.   The weeds have grown HUGE in the past 2 weeks as I've been busy getting the rest of the garden planted.   And if I dig, I hurt the asparagus roots.  So I mostly broke off the weeds, digging as little as possible.   I didn't take a "before" picutre, but this is halfway through the plot:

And this is when I'm finished!

 I'd love to start over some day with a new asparagus plot, but on the other hand, this one keeps yielding great asparagus.  Every day or two I pick another dozen spears.

     So much more is happening in the garden, but posts and more photos will have to wait a day or two...