Farm & Garden UpdatesWhen the clouds parted yesterday afternoon and the sun shone through in its natural yellow-white gleam it was pure delight to experience. We are relieved to be past the eerie and unhealthy haze of the wildfires and consider ourselves thankful that it DID feel unusual, unlike fellow creatures in many parts of the globe who battle air quality. We read a piece from a horticulture professor downstate that explained the possible impacts on plants, and the good news is that the smoke isn’t carrying unhealthy chemicals and there shouldn’t be negative impacts to the safety, flavor, or growth capacity of the plants. Read full article here. On the farm we’ve been catching up on weeding, after the focus on direct seeding and transplanting the last couple weeks. We’ll have a fun Saturday crew in the garden tomorrow, stop in anytime 9am-1pm to join us. If you are holding out for the potluck weekend, mark your calendar for Saturday June 24th! The Garden Mornings are the last Saturday of each month through October. We’re hosting a free garden tour this Sunday 1-2pm. If you have any friends or neighbors who are curious about the farm or our shares, send them on over.  From over 90 degrees to below freezing in 48 hours, we lost nearly a 100 tomato plants to patchy frost during the full moon Saturday. On Tuesday, we planted all our surplus plants and tracked down some more to fill in the gaps.  Here’s an example of intercropping, a tool we use to grow more food in an area while reducing the amount of bare ground. This bed includes two outer rows of head lettuce and a single planting of green beans down the middle. The lettuce matures more quickly and will be harvested, after which the green beans will grow to full size and take up most of the bed.  Mulching and weeding in perennial gardens, including sheet mulching to cover persistent weed areas. Also, welcome back Lianna (pictured here), we enjoyed her company last summer and she’s joining us in the gardens again while she’s home from college this month. Tips & Flavor Notes
 Thanks to the Weaver Family for donating a container for all the food scraps you’ll see in the wash stand area. Do you need a container to collect food scraps? littleGrasse has buckets, and every household can bring one home to collect your waste and transport back to the farm. You can be part of closing the loop and building healthy soil, that in turn feeds our food crops.  Kale is available beyond the greenhouse in the last three beds. Since the plants are still establishing, only harvest a couple of the largest leaves from each plant before moving to the next. Remember to start your harvest where you find the pink flag and then move the flag to the spot you stopped so the next person knows where to start their harvest. Kale is a crop we harvest from the same planting for many weeks.  A healthy batch of mixed lettuce greens in field beyond the greenhouse. Ruffled edges and unique leaf shapes provide interesting texture. The mix includes green and red oakleaf along with romaine and loll rossa.
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