Greetings shareholders,
Healthy soil is the cornerstone of healthy plants. We’ve had a great run of cover crops this year, such as the oats and field pea mix in the Front Range field on the right when you pull into the driveway as well as the stand directly in front of parking area in Irene’s. These will eventually be returned to the soil to increase organic matter before planting more food for you! This attention to soil vibrancy is one of the choices we make instead of directly feeding the plant with synthetic fertilizers. Our growing philosophy is grounded in a long term dedication to the soil life versus merely growing a quick crop.
Green light for kale! There’s two varieties available. At the start of the bed is a lacinato /dinosaur type and the second half is a curly type. These will be available in abundance for all your raw and cooked projects for months to come. When harvesting, cut a few outer, lower leaves from plant and move to the next leaving more than half of it, including all the center growth.
We are starting to harvest the garlic scapes this week. There will be some in the small fridge soon, to grab a handful. If you want any in bulk for processing email us at littlegrasse@gmail.com and we’ll save some for you. Otherwise there will be more than we can use and some will be dropped directly in the field after we snap them from the plant.
There’s still juicy heads of butterhead lettuce in the field. Their large leaves would be ideal for lettuce wraps. For lettuce and most greens crops, we plant staggered successions a few weeks apart. For example, there’s two other lettuce plantings in the field that have germinated but are not mature yet. Also, we’ve moved on to a delicate new batch of arugula, mixed greens, and spinach. Depending on how fast one bed is harvested, occasionally there is a time gap for availability from one planting to the next. If that’s the case, we’ll remove that item from the share board and add it back when the new patch is ready.
We planted a new batch of lemon balm, but it’s not yet established. The original patch was decimated by four lined plant bug that chewed thousands of holes in the leaves and they turned brown. Their favorite host plants are in the mint family, of which lemon balm is. We’ve already heard from someone else who is having the same issue. The recommendation is to cut down host plants in the fall to remove eggs that may have been inserted into them. Be sure to bury or compost removed plant material or remove plant residues from the landscape area.
Last Sunday a handful of farm shareholders joined us for a delightful bird walk with biologist Tom Langen. Our birding intern Lauren wrote a blog post about the experience with some tidbits gleaned from the experience.
We are looking forward to the next Garden Morning and Potluck Saturday June 28th, mark your calendars! If the weather is anything like this week, what golden days they will be.
Crops Available
* marks new this week
- Arugula
- Cilantro
- Dill*
- Garlic greens (immature garlic)
- Head lettuce
- Kale, curly and lacinato/dino
- Leaf fennel
- Lemon balm
- Mint
- Mixed lettuce greens
- Mixed salad greens (some spicy ingredients)
- Oregano
- Rainbow chard
- Thyme
- Blooming flowers: Amsonia blue cloud, columbine, lupine, peonies, scabiosa.
- The earliest flowers in the gardens are the perennials that survive from year to year. There are lesser quantities of these as compared to the annual flowers which are getting established now. Our policy for flowers is that shareholders are welcome to harvest anything you see in the landscape (unless marked otherwise if we are saving for seed). Wandering in these beds each week will reveal new surprises.
Peony