Tag: orach

Posted on by Josh

Fezzik the buck is visiting for a few weeks, so we’ll probably have another crop of kids in the spring.

We have tons of orach sprouting in the garden from the stalks that went to seed. We’ll see if it lasts through winter. The Chinese broccoli is still going, and doing better, in fact, with the aphids diminishing as the weather gets cooler.

We haven’t had any mushrooms so far this fall, but we still have plenty preserved from last year.

We decided that try harvesting black walnuts from the tree across the road. They are notorious for their hard shells. First we gathered them and removed the meaty outer fruit, which can be used to make ink or dye. Now we’re letting them dry for a few weeks. Then we’ll try cracking them and extracting the nut meat.

We’re down to five chickens at the moment. We’re still getting some eggs.

Heather is doing the pumpkin drop-off site again by road, and the pumpkins are pouring in.

The garlic Heather planted a few weeks ago is barely sprouting. We’ll see what happens.

Posted on by Josh

A Pineapple Express dropped a half inch of rain yesterday.

The hops plant accidentally got weed-whacked, but it’s regrowing… plus, we noticed a couple additional bines coming up from the ground, too.

The first planting of potatoes is looking great. We planted the rest of row 2 in potatoes today.

The peas are sprouting.

The first planting of corn has a couple of sprouts coming up. I did the second planting today.

We have plenty of volunteer orach and lettuce.

Posted on by Josh

I planted Oregon sugar peas and the first 12 sweet corn seeds in row 1 of the garden.  The dirt on that row seems really compacted, so we’ll see how it goes.

We planted potatoes in part of row 2 a few weeks ago. They’re up and looking good.

We’ve had a good amount of volunteer lettuce and orach growing that we’ve been harvesting and enjoying at the dinner table.

We transplanted tomatoes and peppers last weekend.

We watched a deer decimate the fresh leaves on our grapevines yesterday. I’m glad the netting around the garden is working to keep them out.

The baby goats are all growing quickly. They’ve all been disbudded. In a few weeks, they’ll get banded and turned into wethers.

I think I’ve already ruined the new chainsaw engine. Not sure what’s going on.

Posted on by Josh

We installed three lines of 50lb monofilament around the garden a few days ago. The same day, the field across the street got mowed. The guy who mowed said he saw several deer bed areas. Since that day, the garden is doing better, but we don’t know if it’s because of the monofilament fence or the mowed field.

The volunteer orach plants (from the ones that went to seed last year) have been doing really well. We got our first handful of bush beans today, and there are tons of blossoms. I think the peas are done (healthy vines but noore blossoms). The third planting of corn is sprouting.

Posted on by Heather

Good news! All of the peas I planted in our garden waaay back in February are now sprouted. Hello and good morning! I will never plant peas in February again. I will always plant them in early to mid March. February is not the time to plant anything in the garden. February is a time to plan, learn, teach, prepare, and organize.

I decided to plant fava beans today, as a cover crop. I put them in the tomato row and the pepper\cucumber row. It’s my first time putting down a cover crop. I sowed “Sweet Loraine Improved” fava beans.

While I was wandering around the garden, observing and thinking, I saw happy clusters of some friends I spent a lot of time with last summer. They were orach seedlings! I loved orach last year because it was happy in the cold, happy in the heat, it was tall, generous, soft, and never bitter. It sometimes goes by the name “mountain spinach”. We bought a pack of orach seeds last year that had five different colors of orach. I think all five colors sent out their seeds, and we will be flush with orach in a few weeks!

I have a few 1020 flats of seedlings that I think are going to go to the greenhouse. Our greenhouse isn’t cooled or heated. It’s my first year with a greenhouse, and I’ve already killed off a few flats because i wasn’t sure how warm or cool the greenhouse would be. Now that it’s March, we are above freezing on most nights. I think I’ll move my cool weather crop seedlings out. I don’t know if I can move my warm weather seedlings out yet. Maybe I’ll try.

Even though I spent a lot of time putting together my garden plan and mapping out where each vegetable would be, I have to be flexible. The orach volunteers ended up on the tomato row. Maybe a couple tomato volunteers will end up on the greens row. I could dig them up and transplant them. But maybe this divine chaos is what I need in my garden and in my life–allowing beauty and life to grow wherever there is space for it.

Posted on by Josh

The tatsoi has sprouted nicely, the orach pretty well, and the mizuna, lettuce, and cutting greens sparsely. Keeping the soil surface moist has been a challenge this week due to extremely high winds (strong east winds blew the farm stand over yesterday) and very low humidity.

I finished installing the garden irrigation system today. We can run two soaker hoses on each of the six garden rows.

Posted on by Josh

This evening we planted tatsoi, muzuna, and orach in row 5, and little gem lettuce and cutting mix in row 6 (3×3 patches about 6 feet in from the east end). The seeds are so tiny, they remind me of having “faith as a grain of mustard seed.” It’s hard to believe that these ones will grow into food for the dinner table.