Monthly Archives: April 2014

All-star lettuce after a hard freeze

all-star lettuceWe’ve had 2 nights of hard freezes-one worse than the other. This is a picture of all-star lettuce. It’s a cut-and-come again lettuce that went through both nights with no protection at all. This is an example of how some things are more hardy when they are smaller. They did warm up and thaw by the end of both days. If this had been an established head of lettuce, after two freeze/thaw periods it would be a bowl of soup-all mush. I have other things that were protected and without exception everything is completely fine. The question I always ask myself when it gets this cold is “do I have anything in the garden that doesn’t like cold weather?” Fortunately I don’t. I’ve got a picture of some leeks where there is frost on the leaves and they are just perfect. By matching the right crop with the right season you eliminate all kinds of worries. As a side note, this spacing pattern breaks the general rule of planting lettuce. This is done because they will not be full heads of lettuce but rather part of a mesclun salad mix that will be cut only twice. After that, I’ll amend the soil and replant with something from the root or fruit varieties. Soil amendments and crop rotation. Couldn’t be any easier than this.

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TWE first spring delivery

TWE 041514-1st deliveryI only grow for 5 customers but this is the first delivery for the 6 week spring season. What’s in there you ask? Radicchio, mizuna, claytonia, cilantro, poc-choi, carrots, swiss chard, and an artisan lettuce mix. The mix has a combination of black seeded simpson, red cross and skyphos lettuce, spinach, and tokyo bekana. The whole idea is simple: take a handful of lettuce and add any of the other salad green “mix-ins” for a different tasting salad for several nights. It’s not really cheap but my customers enjoy the freshest tasting salad greens and veggies around-especially this early. None of the local CSA’s are up and running at this time. The greatest thing? Taste-taste-taste! And no chemical/pesticide/fertilizer residues-ever.

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Poc choi

joi choi march 2014I’ve been able to plant 5 or 6 squares of poc choi this spring. It’s too many-I probably only needed 3. Being planted at 4 per square foot, I’m not sure what I’ll do with 24 of them. About the only saving grace is they won’t come up all at the same time. You can see that there’s more than 4 in this picture. I was able to carefully lift out the extra plants and place them in other squares. I should have done it right from the beginning and only planted 1 or 2 seeds in each hole instead of what I ended up doing. This particular variety is a favorite of ours-Joy Choi. It’s a little more slender than the early variety I’ve grown before but just as delicious. These stir-fry’s with poc choi in them are just the best. My first spring harvest deliver season starts in less than 2 weeks. It looks pretty close to being ready.

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