I had a leftover turkey leg from the renaissance festival (costco’s 2 tickets plus 2 turkey legs is a great deal!) so I decided to make a batch of collard greens. My house smells so good right now!
What are you cooking this week?
We’re finally hauling in the good stuff! We’ve had a couple of nice baskets and more are in the way. It seems like nature is trying to make up for its bad behavior this spring with nice deep soaking rains and warm days. Unsurprisingly the zucchini and cucumbers are exploding, we will have a ton of extras so this would be a good week to make zucchini bread to eat, share, and freeze for later.
We also have some sweet stuff that’s just about ready!
Melons!
Butternut squash
Acorn Squash
And here’s a fun pic to compare with earlier ones. The squash plants getting big!
It seems this season is determined to go down in history. First with record breaking floods- you may have noticed some of the commercial farms around us haven’t planted at all, others have soybeans that are only a few inches tall. No one in our area has a normal looking crop. All a result of the spring floods and our local heavy clay soil.
Then last week we experienced record cold temperatures. Nothing was killed here at the farm, but vegetables that normally grow inches per day have not grown at all for the better part of the week. And today it seems the weather is overcompensating with ridiculous heat and humidity. We have water going on the more sensitive crops so the heat should be a good thing.
So once again we are taking a short break in the harvest to give stuff a chance to catch up. Our next harvests will be Tuesday July 29th and Friday August 1st. Given another week to recover we should be back on track again and hope for smooth sailing for the rest of the season.
Once again I want to thank you all for your patience and understanding, we really appreciate it!
In the meantime here are some pics to show how it’s looking out there.
Yes! Those are itty bitty cucumbers
Cucumbers
Melons are vining
Squash
Potatoes are blooming
Tomato plants are about 1/3 size normal but already have fruit
Carrots
The beans are blooming
Zucchini
Tomatillos
Cauliflower
Unfortunately, due to this spring’s record breaking rains we are low on available crops. So we will be taking a short break so the garden can catch up. Our next harvests should be
Tuesday July 8
Friday July 11
The good news is we are looking at the setup for our best tomato harvest in years! The plants haven’t looked this good, this early in years. The cucumbers, melons, and squash are all looking amazing. Even with the ridiculous rains this spring we’re looking forward to an excellent season. It’ll just be a little bit later than usual.
Thank you so much for your patience and support!
The zucchini looks amazing!
This 2nd planting of carrots has had an awesome germination rate. That’s the biggest struggle with carrots, so they are past the danger zone.
Your onions have recovered from the flooding and are growing strong
We had to replant the watermelon 3 (!) times but it finally took and look how great they look!
I can’t emphasize enough how good the tomatoes are looking
Look! Little tomatoes!
To have a visual representation of how the constant heavy rain affected the spring crops, here is a photo of our peppers:
The big green ones in the lower left and upper right are transplants we put in this week. The itty bitty things in the upper left and lower right are our transplants we put in over a month ago! They actually got smaller over time. The rain was slowly killing them.
Here’s another comparison:
These are eggplant, again the big plants are transplants from last week, the little ones are from over a month ago. Talk about frustrating!
Back to the positive:
The best news of all; you can expect peas in your next basket!
There is a lot of good stuff coming your way. 
There are only 9 days until our first Friday harvest, 13 days until Tuesday harvest!
Despite the fact that the rain has not relented, I think we’re still on track.
The spring crops are doing well, peas are rapidly climbing their fence. The radishes, beets, lettuce and greens are growing strong, and we’ll have some herbs in the first baskets as well.
The onions, shallots and leeks are all planted and have survived the heavy rains so far!
The zucchini is actually looking great, rain doesn’t seem to bother them.
The peppers, eggplant and tomatillos, on the other hand, are definitely suffering from the excess rain. They’ve stopped growing and the leaves are yellowing. They are still hanging on though and if the rain would just quit they would recover quickly.
The tomatoes are hanging in there!
And the broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower look great!
Last week’s weather system dumped over 5 inches on us. We lost the newly sprouted spinach, so that’s a wash for this year (literally). It doesn’t germinate if the soil is too warm, which it now is. 
We also lost the first planting of carrots, and a few other individual plants, a few tomatoes, tomatillos, herbs, eggplant, squash, peppers, and cucumbers. But I’ve filled in the gaps with new seeds so we should be good. We also got tomato cages up. Broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, beets, greens, and the rest of the zucchini weeded and mulched (whew!) it’s been a busy week!
The only things left on the To Do list are:
Put up fencing for the peas to grow on- they’re about 4″ tall and looking great!
Put in yet another row of beans- we stagger the planting so we can harvest for a longer period of time
Plant onions, shallots, and leeks- they absolutely can’t handle heavy rain so I’ve been putting it off until the weather settles
Plant one last row of potatoes- for later harvest
Mulch squash and melons
In late June/early July we can do another planting of fall crops, turnips, parsnips, more kohlrabi and greens
All weeding is done…for now. If the weather cooperates I will be thrilled to put in the hard days! All we need is for the ground to dry out enough so we can till. We just got another inch tonight so right now it’s too wet to even walk on. A bit frustrating, but pretty typical for Minnesota. Always grateful for the lack of severe weather. 
We only have about 25 days to go before our first harvest! The rain last night and today has given me a chance to finally catch up here and let you all know how we’re doing.
The last two weeks have been packed with laying out beds, planting and mulching. We have nearly everything planted. Peas, lettuce, spinach, beets and radishes have sprouted and will be abundant in the first baskets. We’re also seeing the zucchini, cucumbers, squash, start to pop up. The melons went in just before the rains so it won’t be long before they’re up. Our transplants look awesome, including tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, peppers, eggplant, fennel, and various herbs. The only things we have left to plant are onions, shallots, leeks, sweet corn, and second plantings of beans and carrots. So far so good this spring, we are on schedule and looking great!
Potatoes are cut and will be ready to be planted when the fields dry up this week. We also managed to get some seeds in before the downpour yesterday. With some sun and warmth they’ll be popping up in no time!
Another cold rainy day, another green growing pic to cheer you up.
Lovely sunny days with biting winds, and other days where the sky opens up and cold rains come down. Pretty typical spring in Minnesota!
Still we’re getting ready for warmer days and nights when planting will be in full swing. Here are just a few of our seedlings so far this year.
Its lovely to walk into the greenhouse and smell the warm earth and new growth. So keep in mind this week when were getting some of that cold rain, that things are growing and we are getting ready for thew 2014 season. Have a great week everyone!