Vegetables 2008
Summer Emily and Lauren help pole beans onto the trellis.  The outside vegetable garden got off to a slow start due to mechanical difficulties and the weather. 
Our summer vegetables are slow growing this year. We expect beans, tomatoes, eggplant, favas, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, beets and continuing salad greens. However, none of these fine vegetables are ready to harvest yet, although that wouldn't be completely unusual for many of them. We started watermelon, cantaloupe, squash and pumpkin in June in pots. They are flowering in late July so we're hopeful — many of the melons are in the hoophouse. It's an experiment, especially since we planted the same cantaloupes outside with black fabric ground cloth. Laura, our culinary intern is an eager gardener. This year the North Fork Valley is hosting the Boulder Culinary School of the Rockies for a couple of weeks in September so students will understand the growing as well as cooking of food. That's also the reason that Laura is spending the summer on our farm — and we are all benefiting from her talent, skills, and very educated (Le Cordon Blue) cooking!
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We have a "wild pile" in our hoop house, the result of Erik's work last year. He piled all the compostables from the garden into a corner of the hoop house. It's become magical — a very large set of leg bones appeared with all kinds of flowers and vegetables tangled in wild abandon. The Wild Pile also provides a good home for predators and prey, we've had very little insect damage or disease in the hoop house so far. Another reason for a healthy greenhouse may be that I left the hoop house empty and open over the winter for a cleansing freeze. |
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Spring
A delicious way to serve radishes:
Slice thin, toss with mix of 2 tablespoons vinegar, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon salt and a couple teaspoons of sesame oil. This dressing is great with cold steamed asparagus too!
Western Colorado generally and the North Fork Valley specifically experienced a cool spring due to La Niña. In fact, the temperatures in late April hit low 20s which caused orchardists to lose sleep, including Wink. More about that in the orchards sections.
We had to wait a long time for the ground to warm up and seeds to germinate. Laura, our culinary intern, arrived in late April and we soon planted spinach in the south bed. The spinach and radishes never looked better when they finally matured at the beginning of June!
The modest lowly radish was treated with the respect due a queen — partially because the cool weather gave it tenderness and thin skin, and partially because we were like rabbits starved for fresh green stuff!
Later in the spring the overgrown radishes served to trap the flea beetles, who prefered them to the neighboring fava beans in the hoop house.
The
long cool spring gave our strawberry plants a big leg up and the berries
were bigger this year too. That might have been because we stopped using
the well (highly salty) water to irrigate plus it's the second year for the
plants. The June berries (Honey Oye and Benton) produced and finished in
July, the everbearing (TriStar) continue to produce. Our horticulture intern
Emily informed us that there is another type of strawberry, the day neutral,
which is supposedly more fruitful.
We love our strawberries so much, that we also planted a 90' row of raspberries
and about 25 PrimeJan blackberries. The raspberries are doing wonderful this
year, the establishment year. Thanks
to Simmons Plant Farm! But the blackberries didn't arrive in good shape,
and I left them in the packing box too long — so there's few survivors. -
M
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Mushrooms and startsWe began starts later than usual, late April, and still lost quite a few in May freezes. This year we sterilized our containers with hydrogen peroxide for a higher success rate. We stored freshly cut apple limbs for a month to reduce the wood's natural fungicide. Laura drilled holes for mushroom spoor plugs. She pounded those in with a rubber mallet then sealed it all with cheese wax. |
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 Asparagus needs a deep trench, lots of water and soil amendments like compost and organic fertilizer.  Aaron stayed with us for a week in March to help with spring jobs. Part of the "joy" is not knowing what the heck we are doing until we're doing it.  Some of us paid a surcharge of pain until the winter fat burned off a couple of months later! The asparagus crowns were beautiful and are doing very well — here's a plug for Nourse Farms! Late March asparagus plantingWhen we bought the farm, it was primarily orchard and fallow ground. We've been diversifying for the past several years by planting wine and table grapes, and we've removed 300 red delicious apple trees. Consequently the price for red delicious has soared! Last year we constructed a long hoop house at the southern end of the cleared ground, moved our bee yard there, and planted a rye cover on the rest of the land. A berm was more or less accidental when we evened the ground so we decided a raised asparagus bed would go perfectly with our spring sweet cherries. We would then have two spring crops to diversify our income. It's difficult to calculate exactly how much space is needed for planting, and farmers must order far in advance to secure the stock. To be on the safe side, most order more than they think they will need and can usually find a home for it in someone else's orchard or field. In the case of 1200 asparagus, we planted the designated berm and realized we needed the same amount of space again! July asparagus growingThe asparagus harvest will take several years to reach 100% and this year is all about establishing a strong healthy bed. Since Delta County asparagus hunters enjoy plenty of the wild kind, we know asparagus likes it in our high alkali valley. Now we won't have to compete with those folks who comb the ditches and canals in April. If you want to know much more about asparagus that you thought possible, a new documentary is available — Asparagus! Stalking the American Life for screening by qualified organizations.
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March
We replaced the hoophouse north side zipper door with these sliding polycarbonate doors. We will be able to drive the tractor through for cultivation, usually once a year. The plan is to add compost, water, t-tape, and starts for later transplanting. Asparagus crowns were mailed today from Nourse Farms for early planting. Soon we'll begin our spring planting!
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Early February in Pete and Sue's Greenhouse 
Our neighbors who are gardeners extraordinaire, Pete and Sue, built their greenhouse this fall from "scratch." We checked it out at the beginning of February — it differs from the high tunnel hoophouse that we've built — it has a double layer of plastic with a small solar powered fan that pressurizes an inflated layer of air in between the two layers. It's a rigid structure, silent inside even with wind blowing outside. Wink got some good ideas to improve our hoophouse. We admired their lush greens, as well as the craftsmanship which makes it worth the effort! |
 Before Aaron headed off to new adventures, he constructed a compost house near the hoop house. Snow in our garden and greenhouse Due to a prolonged growing season in 07, Max decided the hoop house needed a rest. In fact, we hope this is also a hygienic solution to excessive slugs, sow bugs, aphids and other insects that love the warmth and moisture while it freezes outside. If the cold can knock these pests back a step or two, we will avoid the major bug problems that plague enclosed green houses. Wink plans to fix the end doors which are now open, and which were seriously damaged during high winds last summer. When March rolls around, we will be ready to plant spring greens! |
