An Artichoke on a Typical Spring Day

This artichoke plant hosts an entire micro-ecosystem.  Ants have been bringing aphids to feed on its leaves and stem. The ants are like aphid ranchers, bringing the aphids to juicy plants and then feeding on the "honeydew" that the aphids produce. The ladybugs come to eat the aphids. Since there are so many ladybugs there and such good food, the artichoke has also become a popular spot to meet other ladybugs, have a few drinks, and see what happens...

Interestingly, the other artichoke plants in the row have very few aphids or ladybugs on them. I don't know why. I do know that we harvested our first artichokes yesterday, and they were delicious!

We started another round of greenhouse plantings. These are pumpkins (almost ready to transplant) and a variety of herbs.

Stormy Weather

Peas love cool, wet weather. These guys should be ready soon.

Just a couple weeks ago we had temperatures as hot as 90 degrees. The past couple days it has been drizzling and cold, with highs around 60 degrees. For most folks, the crazy weather is a curiosity, something to talk about at the grocery store. For farmers, the weather takes on a much higher level of importance. We watch the weather constantly and try to determine what we can do to help our plants make it through the given conditions. A couple weeks ago we decided to invest in shade cloth to protect our spring veggies from the suddenly hot weather. Spring plants exposed to too much heat can bolt before harvest time, meaning that they flower and try to go to seed early, which results in bitter, unsellable crops. So, now that we have put up shade cloth over all the tender spring plants, the weather has turned gloomy and wet. Hopefully, it's not too cool and wet for our summer plants, which love heat and lots of sun. The good news is that we are a highly-diversified farm, and so some of our plants are bound to like the weather, whatever it may be.

Shade cloth in the rain

 On Saturday I taught a class at the Morgan Hill Community Garden about transplanting and trellising. Below are some examples of tomato trellises that we talked about.

Florida Weave: The tomatoes are sandwiched between the twine

Suspended Trellis: The twine will be spiraled around the tomato as it grows.

The First CSA Delivery of the Season

We're so glad to be back and delivering delicious spring veggies to our members. The first bag of the season is full of greens and fava beans. All the greens are at the peak of flavor right now, and we're happy to be able to share the bounty. We're starting with small bags (5-6 items), and we're hoping to ramp up to 8-10 items per week as more veggies ripen. See photo for examples from this week's CSA bag.
If any of you want to share recipes, send them my way! We include two recipes with every newsletter. 

Eat your leafy greens! (Clockwise from left: Spinach, Lettuce, Mizuna Mustard Greens, Bok Choy, and Fava Beans)

Knee high by the fourth of July? No problem! The corn babies are looking good so far.

Strawberry Time is Here!

The first strawberry. Well, actually I ate the first. Technically, this is the last one left from the first day of strawberry season.

I just returned from a week-long trip to Florida to find that the first strawberries are ripe! There were just a few, but I'm pretty sure we'll have many more coming in the next couple weeks. I treated our beautiful strawberry plants to some extra loving yesterday by weeding them, watering, adding some fertilizer, and covering them with bird netting. We have a lot of blue jays around here, and if they ever get bored of eating the cat food, I'm sure they'll happily devour our strawberries.

Shade cloth over spinach and lettuce.

While I was in Florida, Morgan Hill had its first real heat wave of the year with temps up to the 90's. Gal really held down the fort by giving everything extra water and covering some of the cool-weather crops with shade cloth. (Let's hear it for the boy!)

Purple mustard greens. They're growing so well, but the leaves are full of tiny holes thanks to flea beetles.