A Growing Bonanza!

Tomato Acre Farm?

Beans Reaching for the Sky

The farm is booming right now with plenty of spring vegetables still being harvested and summer veggies starting too. It's so satisfying to see it all coming together. This is perhaps the most exciting time of year on the farm. There's still plenty of work, but we are bringing in the fruits of our labor.

Gal attaching one of our new windows

Anyway, besides the farm work, we are taking care of the farmers. At long last we are installing new bedroom windows, ones that open and close whenever we want. Amazing!

And...What's up with brussels sprouts? They have been growing since January, and they are huge and healthy looking, yet no sprouts to be found. I guess we'll try a fall planting and see if they like the weather better.

Brussels, huge with no interest in sprouting

Sunflower Sprouts

 We grew lots of giant sunflowers last year and saved the heads thinking we would roast the seeds. Well, we didn't get too motivated on that front, but I have recently started growing sunflower sprouts, which has been quite satisfying and delicious.

Giant sunflower last summer. They were about 10 ft. tall.

Dried sunflower heads hanging in the shed

We cut off the sunflower heads last fall and dried them in our shed.
I recently collected the seeds from one head, soaked them and rinsed them periodically for 2 days, and then grew them on top of soil. In about a week's time, we had plenty of sprouts for our CSA members (and some for us too).

Sprouts on about day 4. They grow fast!

Garlic Capital of the World!

Well, almost. Gilroy, the town just south of us, is the official garlic capital. Fortunately, the garlic doesn't seem to care for city boundaries. This year was our first try at growing garlic, and it did very well. I harvested our small patch this morning.

On trays and ready to be cured in the shed for the next couple weeks.

Garlic takes a very long time to grow, about nine months, but overall, it's very easy to grow and pests avoid it. After harvest, the garlic has to be "cured" (dried) for at least a couple weeks so it can be stored. Garlic is great to eat at any stage of the process, and we've been enjoying testing a few of the heads over the past month. Next year we're definitely going to grow a lot more garlic!

Garlic in the field. It's ready to harvest when about 40% of the leaves are yellow.

Gently harvesting the garlic with a digging fork.