Green Season
June nearly escaped us without being captured in a blog post, but luckily we’ve caught her by the tail. It’s officially summer now, and the weeds seem to understand this as their time to shine. The thistles, pokeweed, pigweed, lambsquarters, and purslane are all growing and supporting a complicated network of insects. We’ve been identifying bugs- are you foe or friend to our garden? Most are friendly, some even beneficial. So we pull weeds and hoe the rows clean, while leaving a few healthy purslane plants, because we’ve heard they taste great pickled.
For Serious CSA members, we’re harvesting kale, swiss chard, our famous salad mix, radishes, fresh garlic, peppermint, oregano, sage and flowers. We’re watching the carrots, spinach, beets, green beans and cucumbers, which should all be ready soon. At the same time, we’re also preparing garden beds for lettuce transplants. We’d hoped to plant them earlier, but our schedule had to adjust to the heat wave. (A baby lettuce seedling, freshly transplanted, would not survive this 90 degree weather.) We’re also getting ready to plant our fall crops- broccoli, brussel sprouts, more beets and carrots.
The tomato plants are adorned in their summer best- dainty yellow flowers telling tale of tomatoes to come. And we are glad to see that we might have learned a thing or two about growing peppers. Last year, the peppers were a tragedy. This year though, they are tall, green and healthy.
To those who do not keep a garden, it can all sound romantic- laying out the rows and nurturing plants. Mostly however, our time is spent pulling weeds, bent over and sweating and wondering just how deep those thistle roots could really go. It is a lot of work. But we keep the romance in mind while we labor. Besides growing food sustainably, we learn ecology, biology, geology, meteorology, history and poetry. Perhaps most importantly, this work is something we can do together. And what more could we ask for?
As always, contact us at seriousfarms@gmail.com. Happy gardening and happy eating!
