Gardening Time

Wow, Memorial Day is upon us...does time speed up as you get older? Perhaps this is an example of the TPR principle- that's the Toilet Paper Roll principle: the closer it gets to the end, the faster it runs out. Regardless, the unofficial start of summer is this weekend, of course the astrological start isn't for another few weeks, so don't panic.

Minglewood crew hard at work

Most significantly though, Memorial Day is the traditional weekend to get your vegetable garden planted. The average last frost for this region is May 20, so it should be safe to put out all those warm weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and basil. Of course, with the totally random and unpredictable weather we have had this spring, I would recommend keeping the sheets and blankets handy to cover plants, just in case we get an unusually late frost.

If you are a gardener, be sure to stop by our stand at the Saratoga market to check out all your planting options. We have a wide selection of over 25 tomato varieties, both heirlooms and hybrids, plus peppers, eggplant, herbs, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini and summer squash. We offer the only Certified Organic plants at the Saratoga market.

On the weather front, farming has continued to be a challenge this year. We have had some absolutely perfect sunny days, however, the rainy periods in between have prevented us from keeping on any kind of regular planting schedule. With our heavy soils, we are forced to wait as long as possible for the fields to dry and then planting like crazy the day before it rains again. With the saturated soils, I am sad to say that crops have not been growing particularly well this spring. The most affected crop has been the field grown spinach. All our early plantings have essentially drowned. They hung on for quite awhile, but finally this week the plants succumbed, turning yellow, struggling for a last gasp of air...and died.

"Help- I'm drowning....."

The spinach goes down

Fields so wet, the geese think it's a pond!

Fortunately we've had the greenhouse plantings for lettuce and mesclun, which have provided a respectable supply for market. We have also had a good run with sprouts at market. It's nice to have at least one crop that is not weather dependant. While we have had issues with airborne mold spores causing trouble during the most humid periods of the summer, generally they are an easy crop to grow.


We produce them in our dedicated sprout room in an automated sprout machine - "Auto-Sprout". This has served us well for 13+ years. The basic process is to soak the seeds first in a very dilute disinfecting solution to kill any bacteria on the outside of the seeds, and then to rinse, rinse, rinse. This process is required by the FDA to insure that the sprouts are safe from pathogens.

Rinsing the seeds

We then soak the seeds in water for 6 to 8 hours, and then spread them on the screen trays. Then we pop them in the sprouter and turn it on. The machine automatically mists the seeds every half hour for 30 seconds. After four days, we start to green them up with a grow light. At five to six days they are ready to eat. We take them out of the sprouter on Saturday morning and bring them to market - voila.

Spreading out the seed on trays

Trays loaded into Auto-Sprout

Sprouts at 1 day old

Sprouts at 3 days old

Sprouts at 5 days old

If only growing spinach was that easy...

Winter to Spring

Toes toasting in front of fire

Well, here I sit on May first in front of the wood stove... this weather is just not right. I think back so fondly to mid-March when it was so sunny, warm, and dry. Alas, it's too early in the season to start complaining about the weather, so...

Happy May everyone! This blog has had a long hiatus since the last posting, but the advent of spring brings all kinds of bloggable topics. This past winter was eventful, but relaxing too. We had lots of time for all our favorite things: sleeping, reading, eating. We had visits from family and friends including Chris' sister from England, and Tammara's brother from St. Louis and sister from Austin.

Chris and Tammara at Playa El Tunco, El Salvador

We also had time for what has become nearly a winter tradition for us - travels to Central America. This year we went to Guatemala and El Salvador. This completes our check list for visiting all the countries of Central America - not that we were really counting.

Martin cultivating in lettuce tunnel

The farm season got off to a real jump start this year. With virtually no snow melt and little precipitation in late winter, our fields dried out earlier than any other of our 13 previous farm seasons. This allowed us to plow, till, and spread compost over all the fields by the end of March. Early plantings got in the ground on time, and we are off to a great start.

 It was actually so dry that I had to set up the irrigation in April, something I've never had to do before. As luck would have it, after spending a whole day setting everything up, the pump would not work. So for several days I had to revert to watering all the crops with a very long garden hose. Finally, I took the whole pump apart....to find the innards jam packed with hickory nuts! I guess those squirrels were busy last fall filling the intake hose with provisions. We eventually got everything put back together and working- just about the time it started to rain.

Drilling shiitake log

With it too wet to plant, we have kept busy with other projects. We harvested, drilled and inoculated about sixty new shiitake mushroom logs. We do a new batch every spring. It takes a year for the spawn to colonize the log and be ready to produce mushrooms, so what we prepared this year won't be ready until the 2013 season.

Sealing in spawn with melted bees wax

Seedling waiting for transplanting

We've been quite busy in the greenhouses, getting lots of plants started. With the rains delaying the transplanting for two weeks now - the main greenhouse is bursting at the seams. This week we put up our temporary tunnel to start hardening the plants off, as well as, to make room for this weeks seedings.

Salad beds ready to be cut

We are gearing up for our first market of the season this Saturday, May 5. One big change for us this year is that we will not be attending the Wednesday markets. We have debated this issue for a long time. We are constantly trying to find the right balance between time, size and sanity to make the farm a sustainable venture, both financially and personally. Not attending Wednesdays will give us an extra day to do field work on the farm, as well as, giving us more product to sell on Saturdays. We hope this does not inconvenience to many of our dedicated customers and apologize if it does.

We will once again be offering our Minglewood CSA Dollars option at our stand. This allows you to buy shares which are used as credit for any items sold at our stand. Shares range from $100 to $500 and save you from 10 to 20% off the regular prices. Be share to ask us for details at the market.

We are looking forward to a great season. Hope to see you at market.