Good morning! Hope you are all doing well after coming through Tuesday night’s tornado activity. We spent all day Wednesday picking up sticks, branches, things that need to be put back in their place, and doing major work to save our redbud tree. All this and my “To Do” list was already seriously long (last week’s nearly 5 inches of rain also made an impact).
The wacky weather has taken a major toll on the lettuce patches. They are trying to finish and I’m trying to keep them going. The babies that were planted last week are not quite ready to be picked, but they will extend our lettuce season a bit. As of today, about half of the two older beds need to be pulled and that will make my chicken friends pretty happy. Those beds will get refreshed when they’re empty and beans will be planted in their place.
For Pick Up Today or Saturday morning:
5 Radishes $1.50 per bunch (to be picked close to your pick-up time for best crispness)
4 Lettuce $4 per bag
3 Kale $4 per bag Recipes for inspiration
2 Swiss chard $4 per bag Recipes for inspiration
Chai latte mix $5 per refill bag
Potato soup mix $5 per jar (6 servings)
Seasoned salt $4 each (regular, spicy, chili lime)
Jams $5 per jar
Pickled peppers (banana rings or hot) $5 per jar
Pickled green tomatoes & peppers (hot) $5 per jar
Maintenance for the week:
Deadhead flowers like peonies, iris, daisies, columbine, salvia and lilacs(this includes the stems)
Tuck and train the tomatoes and peppers in their cages, adding ties to the taller plants
Pinch off flowers and tiny fruits on peppers and tomatoes unless the plants are half their mature size
Weed (Haha! This is always on the list here.)
Prune lilacs This is easy. Use the 2/3 method. Cut the height and width by 1/3 to get the shape you want. Then, cut 1/3 of the stems to about a foot high. Yes, this sounds scary, but it’s what you need to do to keep the lower part of the bush filled with leaves and flowers. When you drive around and see bushes with a green halo at the top of tall, skinny branches, it has only been trimmed on the top. If pruning your lilacs like this makes you nervous, at least go out and cut off the spent blooms so your plant stops wasting energy on making seeds and instead stores that energy in the roots for next year’s lilac crop.
Cultivate the top of your garden beds to allow them to dry out and avoid some fungal issues
As always, I’m grateful for your support and understanding. That list must get done, and it will help keep us in crops and improve the ones that are currently growing. The tomatoes need my attention so they can stand up straighter and reach their potential. Some of the peppers need stakes, and lots of seeds need to go in. Scott is going to help me get t-posts put in for each tomato and pepper so we can secure those supports. We would have lost most or all of our crops in past years without those posts keeping the plants upright. It’s a tough job and takes a lot of time. There’s so much more to do, and I need to walk Daisy and get to that list.
Please use the Contact Me button in the lower right to get in touch and indicate when you’d like to pick up your order.