The garden is really happy when the middle of March hits – lots of sun hours, and more every day. In fact, the whole farm is stretching and yawning, getting up and getting going. The cows, for example, were ecstatic about being put on fresh grass today – no more of that crusty old hay for them, no sir!
This is the part of Winter garden where suddenly everything gets to be giant sized. There are three mustard types here – Asian (tiny), curly (medium), and Southern Giant – which is, obviously giant. Hereto now it has been a small giant – but just this week it doubled in leaf size. The curly tastes sweet with a tang, the Giant according to the farm taste tester is more, shall we say, mustard-like or, frankly, a bit on the warm side. Clearly not pepper hot, but substantially toasty.
The lettuces as you may of noticed are lettuces of substance. There are a few of the red iceberg type left, several of the winter density romaine, and then you start getting ‘Optima’ or a mystery type that is very pretty:
The major push right now is getting the outside beds planted. Lettuce, Peas, Potatoes (today), Cabbage are all going to it. To keep the lettuce that was planted out a sawdust mulch was added, courtesy of the Shilofarm Sawmill. The other benefit is that sawdust clogs up slugs, discouraging their mass attack on lettuce.
As mentioned, this is week 6. All of you are signed up for the Green season, which will look familiar to you for a few weeks till the Asparagus shows up, and the Kale. Kale is sulking waiting for some more of this 50’s temperature. And, as an added thing to look forward to, the carrots are entering that awkward teenage time of life – not big enough to be used, but you can see potential. Greens are still available as thinning happens, but the real McCoy won’t happen probably until Green Season.
So – here’s the list for this week:
| Lettuce | Winter Density Or Red Iceberg – your choice, it is all getting nearly past prime. Only a couple of Iceberg left from this planting. |
| Brassicas | There is cabbage head ready – first come, first serve. Everyone else – Bok Choi is nice sized and ready to go be stir fry. |
| Roots | Radishes, Turnips (in bloom… but with some larger bulbs) |
| Greens | Mustard (curly is pretty sweet, Southern is spicy, Asian is outside pouting) Turnips, Beets, Carrots greens – ask, and it shall be given. Spinach – continues to be sparse, starting to accelerate. Baby Chard is available. |
| Herbs | Chives, Arugula, Onion Greens (are Onions a herb?) |
Coming soon… Chard. Bigger beets.
I wonder why the Irish refer to their “Sainted Grandmother?” My Irish Grandma was tougher than an old boot… She did dote on us though!
