Dear Readers,

Mustards! I had never eaten a mustard leaf until I worked on a farm in New Hampshire several years ago, where the farmers, Bob and Jen, grew a whole plot of different mustards greens and sold them in a salad mix. The taste of that Golden Frill variety (spring green, with delicate leaves and a horseradish kick) opened my mind to the world of vegetables beyond the grocery store.

Brassica is the genus name for the mustard family. There are multiple theories about the etymology of the word “Brassica.” The word may come from Latin, meaning “to devour.” A second theory: Celtic for “cabbage.” A third: Greek for “crackle,” referring to the noise that cabbages and their relatives make when leaves are taken from the stem. The many possibilities for the etymology’s origin reflect that Brassicas have been grown all over the world for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Brassica plants include mustard greens, broccoli and cauliflower, kale, rutabaga, turnips, radishes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi (one variety that we grow is called Kolibri Kohlrabi, which cracks me up). You might think that spinach and chard are in the Brassica family, but they’re in an entirely different family, called Chenopodiaceae (try spelling that backwards).

I harvested kale raab– the flowering stems of kale plants, a bit like broccoli raab, with a sweeter flavor– on Thursday for the CSA. The kale had that familiar broccoli smell about them, which my coworkers from last season and I call “Brassica farts.” All Brassica plants have that farty kind of smell. It got me thinking about Brassica plants, and how crazy they are…..

For example, have you ever seen a Brussels sprouts plant? It looks like this:

(Courtesy of allotment.org.uk)

How ridiculous is that?

Also, the color of baby red cabbage plants is incredible:

(Courtesy of tinyfarmblog.com)

Anyway. The Brassicas at North Star are doing SO well. The seedlings of kale, kohlrabi, and broccoli that we planted in the upper field are perky and their color is strong and healthy, which is really heartening because right next to them, the onions are struggling for reasons unknown. We think it’s because of the Spring’s strange, extreme weather patterns right around the time we planted them. Their tips are light brown instead of green, and some of them look wilted or have died. It’s a good thing we planted so many… we’ll hopefully have plenty of onions, despite those that died.

Over the past several weeks, we pulled up the spicy mustard greens and the rainbow chard in the greenhouse that fed our Winter CSA members throughout the cold months. Some of those plants were taller than me, they had been in the ground for so long! It felt wonderful to do spring cleaning– returning the old plants that sustained us to the earth, making room for the summer bounty. First we harvested as much of the greens as we could and stored them in the cooler, for the farm crew to take home. Then we pulled up each plant until they were piled high, and carried them in heavy armfuls to the tractor, where we dumped them in the front loader. Kelly drove them to the compost pile, and now we have wonderful space in the greenhouse. We already planted our first tomatoes!

On Monday, we’ll begin spring cleaning in the orchard– “thinning,” or pinching off tiny baby fruits from the branches in order to make room for strong fruit to grow. More on that next week.

As always: ask questions, make comments, and feel free to request a blog topic!

Your so-ready-for-summer-farmer,

Laura Beth

Dear Readers,

Our customers will eat most of the vegetables that we grow pretty soon after harvest. Greens like lettuce and kale, tomatoes, summer squash, and most of our other veggies will keep for two weeks at most in your fridge. In the winter, we’ll rely on root vegetables for sustenance: carrots, parsnips, garlic, etc. And most importantly: potatoes.

That’s why the spring potato planting is a really, really big deal. If those potatoes do well, we’ll all have plenty to eat in the winter; potatoes can keep for months.

Last week, we put our potatoes in! It took a day and a half, with about 7 of us on the job. First, Rachel prepped about a half of an acre (1/3 of a football field) of empty field with the tractor, smoothing the bumpy soil over to create a flat surface in which to plant. Then she drove over the field again, this time using a tractor implement to draw furrows in the soil. We laid a tape measure next to the furrows, and planted a potato every foot.

That’s right: most farmers plant an actual potato, called a seed tuber, in the ground, rather than a potato seed. Potato seeds are a lot harder to grow; seed tubers are much more dependable. Plus, you can cut a seed tuber into pieces to multiply your number of plants. So long as each piece has an “eye,” or a little sprout, the piece will propagate potatoes when planted. You can plant any potato, so long as it’s sprouting. To sprout, or chit, your potato, just keep it around long enough to see those little eyes grow. Then plant it in the ground about 3 inches deep.

We’ll harvest our potatoes after the green foliage above ground has died– sometime in the early fall. We’ll dig beneath each plant to find a cluster of anywhere from 5 up to around 10 yummy potatoes. The seed tuber will still be there, but it will be mushy and goopy and gross. We’ll leave the seed tuber, and gather up the potatoes, and EAT THEM ALL!!! Just kidding, we’ll sell them. And eat some of them.

Potatoes are in the nightshade family (Solonaceae), which includes tomatoes, tobacco, peppers, and some very toxic plants like belladonna. The Soviet Union consumes the most potatoes per capita (no surprise there!). There used to be thousands of potato varieties; probably, there are around 5,000 out there now. They come in every color, and every shape in size.

One of my favorites is the Adirondack Red potato– rose pink on the inside, and red skinned, it is creamy and rich. I like to skin them, boil them, and mash them with olive oil, garlic salt, and parsley….. pink mashed potatoes!!! Delicious.

Laura Beth
(see the original post here).

Row covers of wonder
Row covers of might
Row covers hide awesome garden delights
I wish they may
I wish they might
Keep tender plants warm and cozy at night.

Last week we were driving home from my inlaw’s house and I said to Josh, “I’m so excited! We’re going to be seeding onions this week!” To which he replied with a twinkle in his eye, “Excited? You are so weird!” As I’ve mentioned before I LOVE spending time with seeds and the prospect of 12,000 onion seeds waiting to move into their new homes in the greenhouse is delightful.

Last spring one of my first days was spent seeding onions with Brint and talking about all of our expectations for the year. I thought that surely over one season at North Star, I’d learn everything there was to know about vegetable farming on this scale. But as the season progressed I learned that, in gardening (or any topic), there is always more to learn!

The world over, onions are one of the staples in cuisine. Yesterday I was reading about them in the Fedco catalog, which stated that the average American consumes 18.5 lbs of onions annually and that in Libya the number is quadrupled. Ask almost anyone who likes to cook and they’ll tell you, first start with an onion and go from there. Why is it that onions and garlic are the start to many great meals? These members of the lily family can grow in almost every climate and hold many immune boosting properties. Onion traces are found in Bronze Age settlements, they were worshiped by Egyptians because the concentric circles reminded them of eternal life, and in the Middle Ages they were so important that they were used to pay rent or even given as gifts!

Onions are a day-length sensitive plant. They will begin bulbing at a certain number of daylight hours and only continue to make new growth as the day length is increasing. As soon as Summer solstice comes, they start the process of curing and then a few weeks later we pull, dry, and top them to put into storage. We could wait until spring to plant seeds in the soil outside. But by starting them on heat mats in the greenhouse they will get every possible day in the garden to bulk up and get as big as they can.

A friend told me, “If you want to impress a man with you cooking abilities, just chop up an onion and sauté it in butter. The smell will win anyone over!” If only I would have know that earlier maybe Josh would have been more excited about me seeding the onions last week at North Star!

Tiny onion plants, their first leaves just beginning to unfold, are arriving to nursery school. Meanwhile the matronly short stake tomatoes, sitting around a card table playing bridge, talk about their grandchildren and watch over the sprouting kale and spinach. The beets make eyes at each other, thinking of marriage and starting their families.

Yesterday, we were discussing the barely unfolding Winter Garden when farm helper Laura began this comparison of the veggies in the garden to the stages of life. It began an illustration in my mind of all of my beloved friends, some homo sapien and some plantae. This is truly the beauty of gardening, to watch the unfolding of life in a day by day experience. Surely we all enjoy the beauty of spring flowers with their promise of new life. We gardeners have the honor to watch every day as the seeds we sow push their primary leaves through the soil and begin the process of becoming mature plants. It is almost like having a family of thousands!

Sometimes, as in human interaction, the seeds we sow do not do as well as we had expected. The spinach I planted two weeks ago only came up half as well as I felt it should have. And I know how many hungry people LOVE spinach! Just like in my family life, when things don’t come to fruition it’s time to take a step back and think of a new plan to try for next time. So yesterday as we prepared to seed spinach again, we tried three different types of sowing methods in order to determine which would be most effective for successive plantings.

Strangely similar, after months of being frustrated with trying to teach toddlers to pick up their toys, I have recently found that the incentive of a penny for each area tidied is proving effective in our house. Hurray! I’m sure that, like everything with children, this will not be effective forever, but it works for now and that is enough. Just like those stubborn little spinach seeds, providing the right frequency and methods will prove to yield more desirable results – I hope!

What to do when the plants that you have been tending all summer with regulated water and pest control begin to curl up and die despite your best efforts? I fear it may be time to say goodbye to some of our brassica crops. Surely we will have plenty of cabbage and broccoli, but after weeks of brutally hot temperatures followed by weeks of downpours, some of the cauliflower and brussel sprouts are simply collapsing. It makes me frustrated and sad to see some of these friends melt away before their time, but I can’t help but think that these are lessons for life.

Sometimes letting go is all there is to do. It’s been years since I’ve lost a loved one, but watching my Big Granny fade was just that way. I spent time with her every week watching strong, stubborn coal miner’s wife slowly fade into nothing but a memory. In the end there was nothing to do except to let Mother Nature take her back. So as we lose crops due to disease or weather-related issues, I try to take my grains of salt and remember that we come from the earth and will return to it. It is my life to enjoy this brief moment; to plant seeds and harvest their crops and in the process grow a little myself.

You know the story; Shakespeare lines up yet another mixed up tale of love and judgment, in which somehow in the middle of the confusion all ends up “right”, or at least dead.

For the first few weeks of growth, I thought that our delicious yellow beans were called Merchant of Venice and thought, “Hmm. Interesting. I wonder why they chose that for the name.” But I was wrong, instead we have Marvel of Venice beans. A name much more fitting because although they do not contain a secret potion for wooing a lover, they are lovely and abundant!

Venice is a city known for its amazing water navigation systems, for its beauty, for its extravagance. You might expect a bean named to be it’s marvel would have gothic scroll work on the leaves or tiny cathedrals on its flowers. But alas, no. But if you’ve eaten these beans you know why they are named such. Such flavor, such freshness!

I’m proud to say that we picked last Monday nine baskets of beans! I think that’s a record, at least for this year, from these bean vines. We are also trying a new trellising system in that looked like a giant harp before the beans covered it. Rather than the plastic netting we usually have, we put up a tight zig zag of sisal twine for the beans to grow up. The hope is that when they beans are done we can cut loose the twine and put the whole “wall” of beans into the compost. Anyone who has grown pole beans (or any vine) knows how tightly they can coil themselves around whatever they grow up. It can take hours to unwrap their tiny curls!

I loved watching them grow up and up the twine. As the wind blew across, it made a sort of slow moving wave, like someone slowly playing the harp. We could almost hear music! Just kidding! Wouldn’t it be great though if vegetables were also musical? Carrot clarinets anyone?

I hope you have gotten to enjoy some Marvel of Venice beans. If so, I think you’ll agree that even Portia, Shylock, and Antonio would have enjoyed these buttery, prolific legumes!

A Field Full for Fall

It is amazing how quickly all the available spaces in the garden are filling up with broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and the like.

Hundreds of seeds sown into soil blocks in the greenhouse looked like trays of chocolates in Willy Wonka’s factory. And now, as they are maturing into young seedlings, they stand proudly in their tidy rows, filling up dozens of beds we haven’t used yet this year – and dozens more that have held lettuces, beets, and carrots. It’s funny to find bits of carrots and parts of dill plants as we make our furrows for planting these fall wonders.

The cruciferous or brassica family includes mustards, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale, collards, pac choi, and many others.

I love the little, almost perfectly spherical seeds, especially the color variation from brick red to golden yellow to dusty purple. All these colors can exist within a single species and so as we plant them its like getting to know a class full of children. They are all the same age, around the same size, and love to grow! Each has its own personality though, and will have a few variations – sometimes three “seed leaves” develop and sometimes the edges of the leaves are tinted white. By the time it’s time to go into the field they are all essentially the same, but if you look closely you can see these distinguishing characteristics. Thank goodness we don’t have to remember their names!

In my own garden at home, I usually forget about sowing cruciferous seeds until September and by then it’s too late. Last week, my daughter Jaden and I planted short rows of each type of seed. We will transplant them as soon as they are big enough, probably in around 3 weeks. Today when we were harvesting corn we she said, “Mom! Come see this!” She was delighted to see that our seeds are growing well, each one a little different from the others.

We look forward to watching them grow and harvest them in October and make broccoli soup, cauliflower curry, and sauerkraut!

We often think of the smell, the texture, the color, and of course the taste of vegetables. But what about their sound? And if you had to describe that sound what words would you use? Here’s my attempt at relaying the sound of working with onions:

Do I hear a troupe of centipedes wearing rubber boots strolling through a dewy meadow?

Or rather a thousand tiny sailboats in a turtle marina all coming home for the night and as they dock the hulls briefly rub against the mooring?

I know, it’s a preschool class of teething field mice and they can’t resist easing their aching new incisors on a bit of rubber band left in the field from bunching chard.

Surely the leaves of this paramount veggie are important, but most often we see onions without them. During the spring and early summer we saw these grass-like leaves growing, and as we weeded the leaves rubbed against each other, sounding very much like tiny bits of rubber being chewed or squeaking against its self. All season the leaves have given food to the bulbing part and then as we harvest the onions, they are cut off and make a strangely soft and cool mat on which to rest our knees.

Since the leaves are long gone, composting back into the soil by the time we enjoy eating the onions, I thought I’d give you a auditory walk through this all encompassing allium. I raise my glass, or rather my water bottle, to the leaves of onions!

What do you do when you have too many cucumbers? Make pickles! This past Wednesday evening seven of us from the farm made 38 jars of pickles from some of the delicious Tasty Jade cucumbers.

I was late since I needed to go home and pick up all my canning supplies and my family. When we got there slicing had been under way for an hour and every bowl had been filled. I thought, “Wow! I sure hope we have enough jars to fit all these into!” And of course, as we made the Dill & Garlic plus the Bread & Butter brines and began to fill jars they did indeed (thankfully!) all fit.

We also decided to make a cucumber kim chee. These are still fermenting and I will be adding the spices very soon. I’ll jar them up on Saturday afternoon and I’ll guess it will bring our total to at least 50 jars!

It’s so wonderful to have an abundant harvest and also great friends to share the work with. From seed, to plant, to harvest, to preparing, and finally to eating. This is my favorite thing about working with food: there’s always something yummy to look forward to!

I’ve gotten a number of questions lately about how to keep various vegetables from wilting in the refrigerator. People are often surprised to find carrots wobbly and soft after several days in the fridge, not to mention the condition of lettuce or chard after the same period of time.

Remember – most vegetables are very high in water content. The chilly air in a refrigerator is very dry, and sucks moisture out of all produce (even beets will get wilted!).

However, since our vegetables are picked so fresh, they should keep a very long time for you in the refrigerator….IF you make sure to keep that moisture contained! For most items, that simply means putting them in a tightly-sealed plastic bag or sealed container and trying to make sure most of the air is removed.

Plastic bags can be used over and over again for various vegetables, and you’ll find that even our fresh lettuces will keep upwards of two weeks in this manner! Carrots stay crispy, chard stays puffy and brilliant, you get the idea!