IN THE FLOWERS THIS WEEK
Of the new faces in the garden this week, we wanted to highlight two in particular.
Chocolate Queen Anne’s Lace: These beauties have been selected to enhance the delicate pinks and purples that are sometimes found in the wild strain. While beautiful at every stage, it’s best to harvest once the flowers are fully open and laying flat. If picked earlier they have a tendency to wilt. Find them just above the cilantro.
Breadseed Poppies: We are trialing a few very dramatic breadseed poppies this year. You’ll find them above the agrostemma on the side closest to the stairs. While glamorous, breadseed poppies have an incredibly short vase life as a cut flower, unless their cut stem is dipped in boiling water for 7-10 seconds. That said, they look stunning in the garden, the bees love them, and best of all, the seed heads, green and dried are a beautiful addition to bouquets.
On the left, Dara Queen Anne’s Lace and on the right Danish Flag Poppy.
Pro-tip: The vase life of flowers is affected in part by how far along they are in the process of blooming. While we love the exuberance and ephemerality of a flower in full-blown glory, it’s also fun to also experiment with picking them at earlier stages: a bud, a half opened flower, and then watching them come into bloom in your vase, changing before your eyes.
This Week’s Flower Challenge: A practice in simplicity. First of all, please pick an abundance of flowers. Make a giant bouquet. But, in addition, keep an eye out for individual stems that call to you. Place each one in a vessel of its own — a bud vase, a glass, a shapely kombucha bottle — and sprinkle through your house. For maximum enjoyment, consider the tip above.
IN THE HERBS
Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Chives & Garlic Chives, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Tulsi Basil, Purple & Green & Bi-color Shiso (aka Perilla), Mints, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Anise Hyssop, Sage, Tarragon, and Vietnamese Cilantro, Culinary Sage
This Week’s Featured Herb: Catnip! As one of our favorite seed catalogs Wild Garden Seed put it: “Now really, who doesn't enjoy having a bit of a nip in the evening with the cat? Or watching the neighborhood felines sneak over to have a private party in the catnip patch? That's why we have it around. But catnip turns out to be as attractive to bumble bees and butterflies as to cats, and I enjoy their enjoyment as immensely as los gatos. I also find the smell refreshing, and the flowers are beautiful in their own right. Flower folks will find it useful as greenery and filler, and of course it makes a calming tea.” You’ll find our catnip freshly labeled and growing in a wine barrel near the lemon verbena.
NOTES & REMINDERS
Confused? Ask us! If you’re ever confused about anything in the garden, don’t hesitate to ask us in person or via email. We love helping you use the garden!
How do I find the herbs? All herbs that are ready to pick are marked with a colored stake with the name of the herb on it.
FARMER’S LOG
The Farm Gods and/or the Gnomes have been slightly angered with us this week (irrigation risers blowing up; tractors not starting; tools mysteriously walking away) so this week we must leave in you the soft yet weathered hands of an old Farmer’s Log:
EQUINOX TURNINGS - 9/15/2020
At 6:30 AM this Tuesday morning, the sun will cross the plane of the equator — the autumnal equinox.
It struck me today how the tasks of pulling off the farm year harmonize with the seasons in such a way that it always seems like there is just enough time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished by the skin on our chinny-chin-chins.
The Byrds were right: To everything, there is a season.
In the Spring, you aren’t harvesting yet so you have all the time in all the medium-length days to prep the canvas and plant out the farm; to expand the propagation zone and build new irrigation systems; to fix gates; to seed 60 trays a week in the greenhouse; to pot up tomatoes, to stake tomatoes, to trellis tomatoes; to mow cover crop and turn soil and shape beds and plant! plant! plant!
Then harvest seasons starts and two, then three, then then four days of the week are consumed with reaping the fruit of Spring’s labor. You put down the hammer and take up the harvest knife. All other projects cease. Planting and harvesting are your life — some weeding if you’re lucky. The days are at their longest. If there is ever a time to be harvesting 1,000+ pounds of cucumbers, tomatoes and squash in the morning, prepping and planting out half mile in the afternoon, it is when there is 16 hours of daylight.
Before you know it, it’s late Summer. The tomatoes start exploding, the cucumbers already are, you’re still planting like crazy and then the melons come in — and just when you think you’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the day, you scroll down on your crop plan and you see that plantings are nearly done. No more compost spreading; no more bed shaping; greenhouse seedings shrink. You plant the last Fall brassicas in the field, the tractor sits quiet for a minute, and you can spend all day amongst the vines and in the cooler playing Tetris with boxes of Summer fruit.
Then comes the Autumnal Equinox.
The tomatoes are still pumping and the potatoes and winter squash start to die back; the corn fills out, crisps up. The big harvests are coming. Space needs to be cleared. Winter is just around the corner so you need to establish garlic and strawberries for next year; mow and hold over spent beds, lime new fields, and get ready for cover cropping — and just when you think you’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the shortening days the heat ebbs, the tomatoes start to show signs of slowing down. A light frost will soon roll through the farm. Smiling friends will come to help you harvest your winter squash. Chilling morning air goes down like a draught of ambrosia. You seed the last lettuce of the season. You have a moment sit down and calculate your garlic seed and cover crop order.
All this is why you won’t ever hear a farmer say, “Shucks! Summer is over.” We are greedy for the turnings. We love nothing more than a first harvest. But first tomato harvest glory fades under the weight of tomato crates and we crave cold hands and cozy coats and the crisp snap of the stem of a plump radicchio glowing in morning sun. Lucky for us, when scolding kiddos for running through the corn becomes sad and hackneyed, Autumn comes, and we can yell, “Come! Knock it down! Gather armfuls of cobs!”
Change is our tonic — one of the great sustaining elixirs of farm life.
Soon, Winter will come. It’s so close now we can almost taste it. The rains will fall and we will turn in — to rest, rejuvenation, and internality. We’ll clean up our books, do our taxes; we’ll look back on the year and create next year’s crop plan and next year’s budget. We’ll open CSA sign-ups. We’ll look at spreadsheets, sit, think, build, fix things, and sleep.
But ample sleep turns into insomnia; too much internality into angst. We will get pudgy, our harvest muscles will atrophy, and we will forget for what we are doing out in the wet and the cold — and just when we think we’ll break, that there is too much open-endedness in the too short days, the sun will return. We will hear the Swainson’s Thrush calling us, beckoning us, “Come out! Build it up again! Plant! Turn! Turn! Turn!”
See you in the fields,
David for Kayta, Kate, and Anna
