Farm News: June

Hello farm fans. This is Phil with Farm Kitchen Events, and here’s what’s growing on outside this month:

Seemed like we were in for a hot one, but then June-uary swooped in with lower temps and a lot more rain! We took the opportunity at the end of May and early June to put many more vegetables in the ground, and they have responded happily to the wetter weather with rich green colors and baby fruit sets. I’m personally pleased to see a few of the Jimmy Nardello peppers are almost ready to harvest, because the combination of spicy and sweet makes them a personal favorite. (Jimmy Nards taste like jalapenos dipped in honey.) And we have two rows of tomatoes, mostly slicers in one row and cherry in the other, that are growing so tall that the Florida weave is in effect to hold them up. For more on that, and updates on what else is happening in the Farm Kitchen fields, please read on…

Weeding, Weeding, and More Weeding

Anyone with a garden can relate to the Sisyphean frustrations of weeding around our flowers and veggies. I might trade Sisyphos, actually, and he can work the scuffle hoe while I push his boulder. We have spent hours outside killing weeds with all manner of cool specialized hoes, only to return the next day to rows that look like the weeds have been growing for weeks rather than a single night. They’re unwanted and resilient buggers, but it’s their dirt too and we’ll keep fighting them with sustainability in mind, using tools not Roundup.

Harvest Time

Some of the first veggies we planted have been edible for a while now, and we are rich with lettuce and broccoli. I like to break off little broccoli crowns to snack on while I’m working, but they go great with scrambled eggs the next morning as well. The radishes and snap peas grow in opposite directions, radishes rooting in the ground while the snap peas climb high on hortonova netting, but they are both similarly snackable and crunchy. As our vegetables bolt, meaning they flower and spread seeds rather than producing more food, we have younger replacements ready to put into rows (this is called succession planting), ensuring that the healthy salad lunches will continue!

Florida Weaving

As tomatoes grow they need structures or support to hold them upright. This is called trellising, and there are a number of ways to trellis tomatoes. Our favorite is the Florida weave, where we run string along T-posts that are stuck in the ground, about 10 feet apart, between the tomato plants. The string - we use baling twine - wraps once or twice around the T-post and then weaves around the tomatoes, alternating sides until wrapping around the next T-post. On the way back, the twine makes figure eights that secures the tomatoes tight enough to keep them upright. They’re growing like kids, so running the next level of Florida weave is a job that continues as they get taller, but soon enough we’ll have tomato plants yielding delicious fruit for snacks and at-home recipes.

Stop by any time to see for yourself! We’re always happy to have visitors and talk about farming.