Week 1 Greens, herbs, flowers

Beautiful flowers to start off our season.
Welcome to Shady Maple Farm CSA, 2017.

Damara and Angie harvesting spinach.

Lettuce almost ready for harvesting.

A visit to the piggies in the barn after picking today. Anna and Damara and their cherubs enjoying the day.

Bryan and his mom, Mary, organize the leeks.

Today's four varieties of kale await dividing and labeling.

Spinach in 3 orange bins soaking in cold water. Sweet Cicely and garlic chives in the blue buckets of cold water.

Swiss Chard and asparagus chilling.

Our bed of Sweet William.

Lavender buds in front of Sweet William.

Honeysuckle almost blooming.

Angie trimming rhubarb near the Sylvanberries.

Untrimmed rhubarb.

Radishes await their rubber bands.

A table full of radishes will go in the boxes after Anna's delicious lunch.

One of Lisa's creations.

Such a delicate rose colored bloom with a dark eye on this arching verbascum.

Peonies, Sweet William and foxglove.

Pale purple Canterbury Bells.

Lisa adding a bit here and a bit there to her bouquets.

A Golden beet and an Ace Beet.

The one with the striped greenish/red stem is a Chioggia beet. When cut across the beet it looks like a target. Red ring, white ring...

Today's harvest box contents.

A young visitor transports their family's bouquet to their car. Adorable!

A variety of Swiss Chard named "Rhubarb".

Another Swiss Chard, Neon Yellow.

Four varieties of kale are evenly distributed and bundled.

Today's two varieties of radishes.

Terry helps harvest Mammoth Leaf Basil. Boy are their leaves BIG!

Today's list.

Foxglove under the black walnut tree. Second year plants we seeded in winter of 2016 are blooming like crazy.

A white foxglove with tan "freckles".

White foxglove with maroon freckles.

This foxglove has two colors of flowers on one plant. Cool.

Today's newsletter":

Let's see if this works. Here is a video of the "flower house".

See you next time on the blog,
Lorrie

Early March in the Greenhouse

Today is pepper seeding day. 22 varieties of peppers, from sweet and mild to quite warm. Some seed packets don't have very many seeds so we order more than one packet of some seeds.

Swiss Chard is looking good.

Celery seedlings have their true leaves. 

One of our kale varieties. 

Our red kale is enjoying its spray of water.

A third type of kale. Tender leaves are holding up under the water droplets.

We seeded our greenhouse grown tomatoes several weeks ago. They will grow and produce inside the greenhouse prior to the field tomatoes. The field tomatoes will be seeded in early April.

We are adding to our artichoke patch this year. Both green and purple artichoke plants are looking good (and the same at this stage of their young lives).

Two different kinds of basil, one with curly leaves, one with smooth leaves. Oh they smell great, too.

We are growing a red basil this year. It is called Red Freddie. Its true leaves are "redder" than its cotyledons which are there to help them get started and then fall off.

Our greenhouse crop of slicing cucumbers are doing pretty well. They will be potted up into large pots, staked and babied in the greenhouse. Field cucumbers will be started later.

One tiny impatien has a head start on its "cell mates". There are a few other little green parts in other cells in this 50 cell flat starting to poke through the soilless germination mix we use.

See you next time on the blog.
Lorrie