foxlinecityfarm

Found hiding deep in the leaves on the grape arbor.

A pleasant week in the garden with this odd weather change.  We honestly wore long john’s and a wool caps while working a few of the days.   Its July and this is crazy!  Scott and I have joked for years that we burn wood in the stoves every month of the year except  July-well, we can’t say that anymore.  We started a small fire in the garage wood stove to “take the chill off” one evening.  The cool temperatures makes for easier working conditions but kinda puts the breaks on all the growth of the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.  These plants spent their week just hanging out.

Lots of weeding.  This is the time of year where the grasses and this little succulent guy called portalaca can quickly take over. It gets a bit overwhelming at times but we just plug away.   So LOTS! of heavy weeding all around the garden.  The leeks and I spent many hours together,  I made sure all the new storage carrots had plenty of breathing room, visited the brussels sprouts and cleaned up around the peppers.  I tied up our tomato vines on the trellis.  A fussy time consuming job.  We have a fancy stapler that makes the job much easier.

Tying up the tomato vines.

BLUE! tomatoes on the vine.

The tidy leek patch. 3 different varieties.

Storage carrots!

Scott worked on the greenhouse and we are going to cover it with plastic tomorrow and the job will be done.  He’s putting the green house up over our existing “leafy greens” area that we have been trying not to plant in so he did not have to worry too much where he stepped but as you can see in the photo we have a few crops in the ground that he had to dance around as the poles went up.

Watermelon report!  The vines are taking over the back of the garden and even into the grass.  Scott wanted to flip up the vines and mow and we realized there are bowling ball sized melons growing in the grass.  So, no more mowing back there.  The cantaloupes vines are loaded with blossoms too and tiny little melons developing.  We have 3 varieties in the patch.

Another beauty on the vine!

Our goal in the garden or in the greenhouse is that “something” has to be planted everyday.  “Something” has to go in dirt, either a seed started in the greenhouse or transplants or seeds into the garden.  Forward progress and ensures that we have a constant rotation of crops.  There are many Fall cool loving crops started in the greenhouse now and several are ready to go out and several plants a few weeks out.  We will start our first of 4 rotations of Spinach this week and I will seed in the first bed of Arugula too.

What is in your box

A few wonderful surprises!

Peppers!-Several different varieties. These sure had a slow start this Spring and I was thrilled with the harvest this week… We bagged the hot/medium hot varieties. Jalapeño, Ancho, and yellow hungarian hot wax.  Beautiful Sweet purple bells and a yellow long sweet bulls horn.

Lettuce-A pretty speckled German variety.

Celery-Long tasty stalks.

Cucumbers-Another bag of crunchy snackers and a few long asian varieties.

Zucchini-Assorted collection.

Onions-2 varieties.  These are not dry storage onions.  Keep in the refrigerator.

Honey!!!!!  Our first harvest ever.  Exciting for us and happy to share the harvest with all of you.  Enjoy!  This is raw filtered honey not pasteurized.

Where the bees live at the back of the garden.

Scott and Maeve extruding the honey.

Parsley-A big bunch of large leaf Italian.

Cherry Tomatoes- Just a few-really! a few for everyone.  We wanted to share with all…..  A taste of what is to come.  The tomatoes decided to ripen slowly in the cold this week.

Best Guess for next week…..

potatoes, lettuce, kale, savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, onions.