Hello again from Eight Gate Farm. Oh dear, we seem to be heading into another summer drought like four years ago. Actually we're in a worse rainfall position than last time. Of course, anything can happen with the weather, and we may get a reversal. But for now, it's just too much of a job to keep anything but the vegetables sufficiently watered. The field will just have to brown out
In spite of the heat and drought (or maybe because of it?), we got a number of exciting "first harvests" of the year. We got the first picking of pea pods. Here is "Super Sugar Snap."
And here is "Avalanche," a snow pea.
We got the first kohlrabis. These are about billiard-ball size, which we prefer.
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| Kolibri F1 kohlrabi |
We got the first pickings of mature spring onions. This is "White Lisbon," which is not supposed to bulb, but these clearly are. No matter, they are still delicious.
I'm growing three kinds of broccoli this year. As always, "Blue Wind" is first across the finish line, making heads before the other varieties even have buttons.
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| Blue Wind broccoli |
Iceberg lettuce seems to get a bad rap among the culinary set. But we love it. I've never grown it before, but I scored a free packet of seeds, so I started six this year. They are growing beautifully, and the first cutting affirmed our opinion, being wonderfully crisp and delicate.
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| Iceberg lettuce |
My only regret is having them all come to maturity at the same time, as well as the two rows of salad mixes. That's a lot of lettuce for us, and there's no way of preserving it as far as I know.
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| The lettuce bed |
Last year a volunteer caraway plant sprung up, and this year it set seed. I cut the seed heads and am drying them now. This is good, because all my remaining seed failed to germinate. Now at least I'll have some fresh seed for next year. I really like caraway seeds in a dish The Kitchen Goddess makes: a ground turkey and shredded cabbage stir-fry.
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| Caraway seed umbrels |
Lastly, we picked a small quantity of cilantro.
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| Cilantro |
That night TKG made tortillas from our own corn flour, to serve with blackened mahi-mahi and guacamole for fish tacos. The cilantro really went well with that.
About a month ago I took some drone photos of our gardens to document progress from a different perspective on a monthly basis. I took another set this weekend. Here's the "field garden." In this and other pictures you can really see the bad condition of the grass, but the garden is doing pretty well.
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| The field garden |
Here's the "stock tank beds." The zucchini, cucumbers, and melons are really starting to fill out.
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| The stock tank garden |
And here's the main fenced garden.
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| The fenced garden behind the barn |
If you are interested, here's a link to
the last set of photos I took.
That's all for this week. Thank you for reading, and thanks as always to Dave at
HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.
Oh man, homemade tortillas from your own corn? I can't top that! And love those fish tacos too. I try and keep cilatro going just for dishes like that.
ReplyDeleteWe were having a prolonged dry spell here too, but got some much needed rain over the weekend. I hope you get some too. Looks like you will be having 'salad days' there with all the lettuce!
The garden is so huge from the sky. And your lettuce and broccoli look incredible. I'm always flummoxed on how to prepare fish, the varieties they have here are unfamiliar and just don't turn out right. Your fish tacos look pretty amazing.
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