Photo Gallery > Spring 2011
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High Tunnel in Early Spring
This high tunnel was up from last November to mid May. It enabled us to start growing our bush beans, lettuces and tomatoes extra early and provided much needed housing for all the seedlings for our plants sales. We estimated that we (2 people) potted up over 2000 seedlings this year both for us and for the market.
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Yellow and Purple Micro Carrots
These were the thinnings from our carrot bed. It is from one of our oldest raised beds and the soil is like coffee grounds. Makes for nice straight carrots!
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Thornless Blackberries
The challenge in growing berries is the competition between you, the birds and the chipmunks. All strawberries have been stolen but this patch of blackberries remains undiscovered...for now.
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The Hardy Banana!
The Basjoo, or hardy banana is supposed to be perennial to zone 6. This tropical tree grows 10-12 feet in a season. Though the bananas aren't edible (maybe the future chickens will like them) the leaves can be used to steam things like fish etc or they can be used as truly sustainable and biodegradable serving plates!
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Flooding Spring Rains
This bed contains one row of celeriac. I grew a lot less this year since not many people wanted to buy this more esoteric root vegetable. Alongside under the salt hay is round 2 of directly seeded rutabaga. This spring offered the challenges of flood rains which washed away the first seeding attempt.
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Potato and Fava Bean Nurse Crop
I read about this from UK gardener Sarah Raven. Planting fava beans alongside potatoes will give the potatoes a nitrogen boost, and by the time you need to hill them, the fava beans will be harvested. So far I have hilled the potatoes but I'm still waiting for my fava beans to appear. They are starting now and when they're gone, I'll hill the potatoes once again. Maybe this crop will prove to be enormous!
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An immature ladybug
Becareful when killing bugs. Some are beneficial. Check out this adolescent ladybug before in turns to the bright red form with black dots. I found one younger than this that looked like a scraggly black insect. It pays to become familiar with your bugs.