Farm Update

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to let you all know that some of your vegetables have started growing!! Vicky has begun to work her magic with cauliflower, cabbage, Red Russian Kale, Bok Choy and Broccoli. It's hard to believe that these little spindly plants will grow into a major food plant in a few weeks. We start them in the sun room of the house that is right next to the wood stove, as they need warmth to bust through the soil. Then once they do they need a temperature more like 60 degrees to continue, so to the basement under the grow lights they go. Broccoli seems to be the biggest challenge of all the spring veggies. Here in Maryland it usually gets so hot so quick in the spring , just about the time the broccoli heads are ripening, they will turn bitter. The fall broccoli is great, but spring is always a question mark for us. Actually last year we tasted every single head of broccoli that was going in the CSA crates. About half made it, the other half found a home in the compost pile. At the end of last year I even made the announcement that I wasn't going to waste my time again on a spring crop of broccoli. You can see how long that lasted. What we are going to do with a lot of the spring plantings is try to get them in the ground as early as we possibly can and then use fabric row covers to protect them, warm the soil and give them a nice start. We'll see if we can get the broccoli to ripen a week or so earlier then usual. We really don't want to eat 14 pounds of broccoli again at one sitting. The after effects are murder.

Steve and Vicky