Colorful Salad Bliss

Who could resist this beautiful salad with it's rainbow of colors?

 

Sharing SFG #2 – Bonnie

Our second in a series on sharing friend’s Square Foot Garden’s is my friend Bonnie. She lives in a town house, and doesn’t have much room, but she managed to create a “stand-up” garden on her patio.

Bonnie's SFG Garden

These boxes are each 2 foot by 5 foot. I took pics of them when they were just planted, and Bonnie says the plants have taken off and the garden is much bigger. I’ll have to get follow up pics soon, so you can see how well things are growing.

This is one advantage I like about SFG, you can build any size you like and anywhere, as long as you have 6-7 hours of sunlight. Last year Bonnie was involved with a community garden and grew veggies successfully. This year she decided to try SFG because she wanted the convenience of having a garden outside her door and one that was easier to manage. (Garden tip: If your garden is close by the house, you are more likely to tend it.)

Hats off to Bonnie, and all the rest of you for trying your hand at successful gardening this year.

If you have pics of your SFG, please send them to zoeyfarms@yahoo.com. We love to see what everyone else is doing in their gardens.

 

Grandmother’s Radish Leaf Soup

Tonight I made Grandmother’s Radish Leaf Soup. We have an overabundance of radish leaves, so I found some recipes to use them. Did you know radish leaves contain almost six times the vitamin C content of their root and are also a good source of calcium? I used red potatoes instead of russets, which I think made the soup creamier. I didn’t have milk either, but my substitute of soy milk seemed to work well. I made the “flower” garnish with the radish and the swirl is olive oil. This is sort of a healthier potato soup.

One of our subscribers made this soup today and even her picky eaters enjoyed it. Try it, it’s good.

Grandma's Radish Leaf Soup

 

Shares available

We had sold out of our first phase of shares, and now we are opening up our second phase. Email us at zoeyfarms@yahoo.com if you are interested. We will send out our 2009 Q&As in PDF format so you can become familiar with how we operate.

 

I admit it….

I am suppose to be doing my school work, but am easily distracted by all the gardening and recipe websites. I enjoy my school work, web design and programming, but tonight I am just not into it.

It might be because today was our second day for customers to pickup their veggies (and I am drinking coffee at 12:30am) and I’m still excited by the day. It’s always fun for us to hang out in the garden and chat with our new farm family. We enjoy picking the veggies, spreading and arranging the veggies on the tables, farmer’s market style, and greeting everyone who comes for a visit. It’s just fun and we really enjoy the day and the people.

Most of the veggies we have now are greens – good for salads. We eat most of our salads at this time of year. We picked lettuce, arugula, radish greens, basil, chard, cilantro and onions – all great for a big salad, which is what we had for dinner tonight. Healthy and yummy!

Ok, school work isn’t getting done, and I’ve got to get back to it. More later.

 

Sharing #1 – Tish & Ty

I probably mentioned in our weekly farm newsletter how we assisted in some way or another, in helping our friends set up their own Square Foot Garden (SFG). I have asked them to send pics so we can share what others are doing in their backyards.

Our first submission is from Tish and Ty’s garden. They did a beautiful job and I am anxious to see how their garden grows. (This was taken a few weeks ago.)

If you have a SFG to share, OR if you’d like to be included in our FREE farm newsletter, please send an email to:

zoeyfarms@yahoo.com

We’d love to see how your garden grows!

Tish & Ty's SFG

 

Busy Busy

Yes, we’ve been busy. Busy getting the beds finished, busy planting, busy weeding, busy selling shares….but it’s worth it. The garden is beautiful. Sure, we have more work to do, but it’s really shaping up. It’s nice to see the progress and to know that with all the work we’ve been doing, we only have to do it once…meaning building the beds.

Eric is working on the irrigation, making it permanent and I’ve been planting whatever looks interesting. Right now we have beets, carrots, basil, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, radish, green beans, cilantro, peppers, arugula, lettuce, tomatillos, chard and peas.

Our opening day was yesterday and we offered: lettuce, arugula, basil, herbs, chard and potatoes. More veggies will be available soon….just waiting for the plants to produce.

The carrots, onions, beets and garlic are taking a much longer time to bulb out, something we haven’t figured out why yet. Could be the wacky weather; hot, cold, hot and cold. The tomato plants have green tomatoes on the vines and that’s exciting; the peas just started to bloom; the Cozmic Purple carrots are growing larger; baby peppers are on some plants; corn, which is an experiment for us this year, is growing tall; Garden of Eden green beans are flourishing; so all seems well in the garden. (pics to come soon.)

We are also happy to announce that many of our friends started their own Square Foot Gardens this year. They are all doing well and growing great. Soon, I’ll post some of those pics too.

Speaking of pictures, I’ve been taking lots of them in the garden; just haven’t had the time to download and tweek them before posting….like I said earlier, we’ve been busy.

 

Happy Earth Day

Ok, so I’m a little late on discussing Earth Day, but shouldn’t every day be Earth Day?

Last night we attended and spoke on a panel at the Folsom Lake College – El Dorado Center about eating locally. The discussion was informative, and reminded me of what we are trying to do, here at the farm.

“What is that?”, you say. (Me too, by the way. I wonder often why, what and how long.) But last night, communing with interesting, like-minded people, I was reminded. Sure, we grow and sell veggies basically….and that’s how we started out….thinking, “We can grow for ourselves, why not for other people?” So we started. Probably not the way a “business” ought to start. I hear you should have a plan, goals, projections, stats, research, focus groups, etc.

We just started. Maybe we were a little crazy, still are probably, but we thought everyone needs food, including us and wouldn’t it be great to grow our own and be able to share it with others. Besides, home-grown is the best and I’d rather go to the garden, pick myself lunch, rather than go to the grocery store or a restaurant. I know that plant, I know where it came from, how it was treated, where it grew up…like an old friend from grade school.

Growing your own food helps the environment in so many ways; less fossil fuel is used; nutritious food to eat; blossoming flowers for the bees; creating open spaces; protect habitats; use less packaging, therefore, less waste; growing organically, so no chemicals; soil building; you get the idea. All of these things help the environment and we get a good feeling knowing we are a little part of that.

Plus, we get to meet the most interesting people and be involved in a variety of community groups. And we have FUN!

So bottom line and back to the question, “What are we trying to do here?” Have fun, grow good food, help the environment, meet new friends and make a little income.

 

New Beds

Thanks to Tish, we have a recent picture of the new beds.

New raised beds

 

Carrots, Beets and Lettuce

We planted all of these seeds in the last week and a half, and guess what???? They are all coming up. No matter how often I plant seeds, I am always amazed when they show themselves. Little seedlings, popping up out of the soil, me checking in on them like newborns.

Carrots are like little, tiny blades of grass. Beets are long leaves but still small, some red in color. The lettuce is tiny too, but round in shape. They are all under cover, to keep them warm and moist. I am not sure what to plant next, but that will have to wait until next week. We need to make a trip to the nursery too, to purchase plants and more peatmoss. The rain last week soaked the soil and compacted it a bit, so we need to top off the soil to the top of the raised beds.

We haven’t started selling shares yet, as we’ve been so busy with other things in life that take priority. I’ll work on the 2009 Questions and Answers soon and will send them to all of you on our email list. We know we will be scaling down this year, at least at first. Once the summer kicks in, we can take on more subscribers.

We finally bit the bullet and hired someone to build the fence. This will help us out tremendously. All of our acreage will be fenced, keeping the deer out, so we can plant everywhere. This will allow the farm to grow and expand, something we’ve been wanting to do for some time. Lots to look forward too.