Monday, April 5, 2010

Today on the Farm

Well, first I guess a mini farm-in-review:

Friday-
Harvested spinach, kale and sorrel for the Rockfish Valley & Charlottesville Farmer's Markets. Seeded radishes, tatsoi, mizuna, mustard greens, and spinach.

Saturday-
Went to the Rockfish Valley Farmer's Market and sold what had been harvested Friday as well as some seedlings for mizuna, broccoli, and kale.

And on to TODAY! For starters, I now have my camera back:::



This is up the road from the farm. Not bad, Blue Ridge Mountains. Not bad at all.

Todays doings included planting the last of the onions, and weeding the strawberries --



-- which are starting to flower, and so I started to wonder about how strawberries get pollinated, and found a helpful post here and here. Short answer? They're hermaphrodites, but require some sort of assistance - bee or some other insect or the wind. Bumble bees are reported to be better pollinators than honey bees or hand pollinating if you're trying to grow them inside, according to this study from Cornell.

If the flowers don't get pollinated they will produce irregular fruit or no fruit, and I was actually a little surprised that even irregular fruit would still be created. Sorry for using the passive tense, Mom.

We also transplanted some tomato seedlings from an open tray where they were all in a row sharing soil to trays where they each have their own little soil-cell.

And here is where they'll be growing up strong and green (next door to these guys - their lettuce neighbors):



And in other news: I am absolutely loving working at Appalachia Star. A friend pointed out to me that last week I was only writing about what I did, and not how I was liking it, and so I'll add that I'm feeling really good about being here and really happy to be working outside and helping some wonderful folks grow food.

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