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| green zebra, jaune flamme, and striped roman tomatoes |
It's a funny thing about writing a blog: the more time you let pass since your last post, the more stuff happens, and the harder it is to write a new post! I decided to just go for it. Blue House Greenhouse Farm is doing great! Let's try to fill in with what's been happening the past month and a half.
As I mentioned in the last post, with help from my dad, we harvested and hung all the garlic. Two to three weeks later, with lots more help from volunteers and my sister in law, we laboriously cleaned all the garlic. By cleaning the garlic, we just cut the tops, cut the roots, and took off a couple layers of skin to make its beauty shine. We still have a ton of Kettle River Giant and only some of the Asian Tempest left- and you can find them at the farm stand! We also harvested potatoes! This was my first year growing potatoes in the Pacific Northwest and now I'll definitely grow them each year. They are super easy to grow and super fun to harvest. We grew Blue, Kennebec, and Russian Banana Fingerlings. The later two varieties I'd purchased from Concentrates, but the Blue where just potatoes we'd gotten from the store that had begun to sprout. And they all did great! So great, that they've all since sold at the farm stand.
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| garlic hanging under the tent |
Tomatoes are doing splendidly. I get many questions about the Fahrenheit Blue cherry tomatoes because they look so striking and black! The variety is from a plant breeder, Tom Wagner, from Everett Washington. I got the seeds from Project Grow, a great non-profit just down the street, who coincidentally have a tomato showing (all real tomatoes!) at their gallery until October 11. Check it out. It's amazing. My tomato highlights this year (aside from the blue tomatoes, which are delicious) are the Striped Roman (a prolific and incredibly sweet paste tomato that makes excellent sauce), the Stupice (a mid-sized red tomato that have a dense flavor and are excellent for salads) and the good-old standby, Sungold Cherry (I hadn't grown them in a while and now I remember that nothing beats their burst of sweetness)!
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| the excellent volunteer, Quinn, with a blue potato |
We've also started harvesting the late summer/fall greens- spinach, mustards, and arugula- and the fall beets and carrots are coming in nicely. I am also still planting for the winter. Since I cover a number of rows with plastic, I get more time to get some winter crops in! And then comes planting garlic, shallots, and cover crops... and the saga continues!
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| a part of the potato and onion harvest |
Those of you who are wondering about the how late into the fall the farm stand is going, weather permitting, it will remain open until the last week in October. October 30th to be exact. Here's to hoping it won't frost before then!
There. I did it! I promise there will be more to come soon!
