new market this Friday!

Blue House Greenhouse Farm will be at the Boise Eliot Village Square beginning this Friday! The Village Square is open Friday-Sunday for the rest of the summer (Blue House Greenhouse will just be there on Fridays). The market is on the SE corner of N Williams and Fremont and from 2-8 pm. We should be there until 6:30 or so.  Please stop by and see us! We will have salad greens, chard, collards, carrots, broccoli, onions, and more!

Mollie, a happy customer
See for yourself how our veggies  make people happy!

In other news- the garlic harvest! Yesterday I dug up two of the three varieties of garlic- Kettle River Giant (which is true to its name) and Chesnok Red. See below for pictures and details. 

digging up some of the 800 or so heads of garlic

Because there isn't a cool dry place to cure the garlic at the farm,
I stuffed our little car full of garlic and brought it all home! Here I am
(with Seymour the cat) prepping the garlic to be hung to cure.

Jeff with one of many bamboo poles to be hung in our covered porch.
 After two weeks , we will cut the stalks and further clean the garlic
and then it will be ready for sale! Get ready!

big changes!

That's right folks big changes are coming to Blue House Greenhouse Farm.
Monday, July 11 3-6pm will be the last farm stand on site.

But fear not. We will be selling at the Boise-Eliot Village Square on Fridays!  The Boise Eliot Village Square is about local people and local products- not just food, all sorts of goods that are locally made!  It is located on the corner of N Williams and Fremont (just two tiny blocks away from the farm).  The market opens Friday, July 15 and will be open Friday and Saturday from 2-8 pm and Sunday from 12-6 pm.

However, Blue House Greenhouse Farm will be at the Boise Eliot Village Square beginning Friday, July 22 from 2 pm till 6:30ish. Please stop by, check out the market, and see us!

farm stand TUESDAY july 5!

David, happy farm stand customer

The farm stand (that normally happens on Mondays) will be open TUESDAY JULY 5, 3-6 pm because I've been told that buying vegetables isn't something that people normally do to celebrate our country's independence :)

When you come to the farm stand on Tuesday, here's what you can expect to see!

sugar snap peas
snow peas
chard
kale
salad greens
turnips
beets











What else is happening?   Pictured left is Kevin pounding fence posts to trellis tomatoes.  Once the posts were in, we wove twine between the posts to hold up the tomatoes. They are looking good!

We continue to be busy harvesting, weeding, and planting.  We're always looking for volunteers, if you've been thinking about stopping by please do!

beginning of summer update

Ah, the beginnings of summer... one day it's 75 and sunny, the next is 60 and raining.  No complaints here, the farm and I are loving it! So what's going on at Blue House Greenhouse Farm? A LOT. More planting, more weeding, more harvesting, more watering, more of everything! Here are a few snap shots of the past couple weeks.

The farm stand has been open for two weeks!  Pictured on the left is Kevin along with the first week's bounty. The farm stand is open Mondays from 3-6 pm, come and see what's available! This week we will have salad greens, turnips, Asian greens, chard, and more.

On the right, Kimi is double washing the salad greens- not only is the produce delicious, it's clean!

On the left is an extreme close up of the farm.  Pictured are lady bug eggs.  Normally they are found on the top or underside of leaves, but here the eggs were laid on a twig in the soil.  Also pictured is my finger for scale. pretty neat.











We've been harvesting a ton of radishes and  we don't sell the ones that are split or a little less than perfect.  What to do with all those radishes?  Radish Kimchi (pictured right)! We used a recipe from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.  We also made french radish pickles- using a recipe from a friend- and sweet radish pickles with rhubarb. yum.

More random updates to come! stay tuned.

farm stand opening! Monday June 6!

That's right!  Blue House Greenhouse Farm is opening a farm stand on Monday afternoons from 3-6pm.  Beginning this Monday, June 6th! Come by and check out what's for sale.  This week there will be a variety of fresh delicious veggies- salad greens, kale, cilantro and lots of asian greens! You can just come and  say hi!

In other news (there is a lot of other news), the farm has a logo!  Many many thanks to the lovely Clare Price, a fabulous artist and friend, for creating this logo.







The walking group from NARA came to the farm this past week before their "greens and beans" cooking demonstration and harvested some greens!










My mom was in town this past week and helped out a ton at the farm.  You can see her weeding (and hiding from the camera) by the peas.  Thanks mom!







While she was in town we also went to DOC, one of the restaurants to whom I sell my produce.  It was incredible!  ridiculously delicious.  Here are my salad greens with strawberries and goat cheese!

drip irrigation system

Adam, star volunteer, cutting sections of
the 3/4" polytubing to put together the
main lines.  The system has three separate
sections to maximize flow rate.

Here we go into the world of drip irrigation.  I have to say that I have a love/hate relationship with irrigation (and when I speak of irrigation- I only have worked with drip so I won't even get into my feelings about other types of irrigation).  I love drip irrigation because of its efficiency and water conservation capacity.  I hate it because I spend hours trying to figure out why certain components are leaking.  In the end, I have loads more love, for sure.


Check out the photos for detailed info and if you have questions please don't hesitate to contact me!

Here you can see the valve on the 3/4" polytube, which is
one of the three sections.  You can also see the attachment
with which the T-tape is connected. Each attachment has
a valve to be able to select which rows can be watered.

Becca is demonstrating how we roll out
the T-tape.  Brilliant.

The finished product! We actually aren't finished yet...
there are a few leaks that we have to deal with, but we are on
our way!  and those are tomatoes under remay on the left!

tomatoes! and more, of course.

a sea of tomatoes!

blue house greenhouse farm has tomato starts for sale! We have a number of different varieties: silver fir tree, jaune flamme, orange oxheart, persimmon, and isis candy cherry. You can follow the links to find out more about each variety.  They are a deal at only $2 each! Stop by or contact me if you are interested in getting some tomatoes for your garden!

A lot has been happening at the farm. We've planted out all the brassicas- kale, collards, and broccoli- for this season. Along with planting more rounds of lettuce, carrots, spinach, radishes, beets and chard.  In a week or so we'll be planting out our warmer season crops- tomatoes, peppers, and beans.

We're harvesting more and more. With the warmer sunnier weather the plants are growing quickly!  We've started selling an Asian greens mix, which in my (somewhat biased) opinion is delicious.

supplies from Ernst

This past weekend Jeff and I went to Ernst Irrigation in St. Paul, OR. We bought all the components to set up the T-Tape drip irrigation system, which we will be setting up sometime this week.  I will definitely write a post about the installation.


What else?  The farm has been super lucky to have wonderful volunteers- without whom I couldn't get everything done!  Thanks to them! We've had a lot of great visitors- friendly neighbors, folks from the Community Food Security Coalition Food Policy Conference that just happened by on their walking tour, and the walking club from NARA stop by weekly to check up on the progress of the farm.  For these reasons I appreciate the farm's visibility.  We've also had a super friendly neighborhood cat coming by... maybe she'll keep the crows away?

farm kitty (don't tell winkles)