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| Kelly and Cecil showing off the latest harvest! |
Marietta Micro-Farm Adventures
This is me and Brandon's second summer working in a community garden (aka the micro-farm). There are only a few people here that really spend time planting, cultivating and maintaining the plant life, so we have a huge amount of growing space.
Cecil is the resident garden guru, with an impressive amount of horticultural and agricultural knowledge and experience. Cecil's laughter and silliness are highly contagious, and he is definitely one of my favorite people to hang around.
Mini-vineyard update: the importance of pruning.
We have a mini-vineyard of about 6 long rows of grape vines that Cecil has been trying to coax into producing for a few years. Luckily this summer we have a resident viticulture expert (Cecil's nephew, Ben) who moved all the way from California to come help manage our vines (ok maybe not just for us, but we sure are glad to have him!).
After a careful inspection, he concluded that there was one major thing we weren't giving the vines that maybe should have been obvious: a good pruning. This means more energy spread out over a smaller area, allowing more of it to be put towards fruit production. This only needs to be done about once a year.
About 4 weeks later and voila! Our little baby buds have turned into gorgeous green grapes-in-training!
Next week we will be transplanting some more wild muscadines to the mini-vineyard. I am really wild about muscadines. Native to the South East, they have a very distinct flavor that makes an incredible wine or jam. In September (or perhaps sooner at the rate these things are growing), I am going to try my hand at wine and maybe jam making for the first time.
Face-high by the fourth of July.
The Corn has grown faster than it's proverbially expected to.
Fully-grown garlic vs garlic rounds (leave them in the ground).
If you've never tasted organic garlic fresh out of the ground, you've got to. But then brush your teeth, please.
This is what garlic that is ready to take home looks like. You can see all the big ol' cloves ready to throw in a summer stew, or spaghetti, or freshly ground hummus. The uses are endless, and the health benefits are many.
Below, we have what are called garlic rounds. They haven't bloomed, and they probably won't - keep 'em in the ground until next year and they will blossom into the little cloves you see above! Or of course, you can cook and eat as is.
Baby egg plants and pumpkins are looking cute enough to eat!!!!! But we can't just yet.....
When golden cucumbers reach their golden age....
Sometimes, it's hard for us to tell if a vegetable is ready to harvest - or if it's a little to late to chop it up and throw it in your salad. With a few of our golden cucumbers, we had already missed the buck.
When green cucumbers turn yellow, they've fully ripened and naturally are more bitter and mushy inside. Not ideal for your lunchtime salad. With golden cucumbers, you can tell they're overripe when they've grown past a normal, grocery store sized cucumber.
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