Love Apple Farms

A wonderful edible flower and bud: the Choys

Here we have a beautiful little flower bud of a pac choy plant.  It's edible and unusually tasty.  The chef has been loving them ever since our older choy plants have sent up a flower spike and have started to blossom.  We like to let a lot of veggies here at Love Apple Farm flower, because most vegetable flowers (particularly winter vegetables) can be eaten.  We also do it to save seed and to feed our bees in the winter time, when flowers are scarce.

This bud though, is equally edible and lovely.  If it reminds you of a tiny broccoli head, then you've got a good eye.  Pac choy, pak choi, bok choy, or however you want to spell it, is a sister of broccoli.  Both are members of the Brassica family.  I think you would find this particular bud, though, quite sweet.  The rest of the plant is wonderfully edible as well, including the stem after it sends up its flower spike.  So don't be shy, eat those greens....all of them!

Can you believe this commitment?

Rachael, my long-time excellent volunteer, came over today to help out at the farm.  She had some hand surgery a month ago and has been in a cast every since.  Notice her mad skills with the scissors in her left hand (and she's not a leftie!).  You just try to cut something with your non-dominant hand and see how far you get.

Rachael has missed coming over to the farm the last few weeks, and has been asking if there is something, anything she can do with just one hand.  It took me a while to find a task for her: cutting and laminating our new tomato photo labels.  As usual, she's up to the job.  It's always a good day when Rachael comes over.  Sergio definitely agrees, as he tries his best to distract her with his adorable cat-in-a-box routine.

What Rachael's doing is important to the farm, as it will be the first time photos will be posted for each of the 127 tomato varieties we'll be offering at our annual tomato plant sale.  She's got to cut and laminate each one, but it will be worth it.  Below are a couple of examples.  They're coming out great.   Thank you, Rachael!

Tending Tomato Seedlings

This time of year, we're busy sowing, pricking out, and tending thousands of baby tomato plants, also known as seedlings or starts.  These are for our annual tomato plant sale which begins on March 14. 

Keeping track of and keeping happy over 125 different varieties of tomatoes is difficult.  Right now, we are keeping all the babies in my small greenhouse while our big one is being readied.  We need to bring in every night and take out every morning about 50 flats of starts.  Lisette is on the job taking the flats out into the sunshine.
My heat mat is on the left, with smaller drill flats full of germinating seeds on it.  I keep that mat around 80 degrees, about 5 degrees over the optimal temperature for the tomatoes, and about 5 degrees under for the pepper seeds also germinating there.  Each flat holds 20 "drills" or rows.  I sow about 50 seeds per drill.  Each flat represents close to one thousand plants.
Once the true leaf emerges (the second "set" of greenery), we prick each tiny plant out into its own pot.
Then begins the arduous process of hauling them outside each sunny morning and bringing them in each night to the heated greenhouse.  That's a lot of tomatoes.
We can't wait for the big greenhouse to be retrofit.  This process gets old pretty fast.  But it is the way I've been doing it for a long time.  These babies need babying.  That's why it's called a nursery!

If you want to learn how to get a tiny tomato seed up and growing strong enough to plant out to the garden, consider one of my tomato growing classes.  I've only got two left this season.  You choose varieties from my exotic tomato seed bank of over 125 kinds, and take home a sown flat.  You'll soon be bringing outside and taking back in your own fledgling plants.

Pinching Basils - the Key to Success

These are some of the little basil seedlings growing in our greenhouse.  I've talked to loads of people who seem to have trouble with basil.  They plant it out in their herb garden or kitchen garden, and find that it never gets very big or bushy. The key to its success is pinch pinch pinching.  Even at this very young age, we pinch off the top.  No scissors or clippers required, the growing tip is easily removed with just your fingernails.

Right below your pinch point, the basil will send out two new shoots.  This starts the branching process.  Once the two new shoots get bigger, you can then pinch the tops off of those.  Four new shoots will then sprout, two from each pinch point.  Repeat the process continuously throughout the season.  Eventually, the basil will send up some fledgling flower spikes.  It's imperative you immediately remove those as well.  If you don't, the basil "senses" that it has fulfilled its biological destiny, which is reproduction.  It then stops growing, and dies. 

You see, basil is an annual plant.  It has a short life span, just the warm part of the year.  Here in coastal central California, we start the seeds on a heat mat in our greenhouse in late January.  We then separate the tiny plants into larger pots about a month later.  Shortly thereafter, we start to pinch.  Since our last frost will be sometime in April, we will wait until after May 1st to transplant these babies out into our herb garden.  But we still get the taste of summer now, as the pinched tops don't go to waste.  We will take these precious handfuls into the house, and throw them into a pasta sauce, or even the quick and dirty quesadillas we often make for lunch.

Low Germination - What to do?

This is a bed of newly sprouting beets.  Beets need to be sown directly in garden beds.  The term "direct sown" means that rather than starting seeds in flats in the greenhouse, we sprinkle the seeds right on top of the soil, covering them lightly with more soil.  We then keep the bed moist until full germination happens.  Sometimes, that germination isn't 100% or even close to that. There are numerous reasons all of your sown seeds don't germinate.  It could be the time of the year (too cold or too hot).  It could be you've sown the seeds too shallowly (not enough soil on top of them) or too deeply (as often happens with carrots).  Perhaps you have accidentally allowed the soil to dry out between waterings, which often kills the sprouting seeds.  Whatever the reason, you can usually fix it.

A few weeks after sowing seeds, if they haven't sprung up in the numbers you expect, then you should probably assume you have reached the maximum germination you could hope for.  We sowed these beet seeds on January 3; we've done our best to keep them well hydrated.  As a veteran gardener, I am pretty sure that five weeks later, the reason we have a 60 or 70 percent germination rate is that it's darned cold here in the coastal mountains of California this time of year.  Temperatures overnight often dip into the twenties and low thirties (Fahrenheit), thwarting germination of even cool-weather crops like beets.  Not to worry, we can add more seeds to the bare patches.

Just sprinkle more seeds right on top of the soil in the bare spots.  Our aim is to get about one seed per square inch.  We don't go overboard creating grids and expending too much time on this.  We've got work to do!

Once you've added more seeds to the bare patches, go ahead and add more soil.  Don't have any more soil?  Take it from a too-full bed, or use potting soil to lightly cover the seed.  You're adding about a quarter of an inch on top of the seed.  In this photo, you can see the darker, new soil, in the lower half of the shot.  Don't worry at all if you get soil on top of your tiny sprouted plants.  Once you water, the soil will settle around them.

You will then need to water the whole bed in a bit, as the photo below shows.  Don't over-do it, as you only need to moisten the top half inch of soil if your seeds are only lightly covered, right?  It's not like you're watering a big tomato plant.  Every day thereafter, check the moisture.  Water if the top of the soil starts to show minor signs of drying out.  If you keep your re-sown seeds constantly moistened, you should see some good seed sprouting within a couple of weeks.  That way, you get full bed coverage.  No wasted space!

Transplanting Brassicas with a Little Dog Help

We planted out some Brassicas today: Purple and White Kohlrabi and a bed of Purple Sprouting Broccoli.  Although we've had these growing all winter, and we've been harvesting them for the chef, I am trying to get one more opportunity for these cool-loving crops before the garden gets taken over with the summer plants.  The tray of Purple Sprouting Broccoli above was seeded in our greenhouse about 9 weeks ago, and then pricked out into our small rose pots about 4 weeks ago.  We do an off-set spacing with them in our garden beds, taking maximum advantage of the space by doing so.  Here is what I mean:
Broccoli gets pretty big when mature, so we space them about a foot apart, and start with five across.  The next row's plants are then placed in the middle of the previous, in an off-set (or grid) pattern.  That allows us to place more in each bed.

Since I wanted to give James and Rois as many "farmy" experiences as possible, they were asked to help out popping the seedlings in the ground.  As usual, they cheerfully obliged. 

One of my main tips on transplanting seedlings, is to get them deeper in the ground than they were in the pot.  Don't compact the soil as you back-fill.  We give them just one gentle push to settle the soil around each fragile root-ball.  Looks like the Brits have the technique down:

Our farm dogs, Indy and Trinity, always find lots of opportunities to check out what we're doing and try to horn in on the action.  We're never too busy to give them a quick cuddle before carrying on.

Dogs certainly can make life more interesting, and our dogs are real characters.  I don't think we'd have nearly as much fun around here without them.  Sara always has a smile for a dog eager to distract her from her duties.

Welcome, New York Times Readers!

Hello to those folks who are new to Love Apple Farm's blog from a link in an article today in the New York Times.  You've no doubt clicked through in an effort to find David Kinch's fabulous essay on his "Into the Vegetable Garden" dish he creates for his restaurant, Manresa.  That was posted back in 2007, and can be found here.  In the meantime, feel free to peruse these pages, and perhaps consider subscribing to Love Apple Farm's free email newsletter.  That way, you can keep up with how we grow 200 different varieties of fruit, veg, herbs and edible flowers for one of the world's finest restaurants!

And for my loyal readers who want to check out the NY Times article entitled "Gargouillou:  A New Meaning to 'Garden Variety'" you can click here (but they might require you to register for a free account to view it).

Getting Ready for Spring - Amending the Garden Beds

Between crops, we always amend our beds.  There's an exception to that, and it's carrots.  But I digress.  See how dark and luscious that soil looks above?  That's not soil at all, it's a nice thick application of our compost.  It's from the very compost pile that I pictured in one of my previous blog posts dated December 2, 2007.  That 14 month old compost pile is now producing some very stinky compost.  No doubt because we had put 5 whole Bluefin tuna heads in this pile.  There were a few almost indistinguishable bones in it, but it is remarkable how fine the compost is.  We don't even have to sift it.

Sara can take it straight from the pile and into a wheel barrow.  We add two barrows of compost to each 50 square foot bed.  Our beds were too full before we started, so we took a couple of barrows of soil out first.  We saved it on a tarp, and will use it for some good purpose later. 

Once the compost is on the bed, we add about 5 quarts of Sustane 4-6-4 dry organic fertilizer, a cup of Humic Acid, and a good amount of worm castings.  To us, since we "manufacture" our own worm castings, that amount is probably much more than a normal farm would add.  To a 50 square foot bed we add about 5 quarts of our pure worm poop.  Great stuff.  Below, Roisin adds the castings while James gets a start on turning the amendments into the bed.  And yes, to all of you Brits following along here, those are your mates in barely-there attire whilst London has ground to a halt with inclement weather.

In case you think that digging is only a man's job around here, Rois works on her technique for getting that compost under ground.  Go girl, go!

Look closely, and you'll see both of them are using my favorite tool, a gardening spade fork.  Every good gardener needs one of these "pitch forks on steroids."  Essential for forking compost into wheelbarrows and turning amendents into beds, we use the heck out of them at Love Apple Farm.

Once the beds are turned, we rake them smooth.  They're now ready to plant.

P.S.  For those of you rightfully concerned about the plight of wild bluefin tuna, Manresa receives its tuna from a Japanese university fisheries laboratory.  Raised from an embryos, Kindai tuna is considered by many to be the sustainable alternative to catching the in the wild.

What's Going on at the Farm Today

 
As usual, our Saturday morning was spent harvesting for Manresa.  Above, Sara assembles some delicate Red Frizzle Mustard into our yellow delivery bags.  Next to her are some Fava Bean tops and Bordeaux Spinach.  Here, Irish lass and fab helpexer, Roisin, cuts some Green Mustard:

She looks positively giddy cutting those leaves!  I would have thought she was a bit maniacal, had I not just told her a silly joke to get her to giggle.  Below, James, our helper from England, gets up close and personal with some beets (that's beetroot to you Brits).
Back in the house, Annette, our volunteer, puts in some desk time helping me out with several blog glitches and yet another Adobe Photoshop tutorial (I'm a slow learner).  She looks like she'd much rather be outside, harvesting veggies, than inside explaining something to me for the umpteenth time.  I'm so grateful she's endlessly patient!

One of the nice things about farm life, though, is that it's constantly changing.  Next time she visits, we'll get her out in the sunshine where she belongs. 

We did a bunch of other things, too.  I spent the afternoon getting my classroom ready for a couple of gardening classes tomorrow.  Manuel fixed the porch light and the back screen door.  Sara, Rois, and James worked on amending and turning several of our garden beds.  The Brits leave next week, so I'm trying like heck to give them a full taste of California gardening

Thanks, troop, for everyone's good hard help today!

Well Tower Rental at Original Farm Location in Ben Lomond

Available for rent:

100 year old water tower (also known as a tank house or a well tower) converted to a three-level mini apartment. Only big enough for one person. Has a small kitchen and tiny living area on the first floor. On second floor is a landing (big enough for a desk) and a little bathroom with corner sink, shower and toilet. At the upper most level there is a sleeping loft big enough for a double bed. All new windows, insulation, charm galore. There is also gardening space available on the farm. The well tower is currently occupied, but will be available beginning February 22.

Rent is $825 per month. There is a separate, additional utilities charge of $75 per month that covers electricity, cable t.v., internet, water and trash. The well tower resident is also responsible for a separate propane tank, dedicated solely to the unit. The more you use the propane (to run the heat and hot water), the more your bill is. That's up to you. Traditionally, it works out to about $60 per month for heat and hot water. Deposit of $1,000 due upon signing of rental agreement. This is a month to month rental, no lease is required.

We are close to downtown Ben Lomond, it's a nice 5 minute walk out our back gate. There is a bus stop right out front. Room to park a car or cars, no problem. No smokers. Cats ok, but no dogs please.

Aerial view of the farm. The well tower is at the right (note there is no longer a greenhouse adjacent to it):



Well tower entrance (note there are three windows, just not showing in this photo):



View of tower beyond the garden:



Little kitchen (there is a fridge opposite, out of site):



View of stairs and fridge opposite kitchen area:



Side view of main farmhouse and garden:





Flowering tree in front lawn:



Herb garden:

To view the rental, email loveapplefarm@gmail.com

Essays from My Gardening Students

I asked my newsletter subscribers to submit an essay on the topic of what it means to them to have a vegetable garden.  I was hoping to get various perspectives to share with you, and indeed I received a few inspirational compositions, as well as some photos of backyard gardens.
 

From Cheryl Brondstotter:

For many years as a bus driver, I drove past this little farm on Glen Arbor Road and noticed a hand–painted sign for heirloom tomatoes pointing down towards the end of a long driveway. Season after season, I would say “one of these days I’m going to see what’s down that drive.” And time, being the elusive rascal that it is, slipped by until the Spring of 2008. And then I retired and visited Cynthia (with Manuel’s help) for a tomato cage class down that inviting blacktop.

A remodel many years ago left me with lots of broken concrete, various sizes of lumber, and a sincere hope of re-using these leftovers in a beneficial way. Voila! Add an 8’ by 4’ straw bale perimeter container bed, a premier visit to the Love Apple Farm and I embarked on my first ever vegetable garden. With stone, wood and straw, I had a 3 Little Pigs garden!!

Being in the “banana belt” of Santa Cruz, I’m still more coastal than not. Hence, my medium sized tomato choices did much better than any of the others. The wonderful heat of June passed into the fog doldrums of July and August. Lots of green fruit manifested by the 4th of July, but then a long stall happened until the warm sun at the end of August, early September.

Tomato Love….Stupice, Earl’s Faux, Paul Robeson. My family loves me, my friends are SO receptive, and fresh mozzarella hides behind anything un-Caprese and basil. I can’t wait until next year. Everything grass-like will be eradicated from my yard. Raised bed gardens will replace it; with lots of room for new heirloom varieties, Love Apple classes, and a few new ventures into the unknown. The inspiration I received from Cynthia and her vision of sustainable living has motivated me to attempt a REAL all-encompassing vegetable garden, keeping my family stocked on an annual basis. Many new beds will appear before the call goes out for 2009 Love Apple tomato seedlings sale. I’ve progressed from the 3 Little Pigs to When Pigs Fly Farm. Reach for the sun and be prepared for the warmth. And revel in the warm, red, ripe juicy wonder that is a love apple tomato.

Thank you, Cheryl.  I love it when people rip up their lawns and decide to dedicate their entire small spaces for edibles!  Now, this one from Damara Ganley:

Permaculture's founder Bill Mollison is often quoted as saying, “If you set out to solve the worlds’ problems at some stage you will become a gardener. If you set out to become a gardener at some stage you will see that you are working to solve the world’s problems.”

I think that this is because at the center of what we call humanity is a garden.  A sacred place where our relationship to the earth is unquestioned and where our connection to our truest nature can be forged. To garden is to honor the seasons, to honor our bodies, to honor the cycles of living. In many spiritual traditions, paradise or other spiritual realms are depicted as a garden. In all cultures some form of gardening is a necessity.  Whether it be in large swaths of farm land or in tending to available wild plants, the earth provides our physical, social and spiritual sustenance through a garden.

In my life, my garden has meant home. It is where I seek to learn how to be a better human being.  It is where peace and purposeful contemplation can be found and cultivated. It is where change and challenge is expected and met with careful consideration and conscientious action.  It is where my internal world is found reflected in the outer landscape – a bit messy, well-meaning, growing under good conditions, wilts when forgotten, expresses with color and abundance.

The truth is I worry about the planet and climate crisis and biodiversity and wildlife endangerment so much that I often feel a sense of paralysis.  But then I go into my garden and I see the growth and I watch a butterfly sip from the dew on a borage leaf and I feel a deep sense of renewal.  As writer Minnie Aumonier has written, “When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden”.

Many thanks for your continued inspirations.

And thank YOU, Damara.  Your beautiful words have inspired me right back.  Now, schoolteacher Larry Volpe tells how he connects with his students and their parents through his school garden:

I started gardening with my students ten years ago, shortly after I started teaching fifth grade.  Nothing gives me more joy than to spend time gardening with the kids and their families. Over the years it has allowed me to form very special relationships with the community I serve.  Many children are tireless and cannot get enough. These kids can apply this hard working ethic, which many get from seeing their folks working in our garden, to many life skills, including succeeding in school.

I teach at Seven Trees School in San Jose in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood made up mostly of Hispanic immigrants.  When I started teaching I quickly noticed that the non-English speaking, immigrant community I served was reluctant to come to school. I had very few parents coming to Back to School Night, and even less would come to various other school functions. Working in the garden has changed this to the extreme. When other teachers get fewer than ten parents coming to Back to School Night, I now get over twenty. Parents coming to school is extremely important to the academic success of the child. Gardening with my students is one of the activities that has allowed me to become a more effective teacher.

It all started with a few tomatoes and now it has bloomed into over fifty tomato plants among forty or so varieties of organic heirlooms. Summer is filled with watering, caging and caring for the plants so that they produce loads of luscious fruit for the families once school begins in a few weeks. Working in the garden over the summer gives the kids something to do and it allows me to stay in touch with some kids whom I love dearly.

Once the harvest begins so does the feast. The kids get great joy from eating the tomatoes right off the vine. Most of them have never seen so many colors and sizes of all the different kinds of tomatoes. They love to compare and choose their favorite kinds. Many kids bring home tomatoes to meet their families' needs and they use them in their traditional dishes.  Some parents show their appreciation by sending back fresh salsas for the teacher to enjoy. If I am lucky they will send me some enchiladas. The best part comes when they invite into their home to share a meal. This is by far the best part of my job! While there, I bond with the kids, help them with homework and ask the parents to show me how they make their homemade salsas. The tips I have witnessed in the culinary arts of cooking with tomatoes the “Mexican way” are such a beautiful thing.

Now the days are filled with prepping the beds for the winter garden. Garlic, onions, leafy greens along with the cruciferous vegetables will soon be thriving in our garden just as we are about to harvest our pumpkins...one of the kids' favorite events!  After a very informative winter veggie class at Love Apple Farm, I now have a few dozen 4 in. pots getting ready to put into the ground. The kids ask me every day without fail, “Are we working in the garden after school today?” Like I said, they just can’t get enough. While this is way more fun than lesson planning and prepping, to mine and the students’ dismay, a few days a week I just have to say no.

I would not give up my position in the community for anything. It is a very fulfilling part of my life that I would not trade for the world. I look forward to many more years of gardening with my students and sharing the food and culture with their families.

Wonderful, Larry!  I know you must go above and beyond the call of duty to maintain that garden and reach out to your community.  I'm sure you're changing the lives of many of your students.  Fabulous!

Images are from Cheryl Brondstotter's garden.