Growing Onions From Transplants

WeeBee Farms will have Onion starts late April through mid-May. Here's how to plant them:
Choosing the right site-
Onions love to grow in full sun in light, well-drained soil that's high in organic matter.

When to plant- to get to optimal size onion transplants should be planted 2-4 weeks before

Protect cool weather plants and Salad Bowls during hot weather!

This week is unusually hot and sunny for April. The salad bowls, lettuces and mustard greens are wilting in the heat. Make sure to water them like crazy, and if possible, give them shade during the hot part of the day!! Freshly planted seedlings are more vulnerable to heat because their root system has not spread out yet. Even more vulnerable are plants in little black pots. Keep these in the shade on hot days, or plant them in the evening and water them deeply.

Tips for growing cold weather greens and Salad Bowls

Our "salad bowl" planters are ready to put on your deck or porch. Here are some quick tips.
Buy one before Mid-May, as they love cold weather and won't be bothered by frost, but do not do well in heat. Harvest about half of each plant when the plant is around 6" high or so. Lettuce will be fairly long-lasting if you keep using it. Harvest often, by pinching off outer, bigger leaves.
Here are a few veggies that may be in your bowl:

• Mustard (Osaka purple, mizuna or komatsuna, ruby streaks): short-lived, eat leaves while small.
• Kale and chard: eat leaves while small, do not let it get big or it will take over the whole bowl.
• Spinach or Arugula: short-lived, eat small young leaves.
• Chives: a long-lived perennial. Harvest by clipping or pinching. Replant outdoors when bowl is done.
• Garlic Greens (sometimes marked by a stick if they haven't come up yet) Pinch off leaves and use in salads or with rice, eggs, stirfries, soup, etc. Bulbs will be tiny and not fully formed- not worth waiting for.
• Italian Red Bunching Onions - eat green part, or wait and use little bulbs like scallions

Keep the bowl well-watered in a place where it gets at least a half day of sun. It will probably be finished growing in June. Bowls can be re-used for years or returned to us.

9 different kinds of kale plants for sale! Come to our first day April 7th!

Delaway        O    Karen’s 2011 favorite. Very sweet and productive

Dinosaur        O    Also called Lacinato, Tuscan, Black Nero. Delicious, gorgeous

Red Winter    O     Very hardy, pretty and good tasting. Eat small or medium leaves

Judy’s Kale    O     Tall, broad leaves, good for bunching. Excellent taste

Peas

Swiss Giant snow peas

My son Caley grew his own pea plants to sell, and I grew some too. Now is a good time to plant them outside. Peas are very cold hardy, and it's best to plant them in April or early May.

Types of Pea Plants that WeeBee Farms is selling:
                             Type                      height trellis?
Green Arrow          shelling     65 days    24"     no        high yields, 4" pods, disease tolerant
Wando                  shelling     68 days    24"     no
     heat tolerant heirloom

Bees and peach blossoms!

Our two beehives made it through the winter!

Garlic is up and growing

My family took a vacation in January (yay!) and came back on January 29th to see some of the garlic already an inch or more above ground. The warm mid-January weather usually does that. There have been very few winters where cold and snow has kept the garlic from popping up in late January.
The garlics that were up are the "Turban" types (Tzan, Shantung, Uzbek Turban and Thai Purple).  These garlics are always up first and they get harvested first, too, in mid-June.

Cold February kept the garlic from growing any more, and the tips are still about the same, with just a few of the other garlics barely visible. The snow helped protect the garlic for a while, but of course it got windy and dry and now the tips are a bit naked. A little mulch would have protected these tips from the harsh climate, but it's too darned windy here for us to mulch our huge garlic beds. Anyhow, I know from experience that everything will be fine, and as soon as it warms up a bit (tomorrow?) the garlic will continue to grow and the weather-beaten tips won't affect the growth. The cold nights are fine for the garlic, even with the tips above ground, although it would probably do a bit better without the extra challenges they face.

With the winds, and the warmer temps on the way we'll be planning to water all the garlic beds soon. Now is a crucial time for them to stay moist.

What's being seeded in the greenhouse?

We've planted 6 varieties of kale for April sales at the market. (don't forget to make room for planting kale in April - it's VERY cold hardy). My new favorite is called Delaway. It isn't as beautiful as the others (looks big and cabbage-like), but is the very sweetest. It's the one I constantly nibble on as I work. Broccoli diCicco is up and growing fast, as well as Swiss chard (gold, red and silver), lettuces of all colors and a few other cold hardy plants.
Next week Caley and I will be starting pea plants that will be ready to plant out in April.
We also started lots of strawberries this year. Regular strawberries from our patch, and lots of the "wild" Alpine strawberries that are so delectable.

Greenhouse planting begins

Greenhouse in October 2011 snow

  

Photo: Onions in April 2011
We started planting onion seeds in the greenhouse at the beginning of February. We've sowed lots of my new favorite "Red Cippolini" These are the Italian flat-shaped onions that have fabulous taste and store for quite a while. For yellow storing onions we're growing Cortlands and for Australian Brown. Both of these seeds have been grown organically. We'll grow a few Walla Wallas but they came out pretty small last year. I hear these can be grown over winter for bigger onions so I may try that next year. We won't be growing any "Candy" sweet onions this year because Monsanto now owns all the seeds for these.  I won't support Monsanto and am upset that they have bought the rights to some of my favorite vegetable seeds. Check out the following link for more info http://inspirationgreen.com/organic-vegetables-start-out-as-seed.html  and another link to learn about Monsanto's history http://bestmeal.info/monsanto/company-history.shtml#timeline
It's almost time to start sowing seeds for chard, kale and lettuce- hard to believe!

How Boulder county Farmland policies affect me and you. (Repeat of August 19th blog entry)

I used to think I could grow organically on my own small farm and not worry about what other people were doing. Never did I want to become fanatical or political! Then 2 things happened.