Hello Farm Friends,
This week I have two not entirely intentional farm experiments, and one intentional one to tell you about.
First for the intentional one: last season we had a bunch of Shallots that were too tiny to bother with, and having heard that folks in England plant theirs in the Fall, I decided to go ahead and plant them when we planted our garlic. Onions and their cultivars are biennial, so that means that in their second year they will make seed (hence garlic scapes). Onions, when they go to seed become inedible, but I wondered if Shallots act more like garlic, dividing and splitting around the woody flower stalk. When they flowered we cut the tops off and I had mostly forgotten about them ’till this week. Low and behold when I checked on them, sure enough we now have some nice big Shallots!
Our other two experiments were: what happens when you grow amaranth and lambs quarters (aka “weeds”) in your onions and sweet corn? Unsurprisingly the answer is, your crops are small. In the case of our onions, mostly it means they are too small, in the case of our sweet corn, I think we could make a case for them being the cutest cobs of corn you ever did see. My kids tested a couple and thought they were just about ready so we will let you see for yourselves this week! In what may be a side benefit of this experiment, it’s so weedy it seems that the raccoons have not been able to get in and steal any either!
All the sunshine continues to give us a tomato and bean bonanza this week so if you are able to visit us at Market in Toronto or Stirling please consider putting those items on your shopping list! We have sweet Yellow beans and elegant French Filet beans in abundance and all the field grown Heirloom Tomatoes we can handle. We also have a new crop of Salad Turnips, which is reason enough to turnip to Market.
Puns aside we have so much to get excited about right now I look forward to sharing it with you.
Sincerely,
Jenny
This weeks Share:
🍅 Heirloom Field Tomatoes
🍅 Cherry Tomatoes
🐾 Beans
🥕 Carrots or Beets
🫑 Peppers
⚪️ Salad Turnips
🍆 Eggplant
🧄 Garlic
🌽 The cutest Sweet Corn
