What to Do With Your Share---Week 2

It's been an inside/outside kind of day. Much of the morning was spent in the high tunnel, harvesting in its controlled environment. Conditions like that help us grow crops like salad turnips, with a texture that has been described as having an ice cream center. Eat these fresh with your favorite dip or dressing to take advantage of them at their best.

Later it was out to the field, where the kale has been subjected to more natural conditions. This early crop is doing great, well mulched and enjoying the wind and direct sunlight. One great way to enjoy the kale is with some pasta, as in our Kale, Green Onion, Bow Tie Pasta and Goat Cheese recipe from 2014. Use any green onions you may have left from the last share, or use the freshly pulled green garlic.

green garlic

Out in the fallowing fields we have been focusing on weed eradication. This work has caused us to slow down our regular cover cropping plans to work on cultivating the freshly germinated weeds out of the fields every few weeks. Killing weeds when they are in the "thread stage" is a lot easier than when they are full grown.

Thread stage weeds after cultivation

This is called creating a stale seed bed, and helps us reduce the "weed seed bank" in our soil. All part of our sabbatical plans to manage our soil to create the most fertile soils we can.

Freshly cultivated fields