Garden markers.

We were given these garden markers for carrots, lettuce, and zucchini by Heather and Derek Rubright. Here's what they look like now, adding character and beauty to our vegetable beds!

 

A brief tour of Habitat Farm, spring 2014.

Here's a view of the farm standing near the Northeast corner and looking toward the chicken coop. Note the tall stand of yellow flowers at about two o'clock: that's the cress that was covered in frost and snow a few months back. The small yellow flowers of broccoli-family crops like this one are a favorite of bees and other insects beneficial to the garden. Behind the cress, toward the center of the frame, is a tall stand of dark green: the crimson clover we sowed back on August 25th, that will be flowering in the next few weeks. Between the clover and the cress is a narrow strip of soil where our "cocozelle" zucchini seedlings, sown April 7th under cover, are coming up and showing their first set of true leaves. The bright green dots beside the cress flowers: "black-seeded simpson" lettuce, started indoors on February 2nd and planted out on March 24th. At three o'clock are three rows of "white egg" turnip, sown March 23rd, now ready for thinning. What looks like bare dirt at about eight o'clock is a bed of "atomic red" and "yaya" carrots, sown April 7th under cover. We just removed the cover a few days back, when the seedlings first began to show.

Here's a closeup of our "cocozelle" zucchini seedlings. We're planning another row of zucchini that we'll sow as a succession to this one, in about a month.

 

 

Here's one part of our chicken run. We've kept the chickens off the green grassy area in the background for a few months, so that it could grow thick and lush, better able to survive the chickens' routine grazing and scratching. We opened the space back up to them on April 20th, just for a couple of days. In the coming weeks we'll let them return for longer--a stretch of a few months-- while we give another section of their run some much-needed rest.

10-egg day!

With our eleven chickens, the average eggs laid per day is just over five. Ten eggs is the maximum possible harvest for a given day, and such a yield was mere conjecture until April 16th, 2014. Here's what it looked like that day, when every one of our hens chipped in.

Spring leeks and carrots.

We harvested these leeks and carrots last Saturday. 
The leeks were sown March 10th of last year, transplanted a bit late (June 9th). They grew a bit in the fall, held in the ground through the hard, snowy winter this year, and make for very good eating these days.

The carrots were direct sown a bit late (July 19th) and held in the ground just fine through the winter with very limited top growth. One of the varieties shown is Purple Haze, which we've overwintered before and had great results.

We'll probably still overwinter Purple Haze this season (that would be winter 2014-15), but we're planning on trying a new variety as well, called Merida. It can presumably be sown in late September/early October, and harvested the following May through June. Has anyone out there grown Merida on that schedule? Please let us know how it turned out!