a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • Trip to My Grocery Store

    TomatoLeaves

    Preparing lunch meant a trip to my grocery store for vine-ripened tomatoes and some chard. There are no fluorescent lights, no other customers, no music, no cash registerers dinging. This is where I go to get much of my produce, straight from the source.

    And I can’t help but admire the beauty of budding tomato leaves, or the artful curve a growing squash makes. Look at the intricate design on the squash. It would take someone hours and hours to paint that, and yet a squash skillfully adorns its skin without a thought.

    GrowingSquash

    But what was a welcome surprise were the flower buds on the purple pod bean plant. Such vibrant colors. In a few days the bean vines will be loaded with these tiny dancing purple flowers. You miss so much of the beauty of how food grows when you only see the final product in your grocer or in a can on the shelf. Half the joy of eating a bean is watching it bloom.

    PurpleBeanFlowerBud
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  • Off to Market Today

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    Off to market today are ruby streaks, chard, arugula, cherry tomatoes, baby kale and magenta spreen. Few things are as rewarding as growing produce.

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  • Grow Food, Grow

    CabbageSprouting

    Seeing planted seeds sprouting is always encouraging. Those first bits of green show so much promise. Soon, these cabbage sprouts will be out in the field, growing and becoming succulent heads.

    The ripening apples portend cooler weather. This year is promising to be a bumper year for apples. The riper they become, the more I keep my ears open to hear if any pileated woodpeckers have found them. They love pecking and eating apples. We don’t mind. This year there are more apples than we can possibly eat. We are open to sharing them with these wonderful birds.

    If you’ve never seen a pileated woodpecker with its bright red head, or heard its startling call, or listened to the rapid thump it makes when it pecks at a tree trunk, you’ve missed a great pleasure.

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  • Fall

    140811-MimosaBloomA

    According to the Japanese calendar, August 7, was 立秋 (risshu) the start of fall this year. We still have warm days ahead of us, but the mornings are starting to feel like fall. The mimosa tree is in full bloom, a sure sign that summer is coming to a close.

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    It’s time to plant fall crops like this purple peacock broccoli.

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    The white flower beans are blooming well and developing seed pods. It’s odd, but watching the pods grow is exciting. It’s not like clicking through web pages or TV channels with a remote or watching an action movie where every second or two there is an explosion. It’s a quiet excitement that lasts a long time. Every day there is something new to discover.

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    140811-GrowingBeanPods

  • Magenta Spreen

    Magentaspreen

    I planted some Magenta Spreen (chenopodium giganteum) from Uprising Organics and some of it is ready for picking. I added a few sprigs to the salad greens I sold to Tweets Café today. This is how Uprising Organics describes it:

    Very closely related to the common weed lambsquarters, it has a blush of shockingly iridescent magenta coloring around the growing tip and undersides of the leaves. The flavor is very dense and wild (like a mix of spinach and collards) and the plant contains three times the calcium of broccoli by weight. It thrives in summer heat and is indifferent to neglect. Though not nearly as invasive as its weedy relative, it will self sow if not removed before seed set. Pick growing tips and young leaves all season until flowering as a stunning salad highlight. A staple food in the Americas 4000 years ago before corn dominated the diet.

    It can grow to eight feet and is known as tree spinach. Mine are still quite small. It grows to be a bush, so maybe it will make a good hedgerow. It supposedly seeds easily, so I may be able to make a permanent row of it. Other names for it are Purple Goosefoot and Giant Lambsquarters.