A Day at Noble Gardens

Harvesting new mesclun crop

There is no such thing as a quiet day on the farm unless it is raining.  That was certainly not the case this past week - we had a few very hot days!  Our day starts at 4:30 when we drag ourselves out of bed even though it is still dark outside.  By 5:00 we are ready to go.  This seems early but believe me it is the best time of the day to be working in the garden.  Some days the mosquitoes are not even out yet.  We try to get the most work done as early in the day as we can.  Once 11:00 hits it is getting very warm and we know it is time to leave the garden.  Today we did lots of harvesting and put everything in the cooler.  Then in the afternoon (after a nap) we are ready to package.  Everything needs to be weighed out and organized  so nothing gets left behind when we leave for market.  The packaging stage always amazes us because it all takes longer than we expect it to.  Then once supper is done and the kids are all down for the night  - that is when the blog gets updated!!

The warm weather has been great for the garden.  We can see a difference every day now.  The potatoes are coming along well - we have even found little spuds on them ( 2 inches big)  It won't be long and they will be arriving in the baskets. 

The cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli have also really shot up the last week - I think they have almost doubled in size.  To give you an idea of how big the garden is, this photo shows the hoses at the beginning of the row  ---all the way down to the end of the row 400' farther.  They are very long rows when they need to be weeded!  As you can tell the mulch beds are really helping to keep the weeds away ( it is nice not to have to worry about the weeds here).

The long rows are starting to fill out nicely now.  First is the golden beets, then red beets, turnips and carrots.  The turnips will be a space by tomorrow when they get harvested for the basket.  Last year we did not have enough carrots, we simply couldn't get them to grow, so this year we made sure to plant enough.  We now have 1000' of carrots plus a new seeding of 800'.  Yup, I think we will have lots this year!

All is well in the garden until the wind starts to blow.  On Friday night we had "some" wind.  Well it was enough to blow the hoses all over the place.  To put them all back in place we need to walk down each row (400' remember) and place the hoses all as close to the plants as we can.  Next year we hope to invest in a machine that will bury the hose 2'' under the ground.  This is the new seeding of corn - hope we gets lots of warm weather yet so we can harvest lots of corn on the cob!