Harvesting and Planting

New cucumber that we will let grow and a plant head that needs to be removed.

Our new German roomate Vanessa and Manon washing the beets for market.

Learning to harvest the zucchini.

A collection of the greens we have ready to go to market.

Manon teaching me how to harvest the kale.

Pepper plants in the ground.

This week has been filled with many new foods.

Today was harvest day. We started the work day at 6.00 am in an attempt to beat the heat in the greenhouses – in past weeks we have been sweating buckets trying to get the greens and lettuces harvested for market because of the heat.

This morning we first cut all the greens and lettuces in the two back greenhouses and then moved across the street to harvest, kale, collards, cucumbers, zucchini, rainbow chard, and kohlrabi. I have never harvested any of the latter products before, so I was excited to be working with these plants.

For kale and collards I learned that you can harvest all the large leaves from the main stem of the plant leaving about three leaves to regenerate the plant in future weeks. Kale is one of my favourite greens, so I was surprised to see how easily the leaves came off the stem in the greenhouses. I later learned, when we were bunching the kale and collards, that those that were harvested from outside were much hardier and less delicate than those in the greenhouse. I am unsure if it is because of the speed at which they grow inside under much hotter conditions, or just the fact that they are protected from the elements that the leaves do not harden up as much as they do outside. We also learned it is important to harvest both greens with their leaf stem attached otherwise we will have to sell ‘kale balls’ and ‘collard balls’ at market – a product that will be available this weekend actually!

Rainbow chard, chard with stems that are yellow, red and orange, are collected similarly, but the focus is more on the big leaves, so you are leaving many more leaves behind to grow for future weeks.

The zucchini plants are producing lots of zucchini. I learned a few years ago that the way to be successful with zucchini is to keep harvesting so that the plant keeps producing for you. We collected about a crate of 8 – 10 inch long zucchini and there are many more to come. To harvest the zucchini you need to cut it from the plant at the base being careful not to slice any of the flowers or other zucchini. Then, because the vegetable is so delicate, especially the skin, you need to lay down a matt in your crate to protect from scrapes as well as lay the zucchini with their cut ends facing out so that those tougher parts don’t knick the other zucchini. Even if you hold the zucchini too tight, you will start to see the water coming out. Be careful!

I had worked in the greenhouse earlier in May de-suckering the tomato plants, and didn’t even realize that we also had cucumber plants in there. The cucumbers plants are growing vertically and not on the ground as I have most often seen them. As we harvested the cucumbers, long English and baby ……, we had to go through and de-sucker the plants as well. Basically at every leaf join, a cucumber grows out as well as a new plant head that would allow the plant to spread all over the ground. But, because we are more interested in the vegetables, we remove these heads to force the plant to pouring all it’s energy into growing the cucumbers instead of spreading its reach.

The afternoons this week have been filled with planting. Yesterday we planted a number of varieties of peppers, and today we planted kohlrabi (green and pink), green cabbage, red cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli in the field directly outside the house. We were filling four rows where corn had been planted but then only sporadically germinated because of a cold spell. Once mature, these rows will be like shopping in a produce aisle. I can’t wait.

Last bit of information is with regards to weeding. Yesterday we spent a good number of hours weeding carrots, parsnips, turnip and green onions. The section in which these were planted has not been covered with black plastic mulch as have our other sections. As a result, I have changed my mind about my least favourite weeding activity, and it is now weeding green onions without plastic mulch. It is so difficult to see the tiny onions in the jungle of weeds that are able to grow because of their access to light, that the job becomes very very slow and tedious. The carrots, parsnips and turnip were not bad because they are distinctive as seedlings, but the onions were difficult. When we asked farmer Annamarie why the mulch had not been used on this field, she said it was to test the differences and show the benefit of using the mulch. Point taken!