Still more variety to add to your table this week!  Our early summer crops are speeding right along...cucumbers, carrots, and sweet onions are all available now.   I've posted a number of new photos on our Facebook page if you'd like a little seasonal virtual tour of the farm. 

We grow three different varieties of cucumbers: regular garden cukes, English cucumbers, and 'Diva' cucumbers.  Diva cucumbers are always the earliest, and I think the tastiest - think small, sweet, nearly seedless snack-sized little cukes - yum!  The other two types will be along shortly.  Carrots are available again, and these are available in bunches of just orange carrots, or wilder-looking bunches of a mix of orange, yellow, and purple roots.

Did I say onions?  We lost the bulk of our main onion crop in those ridiculous monsoons last June and July, so forgive me if I seem a little too excited about fresh sweet onions!  We try to have some sort of oniony thing available year-round.  Leeks and scallions are great, but it's 'real' onion season now!  We grow sweet Vidalia-type onions, but we can't call them Vidalias, or Georgians tend to get a little cranky.  Trust me, I've eaten Georgia-grown Vidalias, and I've eaten my own sweet onions, and I can't tell the difference.  So they're just "sweet onions," wink-wink.  At the moment our onions are still 'wet' and uncured, and will come to you looking almost exactly like they appear in the picture above, although cleaned up for market.  You can use the green tops just like you would a scallion. 

We always seem to have far too many extra onion plants after setting out the main crop in late winter, so we plant the extras at closer spacing for some early scallions.  After a bit, the onions start to bulb up, but never get very big - these are the 'baby sweet onions' listed this week.  These babies are fabulous used in place of pearl onions, skewered onto kabobs and popped on the grill, or just a different size for those of you who want daintier portions of onions.

Some of our early-spring crops are going to fade away quickly in the dry summery heat we've seen of late, so be sure to get your fill now.  Pea fans: we're probably looking at just one to two more weeks for peas, then they're done for the season.  Maybe two more weeks for head lettuces, ditto for collards and radishes.  The cauliflower has succumbed to the heat already...that may have seemed like the shortest spring cauliflower season you've ever seen.  We can usually squeak out a few weeks' worth of cauliflower in the spring, we will enjoy a much longer season of it again late fall through early winter.  Kale and chard will usually continue on through late June - our Tuscan kale isn't gone yet, but we've been cutting it hard, and need to let it re-grow for the week.

Thank you all so much for your business, for some fabulously busy farmers markets in recent weeks, and have yourself a great week!

    A cornucopia of new crops for you all this week: cabbages, fennel, squash and zucchini, beets, and yes, fresh celery!  Whenever we bring our celery to the farmers markets, it is greeted with an odd mix of elation, distrust, and of course an endless barrage of questions.  So here's a short-and-sweet FAQ to locally-grown celery...

    "You can't grow celery in North Carolina."  Um, yes, you can.  It isn't easy, it can be hard to find, but we are not the only farm in the state to grow it.

    "You need black peat soil to grow celery."  No, you don't.  Our soil closely resembles the beach, sans surf and seagulls, and we can grow celery.

    "Where did you buy that?"  We didn't buy it.  We don't buy in any of the crops we sell - we grow them all right here on our farm.

    "Why is it so...green?"  It hasn't been sitting around in a cellophane bag on a shelf for the past month.  That's what real fresh celery looks like.

    "I bought some celery from you before, and it wilted before I could use it all."  We cut our celery as close to markets/delivery as possible, then immediately ice it down in coolers.  To keep it nice and crisp, do NOT just toss it in your fridge.  Keep the whole head tightly wrapped in plastic.  If you separate the leaves from the stalks, the stalks will keep a little longer.  If it starts to get a little limp anyway, put the celery in an ice water bath for 15-30 minutes to re-crisp.

    "But how do you grow celery here?"  Let's just say it took me a good five or six years to figure it out, I like to keep a few tricks up my sleeve, and a girl's gotta have a couple of secrets, right?

    With all these new veggies to add to your dinner plates, don't forget those other items still available!  The peas are at their peak this week; and I have to say that although the peas came in a bit late this spring, this is the most prolific year for peas I've ever seen; perhaps they're trying to make up for lost time?  Peas rarely make it past early June (check that calendar: just 2-3 more weeks), so be sure and get your fill of them now.   Cooking greens are usually available through mid to late June, but tend to be sweeter and more tender now, than later.  Head lettuces may also only be around for a few more weeks - don't forget to add some salads to the weekly menu!

Peas, please!  Like so many other spring crops, peas have a fleetingly short season of just three to four weeks.  It seems most years we go from wintry weather, to a few short but sweet weeks of what's actually "spring-like" weather, right into summer heat.  Spring crops can be tricky in our area because those seeds need to be started in winter, early enough to hit that magical month of mild weather.  Wait too long, until it feels like more reasonable planting weather, and we're trying to nurse delicate salad greens and peas along through 90-degree weather.  And sometimes that happens anyway.

And when the summery heat kicks in, it can get difficult to pin down what we're going to be harvesting for the week.  What doesn't look ready on Monday morning can be full-sized and ready to eat by Friday; what looks good today can sometimes bolt and go well past its prime by the weekend.  Even now, some part of me is still stuck on winter's slow harvest schedule, where we have a good month or two to get those greens cut and sold.  Now that window can be one or two days, and it takes me a bit to wrap my head around the explosive growth we're starting to see on the farm.  Not a bad problem to have!

The cauliflower started heading up late last week, and looks beautiful despite the summery temperatures.  The broccoli rabe is trying to go to seed faster than I can keep it cut back; this is likely the last week for rabe; might be gone for good by late in the week.  Next week is likely the end of our asparagus season - after cutting the spears for 7-8 weeks, it's time to let the ferns grow.  We grow baby lettuce mix a good part of the year, but May is always a treat because it's the season for big tender head lettuces.  The lettuce mix is easier to prep and use in your kitchen, but those full-sized mature heads of lettuce have so much more flavor and character.

The fresh herbs are also at their loveliest right now.  With the exception of parsley and basil, we do not cut fresh herbs in bulk for the farmers markets.  Our more 'unusual' herbs do not sell very well, and we end up seeing most of it go to waste.  If you'd like any herbs, please send me an email with what you'd like, and I'm more than happy to spend some time in heady, aromatic herb beds cutting them to order for you.

The warm, sunny weather is pushing on many of our other crops incredibly fast: beets, fennel, and cabbage are likely next week.  The carrots are sizing up nicely; the onions and potatoes are beginning to fatten up.  The squash, zucchini, and cucumbers are unbelievably starting to bloom; and some of the tomato vines are already waist-high!

This will be the last week we offer tomato plants for sale.  Our stock is running low, the plants are getting a little too big for their containers, and if you want ripe tomatoes out of your back yard before summer's end, now is the time to get them in.  We will probably still have peppers through the following week.  Check over here for the varieties still available; I try to update the list throughout the week as we sell out or get low on specific varieties.

Thank you all so much for your business, and have a great week!

The Downtown Raleigh Farmers Market opens (take two) this Wednesday!  Better late than never!

Last week we heard about hail just to our west, flooding off to our east, and funnel clouds a few miles north.  Thankfully we hit a sweet spot in the middle of all that, and saw nothing more here on the farm than a whole lot of rain and wind.  Other than a few wind-broken plants here and there, all's OK, and the rain and warmer temperatures are pushing your crops on fast!

Heavy, prolonged rains like that will also bring up every weed seed that ever even thought about existing, putting a nice green 'fuzz' over the whole farm if we don't jump right on them.  Since we don't use herbicides here, that translates to a whole lotta weeding, hoeing, and cultivating, which takes up a tremendous amount of our labor hours over the course of a season.  Remember that old Tootsie-Pop commercial, where the owl contemplates how many licks it takes to get to the center?  I think of that every time I'm hoeing the same patch over and over and over...I have yet to figure out how many licks it takes to get a weed-free stand of vegetables.

We started farming almost ten years ago, and until last summer, that was a comparatively very dry decade.  Growing under droughty conditions is very different than growing under soggy conditions.  (Both have their challenges; I'll still happily take too dry over too wet).   Last summer was ridiculously wet, and we learned more than a few new lessons - number one being Thou Shalt Not Let Your Weed Seedlings Languish.  Looks like we're in for a marathon weed-eliminating session this week!

Salad greens are back for a good while now, and the kales, collards, and chard are growing like they're ready to take over the world.  Tomato and pepper plants will only be available for a few more weeks.  Many more fresh goodies are right around the corner!