Serenbe Farms
  CSA Newsletter and Recipes 5-3

May 11, 2010
 Farm News From Ashley- 

watermelonOne of my favorite things about farming is watching how quickly things grow. Many plants germinate in less than a week; whether this is done in the greenhouse or directly in the ground it astonishes me how quickly these little seedlings jump out and say "look at me." From then on they are a bundle of energy taking in whatever they can get and growing as quickly as possible. One of my favorite things to witness germinating was squash, because they really do pop out (as you can see in the picture on the right). This past weekend was my first official weekend of being in charge of the farm. I was extremely nervous about taking care of the greenhouse. I spent all week learning the ins and outs of how to water, and when to open and close the greenhouse based on the sunlight and temperature from Paige. On the farm the greenhouse is like the newborn unit of a hospital, its where all the little babies are taken care of. And the last thing I wanted to do this weekend was kill all the little farm babies. Luckily since it rained a little more  3.5 inches last Monday, I did not have to irrigate at all this weekend, which made my job a little bit easier.

It's a great feeling watching things that you seeded in the greenhouse grow big and strong.  And then when you finally plant them into the ground its like empty nest syndrome with parents but  plants  instead. You still have to take care of them, mainly watering, and keeping all the bad guys away (weeds of course!), but they are for the most part on their own to survive in the world. We can only provide so much protection. So you can imagine its a great feeling seeing plants then flourish in the ground and take control of their own existence. One of my favorite examples are the sugar snap peas we are growing on the farm. I have been watching them for the past month or so, and I swear every week they look like they have grown a foot. Or the potatoes we planted my second week here, we have already hilled them twice, and this week I think they grew at least half a foot. I have also enjoyed watching the asparagus. I think we weeded them all my second week here, and by the next week there were some that were 2 or 3 feet tall. Now 3 weeks later they are huge and starting to get bushy and flower. Its very evident how important weeding is in maintaining healthy plants. Every time we weed something, by the next week it has  most likely doubled in size. This is because the plants no longer have to fight for water, nutrients or sunlight with those pesky weeds.

While watching plants grow is very exciting, by far my favorite ashley w/ chickenexperience with growth on the farm has been raising the baby chickens. Yup, that's right, here on the farm we are raising about 65 baby chickens, which will hopefully start laying eggs in September. I think Gretchen and I both experienced empty nest syndrome when we moved them out of our garage and onto the farm a few weeks ago. You can read all about them in a blog I just wrote titled "The Incredible Adventures of the Serenbe Farms Chickens." It is filled with plenty of pictures I have taken over the past month and a half. And of course make sure the next time you stop by the farm to say hi to them, so you can watch them grow to!

Anyways, this past week was pretty busy. It was a very long week, but we managed to accomplish just about everything we wanted to. We planted two long beds of heirloom tomatoes, a long bed of eggplant, and finished planting the rest of our cherry tomatoes. Since the peas have been growing like crazy we had to tie them to the trellis we built a few weeks ago. This was long over due and took us a little longer than we expected, but now the peas look better than ever. Many are taller than me! We also had our first farmers market this past Saturday which turned out amazing, I know Paige and Justin were excited to see many familiar faces again.

Tomatoes
tomatoFor the past three weeks we have been planting tomatoes on the farm.  Paige planned for seven successions of tomatoes this season, so hopefully we will all be able to enjoy tomatoes for a long time this summer. With that said we have numerous tomato plants in the greenhouse, and they account for a good bit of the babies I was in charge of this weekend. With all this interaction with tomatoes, between seeding, planting, pruning and selling them at the market, I decided to take some time and understand exactly how tomato blossoms work. I thought I might share my findings.

There are two main types of tomato plants, indeterminate and determinate. With indeterminate tomato plants you do not know exactly when they will fruit or how much they will fruit, because of this they require more long-term attention. With determinate tomato plants it is known when they will fruit and for how long, there for much less attention is needed to take care of them. With that said pollination has much to do with whether a tomato plant is a hybrid or an heirloom. Most heirloom varieties originated before the 1940's.

Within a tomato blossom there are both male and female reproductive parts. Every plant has a way to produce its offspring, and this is the tomato plants way of doing just that. The male part is called the stamen, which consists of the anthers and filament is where the pollen is stored, it is the yellow part just within the outer petals. It surrounds the carpel (the green middle part) which is where fertilization occurs. Within the carpel are  the female reproductive parts collectively called the pistil, which house the ovules and stigma. For fertilization of an ovule to occur a pollen grain must land on the stigma (the very top of the carpel) and then form a tube that reaches all the way down to an ovule. Once the tube is formed the pollen grain's two sperm cells then travel down into the ovule, and fertilization occurs. The tricky part of this whole process is that a grain of pollen must travel from the anthers of the stamen to the stigma of the carpel. If you notice how a tomato flower hangs on a plant it hangs downward usually, this will encourage the proper travel of pollen to stigma. Cross-pollination occurs when the pollen of one plant fertilizes the ovules of another plant. The act of pollinating is usually done by a bee which attaches itself to a blossom and then vibrates it in such a way that the pollen lands on the stigma. Many varieties of tomato can be pollinated by the wind, or by being shaken.  I found this concept very interesting, and it can actually be related to many other plants which flower to reproduce. I found most of my information on this website, which has pictures and diagrams which explain the whole thing: http://www-plb.ucdavis.edu/labs/rost/tomato/Reproductive/Repro.html
csa share last week
I have also posted new recipes, beet and beet green risotto, arugula pesto orzo on the blog.
 
Have a great week, and enjoy Tuesdays share!

Ashley & Crew
Find recipes here.
 
This week's share prediction:
(subject to change since we don't harvest most until tomorrow morning)

1 bunch kale
(or collards)
--kale recipe from a CSA member here

1 bunch hakurei turnips
--turnip green recipe from a CSA member here

1 bunch baby beets

onion flower stalks

1 bunch other greens (Asian greens or arugula)

head lettuce

1 bunch Chinese cabbage or bok choi

bag of spinach

1 bunch herbs

Things to look forward to in the future:
green garlic
kohlrabi
strawberries

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Links
www.serenbefarms.com

www.georgiaorganics.org
www.slowfoodatlanta.org
RECIPES

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