Some mid-summer pictures.......

Been a while, long past time to post something. Our facebook page gets updated more often, due to the fact of it's ease- snap a couple pictures, write a few words, and it's done. Even if you are not a fb subscriber, you can view our page here. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Niemelas-Market-Gardens/423815084449330

I took a spin around this evening, and wanted to share some pictures with you. Been a nice busy summer, weather has been good, other than trying to work in the mid-90s with high humidity stretch we had for a while there. :) Days like that, about mid-day, I'd usually give up all pretense, loaded up the family, and head for Keweenaw Bay. Not good to work out in the sun when it's that hot.

Baby butternut squash.

Delicata squash.

We put in a bunch of winter squash this year, in what is called the north field. So tasty in the nippy fall days to sit down to some baked squash with whatever else is for supper. My lovely and gracious wife Janice says they are good as is (and they are); I still think, just like most things can be improved with bacon, any winter squash that's already good can be improved with a puddle of butter and brown sugar in the hollow. :)

"Leeking" a secret here.....

We planted a bunch of leeks this season. I like crops that like my soil, aren't too demanding, tolerate frosts, and are popular with our customers. Leeks definitely fit that description, so we put in quite a bit more than last season.

Jerusalem artichokes, a.k.a. Sunchokes

We put in some of these in a section of the garden. I've had a couple places where they've been growing neglected for a while, but this year we put some in an area where we can take care of them. It was a bit risky, since they are reputed to be almost impossible to eradicate if you want them gone. But I get kind of used to living on the edge, I guess. :) My daddy once said if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space. :) If they get to be a problem, I'll run the piggies through them and let them root 'em out. God gave pigs a snout for a reason, and they love to use it.

Brussels sprouts starting to go....

About early September or so, we'll go down the brussels sprout rows and cut out the growing point, and cause them to finish up the ones that are formed, rather than keep growing taller and taller.

Cilantro becoming coriander. :)

Oscarde lettuce we are letting go to seed for next season.

Climbing Sungold tomatoes......

These plants are getting to the end of their ropes, literally. Pruned and twirled up strings, some of them are starting to hit the top of the greenhouse. If I had a bit more forethought, when I hung the strings, I would've left some extra hanging at the top. But not too big of a problem, I'll just add on some pieces to the top of the string, untie them, let them down a couple feet or so, and they can keep growing up. The stems that are sagging on the ground supposedly just root in the bed. They've set loads of fruit, some of which has been trickling onto the market tables.....

Dill weed.

Put in a couple small late plantings of dill, for fresh herb use. The earlier plantings are starting to look like the next picture, which is wonderful for picklin', but not so nice for sprinkling over fresh-dug new potatoes. (Which, incidentally, we should start having on the market tables next week.)

Almost dill seed...

Yellow crookneck squash.

Starfighter lettuce.

In order to have lettuce all summer, you need to sow all summer. This is a new one I'm trying, a little bit darker green leaf type than the lighter green summer crisp we've had. Fun to change it up once in a while, and try new varieties. We'll be planting lettuces for whole-head harvest probably to the end of August, the later plantings will finish up growing in the tunnels.

Part of my "office", where I get to hang out during the summer. :)

The weedy patch in the foreground is part of the old herb garden, which has since moved up in the world. (Wrote about it in earlier posts.) I'm gonna run the two piggies we are raising for the table through it, and plant hopefully next year. Pigs are wonderful to use for working rough areas for next season planting; they love to root, and don't even know they are doing our work for us. :)

A couple weeks back, after Saturday morning market, we went to Fort Wilkins to catch a little of the War Between The States era re-enactments. Fort Wilkins is always fun to visit, especially to see how they lived in days gone by. I found the general store (among many of the other buildings) to be quite quaint. If you have never been to Fort Wilkins, it's definitely a good stop.

Well, I better run along. Y'all take care now, and eat your veggies. :)

Of potatoes, pigs and other pictures.....

Things are going well here, and have been going well at market. Thank you to all of our wonderful customers- we've been going home early from market, always a nice thing. To get there, sell the produce, and go home to work on the gardens there. :) Here's a shot of last Saturday's table, before the folks started showing up, and cleaning up the goodies. Set up, keep loading out of the coolers into the display tubs, then take down the tables and go home to get back into the dirt. :)

Love those shiny radishes!!

After tying up some tomatoes in Tunnel #1, which was moved over and is planted to tomatoes, cukes, basil and peppers, I took a scoot around to get some other pictures of how some other stuff is doing here. Sungolds are coming along quite well in Tunnel # 2. We've been keeping them tied up and pruned, and have even had a small handful of them turn ripe.

Sungolds.....

We have these ones pruned to 2 leaders. Basically, we remove every side sucker that sprouts in the notch by the leaf, until the one directly BELOW the first flower cluster. The one directly below the first flower cluster then becomes the second leader.  When done when the suckers are still small, they are easy to pinch off. When they are pruned, it makes the plant much more manageable, without all the side growth getting in the way; and it is supposed to allow earlier ripening of the fruit. Tomatoes are a tropical perennial, grown as an annual in our climate. Allowing all the vegetative growth may work well in the tropics; here, our growing season is a bit shorter, to say the least. :) So the plant needs to be somewhat curbed and made to work for us; cut back some of the vegetation, and force the plant to use some energy to actually make and ripen fruit.

I missed a small sucker on this plant.........

Which I snapped off, after snapping a picture of it.

You can see the sucker shoot, to the right of the second twirl of orange string. The scar above the second twirl of string is a shoot that was removed previously, and has healed over nicely. Anyway, on to other things.

Gypsy Broccoli, next to my #10 boot to show the size.

Tendersweet Cabbage.

These plants are growing where our pigs were rooting and fertilizing last summer; they seem to like the soil there. I use the pigs to dig up areas we need for the following season. They do a wondrous job, eating through the weed and grass roots, working the soil deeply as they root, and all the while dropping fertilizer as they work. We work the soil with the tiller behind them, let it mellow and rot down over winter, then till a couple more times in the spring, and it's ready to go. It probably helps that these plants are growing in a little valley, the soil tends to be richer and damper in a lower area anyway. We have a couple piggies this year, named "Hammie" and "Sausage". They are busy rooting around, working some areas I need for planting next season. We raise them to eat them, so we don't like to name them cute pet names like Wilbur (wasn't that the name of the pig in Charlotte's Web?) or Petunia. If you call them food, everyone including the little tykes know the end result we're shooting for, and don't make pets out of them. Not to say that I don't think animals should be well cared for, if they are destined for the dinner plate. No sirree. I think animals should be raised kindly and decently, given a good life and lots of food, then butchered quickly and processed properly. In the Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery, a pig raiser who contributed to the pig section of her book told the way to gauge happiness in pigs, and I quote, "Dirt on the snout, as a measure of contentedness, depends on where the dirt is. No dirt means not happy. Dirt half way up the snout means happy. Dirt up past the eyes means ecstasy." End quote. I think raising pigs on a concrete floor out of the sunshine without an opportunity to ever root, is no way for a pig to live. They should have dirt to root in, so they can "express their pigness", as Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm would say. Well, I shouldn't hog up all the space on this post talking about pigs, so let's move along here. :) Whoops, one more, then we'll go on.

Hammie "expressing his pigness", while Sausage looks on in approval.

Giant of Italy flat leaf parsley.

Muir Lettuce

Don't know why this machine started flipping the pictures lengthwise, rather than sideways like normal. It'll be a change of pace for your eyes. :) Now it's back to normal. Technology gives me fits from time to time.

C-Plot.

Tiny baby Red Norland Spud.

Some of the early spuds.

The beets alluded to in the previous post are starting to perk up.

Clary Sage in the herb garden. Thought the flower buds were cool....

Old rose bush starting it's show in the round flower garden. <3

Well, I better run along now. Y'all take care now, and eat your veggies. :) Bye-bye.

Spring swinging into summer, and I'm back.

Been a while since I updated this. I ended up being out of town unexpectedly for about two weeks in the middle of May, and since returning home, we've been scrambling to get back into the saddle, as they say. Things are starting to roll here. I stepped out after supper and got a few pictures.

Can you beet these?

These beets are some of a batch of beets we started in one of the beds in the seed starting greenhouse earlier this spring, then pulled up and replanted into the garden rows as bare root transplants. They seem to do well this way, even though the taproot gets broken when you lift them out. I wonder if since the long tap root has snapped off, and they have to form several roots, thereby feeding off several roots in the topsoil, rather than a main taproot going way down into the (not so fertile) subsoil, maybe that's why they do so well this way. Can't say for sure, only that it works, and that's what counts in my book. Although, they are rather disheartening to look at right after transplanting. Get all sad looking and wilted, and you'd think they croaked, but a couple weeks later, they are off and growing. Here's a picture of them in the sorry-looking state.

New transplants. With a bit of time, and ample water, they will do great!

Lots of goodies.

Here's a couple of shots of beautiful kale. Always a popular seller at market, it's easy to grow, likes cool weather, and is frost hardy, especially in the fall. Last fall, for our after season email marketing, we were literally picking it out of the snow, and it was much better due to the cold.

Scarlett kale.

Starbor kale.

Muir lettuce. "Lettuce help you with dinner", as our sign at market says. :)

Oscarde lettuce

The above red lettuce is a different one then the variety we had mostly last year. I like to try different varieties, and this one seems to be a keeper. It likes our soil, grows quickly, and is reputed to like cooler weather. The one we grew last year was called Rouxai; a bit smaller, but so uniform as to be almost boring. Oscarde is a beautiful red, but seems to evoke a frazzled hair day appearance. Like a country girl's pony-tail at the end of an afternoon of pitching hay bales. Farm pretty, but not overdone. :)

BHN something -or-other tomato.

This is a new tomato we are trying out this year, a determinate type that is supposed to have good flavor, and do well in greenhouses, where they are growing. We will see whether it lives up to the seed catalog description.

Second batch of H-19 Little Leaf cucumbers.

After it became apparent that summer should be here to stay, we moved greenhouse #1 over to another plot, and filled it up with peppers, heirloom tomatoes, basil, and these cute little cukes. They are doing much better than the first batch in greenhouse #2. Which makes sense, the weather is better suited to them, soil warmer, etc. 

Onions, planted a bit late, but they should still do OK. Garlic in the left corner.

New potatoes in the making.

Janice's Finnish grandma, a delightful lady with whom I spent many an hour listening to her stories about the "old days", was also a great cook. She used to make creamed potatoes and peas. (Amongst many other toothsome delicacies.) Janice learned many of her tricks and tactics, and she uses many of the same recipes. One of the things I wait for every spring is the first new potatoes. When they get big enough, I'll do a little "grabbling", as they call it, and bring some in for creamed spuds and peas. Yum!

The herb gardens on the hill.

Lemon balm by the pond, in the stone trial.

Something of interest to me is rocks in agriculture. Perhaps it is because I don't have too many rocks in my soil, but I have a fondness for them. We use them for garden borders, to hold edges of plastic covers down, etc. I also tried laying a bunch of rocks down in a plot we worked up by the pond, then planted herbs in between the rocks, in the cracks and spaces. Seems the benefits are numerous- they trap the sun's heat in the day, releasing it at night. They also seem to act as a kind of mulch, if you will, helping to keep down weeds. I once did a google search on stones in agriculture, or something to that effect. Was some interesting stuff there. Again, maybe it's because I don't have lots of rocks around, that I see them as beneficial. If my soil was afflicted with them, and it seemed they bred more underground every spring, perhaps my attitude would be different. :)

Second spring, in the greenhouse.

Lots more plants up-and-coming, for succession planting.

Also, for those who missed it, and care to check it out, here are a couple links to some news bits about us getting our veggies into UP Health System-Portage. Yes, we are excited. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Omua1E7zFg

http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/news/story.aspx?id=1216038#.VYNfflL4JB9


Y'all take care now!

Spring weather and lots of plants in the ground.

Well, after a stretch of nice weather, we're back to more normal springlike weather here in the good old Yoop. Seems most every year about this time, we get a tug of war going between winter and spring/summer. Right now, seems like winter is getting the upper hand, going back to the 30s in the day, and sleet/snow showers. But so it goes, I guess. When I got up this morning, the birds were cheerfully singing, undaunted by the rather gloomy (at least in my mind) weather outdoors.

We've been doing a lot of seed starting and "potting up". "Twas a good feeling to even get some transplants into the ground, like this.

Lettuce, chard, and kale.

Some of the lettuce could have handled getting set out a bit earlier, and looked like they had been "dragged through a knothole", as the saying goes, but in the end they will do great. The starts above were set into Caterpillar Tunnel # 1, called caterpillar tunnels since they kinda resemble a big caterpillar. Here's a shot from outside.

Just ignore the gas can sitting there. :)

This one was made of rebar inside pvc pipes, the ends of which are inserted into about 2 foot pipes pounded about a foot into the ground. The plastic is tied to stakes pounded into the ground at the end of each tunnel,with smaller ropes pulled over between each support, and staked to the ground. They seem to hold up OK to wind, and are relatively easy up and easy down, so are movable. I hope to avoid some of the problems associated with permanent greenhouses, like pest or disease buildup, by being able to move these structures around. The second one we built last Friday was made of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipes connected, then bent and shoved over stakes at each side, which were driven into the ground. Same type of deal with the plastic tied down.

Here's a shot of son James working up the ground in Tunnel # 1, so it can be formed into beds.

Here's some of the things set out into tunnel # 1........

Starbor Kale.

I think this is Red Ursa Kale.

Oscarde Lettuce.

Muir Lettuce.

A new one for us, Scarlett Kale.

I'm hoping to set out the zucchini, cucumber, and tomato starts in Caterpillar Tunnel # 2 as soon as this weather clears off, and it looks fairly decent. Right now, they are in the cozy seed starting greenhouse. The two photos following were from 4-15, they've since been potted up to give them more room to grow. They need to be held off another week at least, but they were whining to either get into the ground, or get into more potting mix, so we obliged them. :)

Beautiful green....

Pickles in the making....

The tomatoes we potted up into larger (than the 2" soil blocks they were occupying) regular pots. The cukes and zucchini went from 2" soil blocks to 4" blocks, made by this goofy-looking, but totally functional homemade soil block maker.

Made some years ago from scraps of wood laying around here.

I could've bought a nice fancy-lookin' one for about a hundred bucks, and it makes one block at a time. Or I could make a homely lookin' one that makes one block at a time, for a song, as they say. I'm a function over fashion type, so we made one, and it works just fine. Don't give a hoot if this one is prettier. Or maybe it's not. :)

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6421-hand-held-1-soil-blocker.aspx

The two "Caterpillar Tunnels".

Planting the first bed of carrots for 2015. :) (S.W.)

Double covered for the cool nights.

Alas, the nice weather wasn't here to stay (yet), so we have the stuff in Tunnel #1 covered with another layer for the nights and cloudy days. Gives another layer of protection, hopefully it will do the trick on these cold nights coming up. (The caterpillar tunnels aren't heated.)


Well, that's it for now. Y'all take care now- stay warm.