Counting Down to the First Harvest

Rushton farm at the end of May is a rich sight. The tall grass is dewy and the soil clings to your shoes and fingers on rainy days. If you walk by the bee hives you can hear the steady hum of the bees.

If I had to pick a theme for today, it would be beets. One of our projects was weeding one succession of beets as well as transplanting beets started in the greenhouse into the field. One of my favorite aspects of beets is their color. Not only does the bulb have a lovely magenta color, but the roots of the beet share that vibrant hue.

When transplanting the beets we used a dibble board so that the right distance between the plants could be observed without manually measuring each distance.  Since beet root blubs are small, we could easily use the hole made by the device.

One of the details we were careful about was completely covering the beets. The soil the beet is grown in dries out faster than clay, thus making it necessary to cover the beet completely. By the way, these holes are not just holes in the earth! This year we are using biodegradable covering made from corn starch as a way to keep the weeds from over taking the fields. You can see this covering in the picture above.  Below: Red Russian, Winterbor.

Another exciting aspect of the day was the quick succession of harvesting, bed prepping, and transplanting; all in the span of a few hours! Although these actions did not all apply to the same plant, I still found it exciting. As we harvested bok choy, I remembered someone mentioning that the water and succulence of bok choy made it fun to harvest. After weeding and prepping the former bok choy bed, we transplanted two varieties of kale: Winterbor kale and Red Russian kale.  This week, we also planted Dinosaur kale, named for its flat leaves, it can be used to make kale chips.

Dibble Board by Claire Staples

The perennial flowers are starting to bloom and before too long will be ready to be arranged into colorful bouquets. Weeding, sewing, transplanting, mulching, and thinning- it all adds up. We are excited for the first harvest this week.

 Natalie Staples