It is definitely growing season here now

A lot is happening here these days.  

The basil inter-planted between the tomatoes and in various gardens is doing great.  

Garlic should be ready to harvest in a week or so. 

Green onions are plentiful.  

My bay plant must love the un-sunshine as it’s growing better than any I’ve had in the past.  

I always think how peculiar it is that dill and cucumbers aren’t ready at the same time.  That’s why we’re growing it at different stages, in the hope both foods will meet eventually.  

White onions are big enough to share with you right now.  They are great flavour raw sliced thinly.  

We pick the kale plants clean every week and every week they grow back hardier, which is quite amazing. 

Eggplants in the greenhouse are doing better than the ones in the garden, which is the way it should be, otherwise why a greenhouse at all.   

We might be eating carrots in a couple of weeks.  

I’m really betting on red tomatoes soon (think positive happy encouraging thoughts).  

Pole beans are rapidly reaching for the sky.  Bush beans are producing but not quite enough for orders yet.  I pushed more beans, peas and snow peas into the ground this weekend so they’ll come about in a few weeks adding themselves to the ones already growing. 

I’m out of granola myself so will be making it again this week.  Let me know if you’d like some.

Here are some pictures of everything growing here so you can enjoy and get excited along with us about the foods to come.

some pansies and sweet william for our salads

sweet william up close

stunning calendula flowers

tomatoes trying their very best to be red or whichever
of the many colours they intend to be

bachelor buttons hanging out with calendula and
sunflowers - who planted the sunflowers in there?

varieties of basil plants

cucumbers climbing our hand-made trellises 

first planting of carrots growing for us

mostly onions here

eggplant currently the size of ... an egg, oddly.

one happy bay leaf plant

I have to say that the mosquitoes are absolutely brutal out there chewing on any skin we might leave exposed, which is sometimes lots due to the high temperatures.  No pictures of mosquitoes are there – who needs that negativity? 

Eats this week are:

Beets  $3/pound

Beet Greens  $3 bunch

Edible flowers   $3 bag

Garlic Scapes:  $3 bunch of 15

Green Garlic  It’s picked fresh, to be used right away, not cured yet, mild garlic flavour  $2 each

Green Onions:  $2 bunch of 10

Herbs, fresh:  bay leaf, cilantro, citrus thyme, dill–so much beautiful fresh dill, mint, rosemary, sage, tarragon   $2 bunch  

Herb Mix: a mix of several fresh herbs  $3 bunch   let me know if there’s an herb you’re not fond of

Kale  $3 bunch

Lettuce heads:  flame, heirloom romaine, speckled, tennis ball, red salad bowl  $3 mixed bag   

Mustard Greens   $3 bunch

Onions, white  NEW  $2.50/pound

Salad Greens, washed and table ready:  includes green spinach, strawberry spinach, wild spinach, orach, celery tops, sorrel, arugula, parsley, lovage, mustard, cress and various soft and crunchy lettuces and other green stuff growing on the property and edible flowers  $5 bag   

Swiss Chard   $3 bunch

Granola, with fruit  $8 /500mL jar  

Granola, with nuts and fruit  $10 /500mL jar

I make it fresh when you order  

Pesto, garlic scape  $4.50

Pesto, basil  $4.50 125mL jar

Plants, basil:  Genovese, Greek, Lemon or Thai  $2 each  See picture attached.

Sunflower Shoots  $2 bag  

I grow sprouts for those who have regular weekly delivery.  If you want me to grow some for you, please let me know.  It’s certainly do-able.  I don’t like to waste the seeds if the sprouts aren’t going to be delivered to someone. 

If you'd like to purchase any of the above items, I'm happy to provide them if available after our regular customers have ordered.  If you want to know how to receive delivery of our nutritional goodness, see Contact information and email or call me.  Thanks.

Until next post, have a great every day.  

Jo

How on this earth is it July 12 already?

Let me tell you about the goings-on here for the first part of July.  Again, the rain is not stopping the lettuces, mustards, onions, salad greens, beans, carrots, cress, orach, celery, , cucumbers, beets, peas and weeds from growing fantastically.  The tomatoes and peppers are suffering slightly but not as much as one would think from lack of sunshine and warmth.  The few days we have had in the last couple of weeks added great height, width and fruitness (good word) to the tomato plants.  We pinch off the suckers on each of the hundreds of plants for hours and hours about every three days.    If we don’t prune them, we’ll have a jungle o’tomato plants out there with more leaves than tomatoes. 

It’s impossible right now to get into lowers portions of the gardens to make new rows.  The plants waiting patiently in their pots may not get into the ground at all this season L.  Thanks to the many who came by and bought some to take home to place into their care. 

We plant new beds of salad mix each week as one bed only lasts for about three weeks before it bolts and/or tastes bitter.   We’ll keep planting the roots such as beets, carrots and green onions every week or two so will continue to enjoy them into the Fall months.   I now grow pea shoots and sun flower shoots indoors to keep them out of chipmunks’ reach.  We start basil every week so there are always plants available for you to buy and for me to make pesto once the leaves get large enough.  Yesterday, we sowed some cauliflower, broccoli, rapini and various cabbages for fall harvest.  We’ll take care of these in little pots for the next few weeks until we plant them out.  And, of course, will hope for the best that the gardens will dry up a bit so we can actually do that planting.

I hope all of this talk about food makes you hungry so you can enjoy the following:

Beet Greens  $3 bunch

Curly Cress  $2 bunch I keep it out of the salad now, you can add your own if you like

Edible flowers   $3 bag

Garlic Scapes:  $3 bunch of 15

Green Garlic  It’s picked fresh, to be used right away, not cured yet, mild garlic flavour  $2 each

Green Onions:  $2 bunch of 10

Herbs, fresh:  citrus thyme, dill, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, tarragon   $2 bunch  

Herb Mix: a mix of several fresh herbs  $3 bunch   let me know if there’s an herb you’re not fond of

Kale  $3 bunch

Lettuce heads:  heirloom romaine, speckled, tennis ball, tom thumb, red salad bowl  $3 mixed bag   

Mustard Greens  looking pretty healthy right now  $3 bunch

Snow Peas  $3 bag

Salad Greens, washed and table ready:  includes green spinach, strawberry spinach, wild spinach, orach, celery tops, sorrel, arugula, parsley, lovage, mustard, cress and various soft and crunchy lettuces and other green stuff growing on the property and edible flowers  $5 bag   

Swiss Chard   $3 bunch

  

Sunflower Shoots  $2 bag  we definitely have lots this week

Plants, basil:  Genovese, Greek, Lemon or Thai  $2 each

If you'd like to purchase any of the above items, I'm happy to provide them if available after our regular customers have ordered.  If you want to know how to receive delivery of our nutritional goodness, see Contact information and email or call me.  Thanks.

Until next post, have a great every day.  

Jo

This Week's Special Feature

is Heirloom Romaine Lettuce.  It's so beautiful right now.  Imagine your favourite Caesar Salad recipe with this lovely rich-in-colour speckled lettuce.   Or every use for a nutritious green in salads or sandwiches, wraps, burgers and more.  It’s much more interesting and better for you than plain old iceberg from the store. 

We have many heirloom, colourful, crispy lettuces right now such as red salad bowl, tennis ball and tom thumb (small heads of crisp butterhead lettuces), speckled and flame to name a few.  The rainy weeks and dark days are friends to my salad ingredients – no complaints here.

And we finally started staking and doing the Florida Weave with the tomato plants.  No, that’s not a line dance, it’s what we do with baler’s twine carefully weaving in between each tomato plant and around the stakes we pounded into the ground between every second or third plant.  This supports the tomatoes so we’re able to trim off those unnecessary bottom branches which would normally hold up the plant but take up way too much room.  The fruits will be healthier for it.  Ah, don’t you just long for the summery taste of that first tomato – soon soon soon. 

Speaking of firsts, there are some snow peas ready, not a lot but some.  Beets are ready this week.  It’s clearly the week of readiness in the garden of greens here at Day Brighteners Farm.

Celery is holding out for another week or so, but it’s definitely growing chubbier stalks for you. 

Weeding and laying straw under the beans we salavationized (new word) last week helped and they are now climbing the ladder of success – well, the trellis of success we made for them anyway.

Here’s the list of foods for you to enjoy this week:

Beets NEW $3 pound

Beet Greens  $3 bunch

Curly Cress  $2 bunch I’ll keep it out of the salad, you can add your own or

Edible flowers   $3 bag

Garlic Scapes:  $3 bunch of 15

Green Garlic NEW It’s picked fresh, to be used right away, not cured yet, mild garlic flavour  $2 each

Green Onions:  $2 bunch of 8

Herbs, fresh:  citrus thyme, dill, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, stinging nettle, tarragon   $2 bunch  

Herb Mix: a mix of several fresh herbs  $3 bunch   let me know if there’s an herb you’re not fond of

Kale  $3 bunch

Lettuce heads:  heirloom romaine, speckled, tennis ball, tom thumb, red salad bowl  $2 each 

OR Mixed Bag  $3   

Mustard Greens  $3 bunch

Red Orach  (spinach more nutritious than spinach)  $3 bag

Salad Greens, washed and table ready:  includes green spinach, strawberry spinach, wild spinach, orach, celery tops, sorrel, arugula, parsley, lovage, mustard, cress and various soft and crunchy lettuces and other green stuff growing on the property and edible flowers  $5 bag   

Snow Peas not many yet but still yummy $3 bag

Swiss Chard   $3 bunch

Sprouts  $3 /bag

Sandwich Booster  (clover, alfalfa, radish and mustard)  

Spring Salad Mix  (broccoli, radish, alfalfa & clover) 

Sunflower Shoots – should be ready by Friday  $2 bag

If you'd like to purchase any of the above items, I'm happy to provide them if available after our regular customers have ordered.  If you want to know how to receive delivery of our nutritional goodness, see Contact information and email or call me.  Thanks.

Until next post, have a great every day.  

Jo

Cute Little Tractor for Sale

1952 Massey Harris Pony tractor:
 has PTO, belt pulley, hydraulics, one-furrow hydraulic plow, hydraulic disc set, extra set of turf tires, new front tires, new carburetor and inline fuel filter and a 5’ Woods hydraulic lift belly 3-blade lawn mower; just  had fuel line and condenser replaced, points cleaned, valves freed up, ignition coil, spark plugs and spark plug wires replaced, transmission/differential oil replaced, engine oil changed, has been pressure washed – it’s in pretty good shape – It works, we just needed one that does more - all for $3,000.00

Email or leave message on phone 613-258-7970

Thanks.

Jo

Gardening in between the rain showers

Maybe it’s the wet weather but is anyone else seeing slugs on things they’ve never been on before?  We have now planted beans three times.  I’ve never had a problem of any kind growing beans, but this year the leaves are being eaten away, leaving nothing but a leafless stem with no hope of survival.  Just before sunset last night, after putting the chickens in, I saw no less than three baby slugs on each bean plant leaf!  Time to get out the beer – not for me so much but the slugs.  I’ve not tried that trick but am willing to give up a small portion of my beer for this worthy cause.  Today we weeded the non-bean rows, turned compost into the soil and covered with straw mulch.  We’ll plant more beans in the hope summer is kind and stays for a longer visit than spring did. 

We have most of the tomatoes in the ground at this point.  If you garden, you know how hard the soil is to work with when wet.  It is mud – heavy, sloppy, clarty globs of mud that stick to your rake, your boots and your gloves. 

In between showers and thunderstorms, we now have the laying of the special Bio360 plastic mulch down to a fine science.  It takes three of us to do this but we’re getting much quicker at it and the 5000 foot roll actually looks like it’s getting small, now that we’ve used about 700 feet of it – nah it’s just our imagination, fact is we’re getting stronger muscles from the whole endeavour.  

the first tomatoes we planted next to the happy garlic

the cherry tomatoes just in

There’s still quite a variety of cherry tomato plants left unplanted.  I think we may not get them all in this week so if you need some, I’m willing to give them up for $2 each.  I also have some basil plants to go along with your tomatoes for $2 each.  

We also weeded the onion and carrot rows today, which let me know that green onions/scallions are ready for eating.  Eggplants are flowering.  The peppers are starting to show signs of pepperage and all of the edible flowers we started, such as nasturtium, sweet william, bachelor buttons, marigolds, zinnias and calendula, are doing wonderfully well.   I grow these to bring the pollinator bees to the gardens to do their magic with the flowering veggies – and so we can eat the petals in our salads. 

bachelor buttons, calendula
and some marigold starts

nasturtium

We’re now at the stage where lettuce leaves are bigger, we have more salad greens and the bags are filled more, so the price for each bag will be $5 as it has been in the past.   

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Garlic scapes are up which means Garlic Scape Pesto is also on the menu. 

It’s also Granola week!  It’s been a while and I’m craving it with my yoghurt and fresh organic strawberries which I picked up at Heather’s Healthy Harvest yesterday.   So it’s on the menu this week too. 

I am so very grateful for the help provided to Day Brighteners Farm over the past many weeks – Carol for working here faithfully despite her busy job and sole business schedule, Leahbeth for coming diligently every week to sow starts for us to eventually transplant into the gardens, Marg who is learning something new about food and gardening every single day she’s here, Jes and her gardening girls from Community Living who make us smile when they’re here and of course, Mark who takes care of our heavy lifting, transporting compost, moving straw, turning that tube of plastic mulch, weeding, trimming, hole digging, tractoring (it’s a real word here), tilling, row making through the mud and so much more all of us do from day to day.  Young Thomas still comes out some weekends even though he has a full-time office job.  We’ve had others come out for a day or few to help out with shed building, sun shelter building, sowing, weeding and transplanting.  There is so much to be done and it is constant.  It’s such a pleasure to see the vegetables start to form and know we will all eat well in the upcoming months. 

With this much wonderful food on the horizon, we would like more customers with which to share.  If you know of someone who would like to be healthier through eating, doesn’t have time to cook or even shop for food in the busyness of their days, or just enjoys eating local non-GMO organically grown food, please let them know about us here at Day Brighteners Farm.  We’re working hard for you to enjoy the bountifulness of the summer and fall seasons. 

The menu for this week goes like this:

Beet Greens  $3 bunch

Garlic Scapes:  $3 bunch

Green Onions:  $2 bunch

Herbs, fresh:  citrus thyme, dill, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, stinging nettle, tarragon   $2 bunch  

Herb Mix: a mix of several fresh herbs  $3 bunch   let me know if there’s an herb you’re not fond of

Kale  $3 bunch

Lettuce heads:  romaine, tango, speckled, bibb  $2 each 

OR Mixed Bag  $3

Mustard Greens  $3 bunch

Red Orach  (spinach more nutritious than spinach)  $3 bag

gorgeous looking orach

Salad Greens, washed and table ready:  includes green spinach, strawberry spinach, wild spinach, orach, celery, sorrel, arugula, parsley, lovage, mustard, mizuna, cress and various soft and crunchy lettuces and other green stuff growing on the property and edible flowers  $5 bag   

Swiss Chard   $3 bunch

Garlic Scape Pesto:  $4 125mL jar  I'll make that this weekend

Granola, with fruit  $8 /500mL jar  

Granola, with nuts and fruit  $10 /500mL jar

I make it fresh when you order  

Plants:  Cherry Tomatoes, many varieties  $2 each;  Basil  $2 each

If you'd like to purchase any of the above items, I'm happy to provide them if available after our regular customers have ordered.  If you want to know how to receive delivery of our nutritional goodness, see Contact information and email or call me.  Thanks.

Until next post, have a great every day.  

Jo