Cabbage, Broccoli, Fennel and the Beginning of May!

The new month means new crops ready to harvest and this week we will have the first broccoli, fennel and Caraflex cabbage. The cabbage is a cone type and is amazing to sauté or steam and eat by itself with just a little seasoning. The fennel is delicious roasted or sautéd.

Last week we started harvesting carrots and brought a few to market and this week we will be bringing lots more since we sold out last week.

We’ll be at the Davis Farmers Market from 3-7 p.m. today and then tomorrow, May 5, we will be at the Benicia Farmers Market from 4-8 p.m.

On the farm in the past week we have planted the last of some late spring crops in the ground as well as direct seeded summer crops. Our third planting of green beans just went in the ground along with the second planting of cucumbers. Hopefully the timing will work out and we will have some dill available when the cucumbers are ready for everyone to make dill pickles.

We also added a second string on our tomato plants as they have gotten bigger and need the string to make them grow upwards instead of sprawling all over the place and being hard, if not impossible, to harvest. A few of the varieties already have fruit forming and they all have lots of flowers. The eggplants are growing a lot but have been slowed by flea beetles eating some of the leaves.

The greenhouse is mostly empty with only some basil, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and leeks left which will all be planted by the end of May.

As with every week we are spending lots of time weeding in the field to try and keep the crops ahead of the weeds. We are beginning to mow some beds of the first crops we harvested back in the beginning of April and will replant them with some summer crops.