The Fink Farm Dirt

We have purple and gold cauliflower blossoming in our garden this week. (We got the color pack when we planted in November.) Nearly a week of sunshine has made everything grow big. Besides the cauliflower, the lettuces are thriving along with the spinach.  The brussels sprout plants keep getting larger and larger -- keeping pace with the cauliflower plants -- but there's no signs of sprout stems. The red Swiss chard is coming along.  It's still small and slow, but seems healthy. There's not much work to be done at this point. Mother Nature has kept a nice pace of rain so there's no watering to be done. The break in the rain and the arrival of sun means that weeds are starting to thrive, but not so much that we can't easily keep them under control.  There are bug holes in the lower leaves of our lettuces, but not so severe that we're inclined to break out the organic bug spray. The basil plants are no longer thriving.  We've had temperature...

We've been so starved for rain these past five or six years, I was starting to forget what it was like. The past two months, we've had a series of nice, durable, gentle rains.  Heavy enough to soak but not to wash out. Frequent enough to foster growth, but not so often as to drown the seedlings.  For us farmers, it's like having a self-gardening plot: we just have to go out every week or so and "ooh" and "ahh" over how fast everything is getting big. Of all the gardens we've ever planted, I think this one has been the most rewarding.  The conditions -- timing, moisture, sun and season -- have come together perfectly.  We have plenty of mulch down so the weeds aren't even raising their heads. We grew cabbage one summer (probably not the best season for that) and it seemed to take forever to see anything cabbage like. It's too early to see any embryonic cauliflowers, but the transformation from one week to the next is dramatic. ...