Replenished stock of gallon tomatos starts

The nursery has a new stock of gallon tomato starts this morning.  We open at 10am today.
Come on in to get yours!

Soil Temperatures Warm for Planting ~ Our Plant Starts are Ready!!

It's now the third week of May. We've brought out new starts that include:

Basil: Italian plus several more varieties

Beans, several varieties

Broccoli

Cabbage, red or green

Chard

Corn, yellow, bi-color

Cucumbers: pickle, lemon, oriental, slicers

Dill

Lettuces

Onions, walla walla

Parsley, Italian

Peas, shelling, snow, snap

Spinach

Summer Squash, crookneck or zephyr

Tomatoes in gallons (bye, bye those little guys, they're growing!)

Winter Squash: acorn, honeyboat, sunshine

Zuchinni

It unbelievable but the leeks are sold out!

 The tomato gallons are flying out the door; gardeners are folks with hope in their hearts

for this fruit. Weather forecasts have been sayin' back to the normal NW spring and summer temperatures.

Garden soils are warm enough for planting according to Cliff Mass who says on

KPLU's Weather with Cliff Mass: "At least, for vegetable gardeners, the warmer temperatures that we've had over the past month raised soil temperatures, says Mass."

http://kplu.org/post/has-june-gloom-arrived-early-not-garden-soils-warm

 Got your trowels ready? Let the garden season begin!

Going to Market ~ Redmond Saturday Market

Opening day at Redmond Saturday Market!  Joe's there with tomato starts in gallon containers, herb starts and veggies starts in 4" containers.  Marching band playing, lots of folks picking out flowers and cheeses and natural dog treats and more!!

Supersize My Tomato Starts, Please

Today the Farmstore begins selling the gallon-size tomato plants.
I wait for this day all year long; I know these starts will live in my
Earthbox on my deck.

A complete list of the starts is available in an earlier post.
Here are the 4" starts in the nursery today:

Vegetable Starts

Beans (several varieties)
Broccoli
Cabbage (red or green)
Chard
Collards
Corn (yellow, bi-color)
Kale
Onions (Walla Walla)
Leeks
Lettuce
Mustard (red or green)
Peas (Shelling, snow, snap)
Tomatoes, 4" (limited quantities)
Tomatoes, Gallon-size
Spinach

Herb starts like chives, oregano, marjoram, etc. are here.

Planted in organic medium and fertilizer without chemicals,
these are hearty plants. 

Every week will feature additional starts; next week look for summer
squash and parsley and others.  Yum!

Come on down and get yours today!

Tomato Starts

Early Girl

Early Goliath

Big Beef

Brandymaster   (Heirloom variety)

Chocolate Cherry
Sweet 100   

Sungold

Yellow Pear

Bush Early Girl (NEW!)

Bush Goliath

Sunny Goliath

Viva Italia

Husky Cherry Red

We grow all our tomatoes from seed without artificial heat.  

We use no pesticides, fungicides or growth stimulants.  

This makes the plants healthier to acclimate better to life outdoors.  

Each pot is fertilized with Walt’s Organic Fertilizer and we recommend this for all vegetables.

'Enuf said.  4" size of selected varieties go on sale Saturday 28 April.  See you then!

'E

Farm opens Saturday, 28 April

At 10 am, these new doors swing open for the 2012 Season at Root Connection Farm. 

It’s the nursery you'll see first; starts of vegetables and herbs and yes, our famous tomato plants, will be available for you to buy (adopt?) and carry home for your own garden.  All starts are grown from seed. 

Stay tuned for the List of Tomato Starts; there’s been a request from folks who are gearing up their home gardens and MUST have those beauties! (Hint: new this year is Bush Early Girl.) 

The first harvests will be in June; for info on what’s in a share, how to sign up, go to www.rootconnection.com/csa.html

Excuse me, I must go find my trowel, gloves and knee pads.  Must get my garden ready for these annual guests.  Time’s awasting!

The Season Ends ~ A New One Begins

 

Are these fields just sitting here empty in the Winter? What’s going on? This week we will be planting the winter cover crop of rye grass. Soon there will be bright green sprouts of rye everywhere, which continues to grow through the Winter. I’ve read where each individual rye grass has over 3 miles of tiny roots! These keep the soil loose, and when the rye grass is tilled in in the spring will provide lots of organic
matter that will decompose and provide nutrients for the crops. (Another name for
cover crop is “green manure”) So what else is going on?

While we are sitting out the cold Winter waiting for next years veggies, there is an
army of over 5 Sextillion earthworms, nematodes, beetles, centipedes and other soil
creatures hard at work for us! (one sextillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) How did I come up with that number? We have at least 3 ft of topsoil on 15 acres of cultivated land, which equals 1,960,200 cu ft. Which equals over 111 trillion teaspoons. Most estimates average a number of 50 milllion of these creatures in 1 teaspoon of organically managed soil. In addition to that, there are estimates of over 50 billion bacteria per teaspoon as well – I’m not even going to try to figure that out! So it is a regular work factory going on in the soil, and it never stops.

They are working hard to process the soil, make it healthy, and enable the plants that we use to feed ourselves to thrive. And guess what? As long as I’ve been digging around in the soil, I have never noticed armies of nematodes doing battle with the earthworms, territorial disputes between centipedes and beetles, or little puffs of soil bombs coming up from the soil. The nightcrawlers do not feel they should “own” more territory or have more status because they are “management”, nor do they withhold their work for the common good to gain politcal power, and the bacterias do not try to overrun the earthworms because they outnumber them. They also do not withhold the bounty that they have helped to create from those who are impoverished.

 My human self, looking out at all that from my empire of tractors, paper, pens, and electronics feels humbled. Because my higher-life-form self cannot do what they do, and without them, could not live, just like I could not live without other humans.