As Salad as a Rock

To start this week off, we finally finished putting up trellis' for the luffa, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes! The trellis will provide much needed support to these plants as they continue to grow and begin producing fruit. I think it ended up looking pretty darn good. And as my title states, I think they are salad as a rock. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed if there is a wind storm that they do not fall over. See some pictures below of our hard work.

Trellis

More Trellis

(Photo from High Mowing Seeds)

We also continued the eternal fight with the weeds for garden space and continued to weed more of the farm. After we freshly weeded a couple of areas of the farm, we planted some watermelon radish seeds. While I do know what radishes are, I have never seen a watermelon radish before so I have taken it upon myself to do a bit of research into the topic. 
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Watermelon radish is definitely good looking! Not only are watermelon radish pretty to look at, they also provide you with a good dose of Vitamin C and can be eaten raw or cooked. Try putting them in salads, sandwiches, stir fires, pickling them, add them to soups or stews, or get creative and make a new dish with them! I am excited to pull these guys out of the ground.

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One of the other interns is working on making hibiscus tea. I did a bit of research on Renee's Garden and Tyrant Farms to learn about making hibiscus tea. To make the tea, we are actually harvesting a part of the plant called the calyx. The calyx is collective name for the sepals of a flower. To harvest this part of the plant, you first want the hibiscus plant to flower. The flower will die in a couple of days and then the calyx will enlarge. The calyx is ready to harvest after the seedpod forms. Today she harvested the hibiscus and I was able to help her take the leaves off of the flower. Next, the leaves will be dehydrated and then they can be used to make some delicious hibiscus tea!

On Friday, we gave the bean beds a whole new look! I am giving y'all a bit of a before and after, because I think they look mighty fine. We had planted the bean plants about two weeks ago and all the plant babies have started to grow. However, our weeding we did prior to planting the seeds only worked for so long. One of the raised beds was covered in weeds, so we pulled out all the weeds we could, added a bit of fertilizer and then added some mulch on top to hopefully keep the next round of weeds at bay. 

Before

After

Elliot Fitzgerald

Not only does the farm have plants, it also has animals!  We have our resident farm cat, Nepeta, and this week one of the interns brought her puppy out to the farm. A highlight of my week is that Nepeta finally let me pet her! I also have photo evidence of this miracle! It only took me three weeks (and her forgiving me for stepping on her, oops) for her to trust me enough to let me pet her. It has been a great week at the Farm!

Nepeta lookin' very majestic

Proof that it actually did happen!