As you may have read in earlier posts, we use a significant amount of borrowed land for our urban farm operation. Today, I'll be updating you on progress at our closest plot, which is about 1km from our home. It's nice that this one came with some boulevard space of its own because that almost doubles the productive size of this space. In total, we have 23 fifty square foot beds in production here.
Starting from the back right, you can see 3 of 4 garlic beds still standing, fall cabbage under white insect netting, 4 beds of strawberries, 1 bed of spring cabbage under insect netting, and 4 beds of lettuce mix and beets that recently replaced 4 beds of harvested snap peas. The wide bushy strip along the boulevard is a large potato planting and on the outside of that are some bush beans.
I am probably most excited about the strawberries here. They are a June bearing variety that should give us another great crop to look forward to early in the season. They have been costly to set up though, since the plants need a full year in these beds without bearing in order to be productive in 2019. I have been pruning off the few flowers that there have been in order to help the plants get better established and put more energy into their runners. I am also pinning the best looking runners into the extra holes in the landscape fabric to increase our plant density for next year. Farming in general is an exercise in delayed gratification, but the challenge of pruning off strawberry flowers has really tested me! Thankfully, a few slipped by.
The other action at this plot this week was the garlic harvest. This subject fits well with the theme of delayed gratification because this garlic was planted last October. I have been keeping an eye on these beds over the last few weeks and the timing was finally just right so they all came out this week. Once they are out of the ground, I bring them home to string them together and hang them up to cure. It's nice to have some fresh garlic heads around again as our remaining supply from last year is quickly dwindling.
