See you Saturday...

at the Mankato Farmer's Market from 8-12, or at the field from 11-4. I will have my gorgeous 'armload' and 'handful' bouquets, lots to chose from and all.......bodacious! =)
No green beans tomorrow, sold them all week long at the field! In addition to the plants we will have broccoli, lettuce, fresh basil & beets. YUM.

Dayliles galore!

The daylilies are already blooming like crazy, you just gotta see 'em! I dug all of these lovelies today. Most in 1-2 gallon pots, BIG plants. A 2 gallon plants is $16 for a lifetime of happiness.
Above is Cranberry Cove.

Sunday Gloves is a gorgeous white, goes with any garden scheme.

Imperial Lemon. This plant is nearly shoulder high on me. Alright, I'm no giant but I am 5'3!

The flowers are 7" across, so lemony and tasty. Did I tell you the flowers are totally edible, sweet, crunchy and beautiful in a salad.

French Tudor, soft lavender with a more rounded petal.

Alabama Jubliee. This photo does not show the vibrant color that they have in person, so just come out and see for yourself!

Raspberries..........yum.

Raspberry jam, raspberry daquiries, raspberry tarts, raspberry margaritas, raspberries in sugar on ice cream, raspberry wine. The possibilities are endless. If you only want to try one fruit to grow this is by far the easiest. Yes, less work than strawberries. Raspberry plants will last around 20 years. About 2-3 plants per person will give you lots for fresh eating and some for freezing. Want more? Plant more! These beauties above are the raspberries plants we grow and sell, yes....they can be yours. The above photo was from my Zumbrota farm. The plant was bareroot in the spring, no bigger than a pencil, and you can see the rewards later that SAME year. The 2 varieties we have are 'Ruby' and 'Autumn Bliss.' These are 'fall bearing' raspberries. Don't let the 'fall' fool you, I picked a handful of these beauties this afternoon. As soon as there is enough to sell, I'll post it here. These are the differences between 'summer fruiting' and 'fall bearing':
Summer fruiting: bear fruit on a cane that is 2 years old, then that cane is done. So every yr. you need to figure out which canes are 1 and which are 2. So only 1/2 of your canes bear fruit any given year. Start producing heavy in mid summer.
Fall bearing: Prune the entire plant back to the ground every fall or early spring, and it regrows an entirely new plant every year, bearing fruit on all the new canes. Heavy fruiting starts later than summer ones, but total poundage is the same. They bear until hard frost. PLUS, by pruning and removing all the canes every fall, this type is less prone to disease as you are removing all of the foliage from the garden every year.

When picking raspberries, first check out the color, should be dark red and they should pull of the plant easily. If you have to tug on them at all, they are not ready.
Raspberries do not like mulch next to the canes. You can mulch within 1 foot w/straw. The biggest problem I have is with the picnic beetle. Scroll down to older posts to see my invention the 'scrap trap' to capture them! I used to grow 1/2 acre of raspberries, about 3,000 plants!
(they were right next to my 2 acres of strawberries) I can't do anything in a reasonable matter. There...I've said it.

Perennials from Seed

Above is lavender 'Vicenza Blue.' I started this from seed last season at home, planted plugs in the field, and dug beautiful 1 gallon plants this spring. Perennials from seed are much more difficult to start from seed than annuals. For an entire pack of 100 seeds, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 germinate and become viable plants. They take up a lot of floor space, as they grow on twice as long in the greenhouse then annuals. Lavenders are not always fully hardy here in zone 4, but these wintered over at about 95% success with a little straw mulch. They are blooming right now, soooooo fragrant. These marginally hardy plants are best for your garden when they are grown local, or do you think the ones from California will survive better in Minnesota? Simple choice.

Above is Dianthus Bouquet Mix. It is also a 'from seed to plant' perennial now in bloom at Earthworks Gardens. The down side of perennial dianthus: they are a short lived , about 3-6 years. Dividing them will helps to prolong life. Even so, at $8 a gallon, they are a bargain compared to annuals! I also have another variety that are like mini carnations and very fragrant. There are many kinds of Dianthus often called 'pinks.' Hmmmm, they are not all pink though? The common name 'pinks' actually comes from the cut edge appearance of the flower that looks like it was cut w/a 'pinking shears.' There are also bi-ennial pinks. Bi-ennial anything has this lifespan:

Year 1- it grows foliage

Year 2 - flowers & dies, often re-seeding itself

That's it folks! That is what it is supposed to do. So when 'that beautiful Foxglove' just disappeared, it was just doing it's thing!

I OFTEN find folks get confused over the terms, annual, perennial & biennial.

I usually just try to explain the 2 simplest: perennial-think permanant, perennial permanent.

annual: think , hmmm how often do you have your 'annual?' Yep, that's right, every year, you plant them every year. Well, this is all my playtime for the day, gotta get to the field, stop out and see me, I bet I'll have green beans today!

First Tomatoes of the Season!!!!!

Okay...so I never said you make a BLT with them! So I picked these yesterday, and finally took a photo of them, offered Frank one of the jems, and he ate both. Nice. =(
Our new little hoop, (one week old) in the field suffered damage in last nights storm. Twisted and crippled, hope we can save it. 1-800-State-Farm!