Early Summer Update

You all seem to like when I give some behind-the-scenes updates, so I’ll try to do a few per year rather than just one.

We’re finally in a longer-term living situation for now where I can at least be close to one of my three garden plots (more on the third below!) and at the end of April we had a new baby as many of you know.

With those things behind us for now, I can breathe a bit and focus on work and the gardens.

Here’s a look at the stuff we’re juggling this season:

Plant Sale

This spring we had a pretty successful plant sale!

We sold mostly elderberry and nankang cherry in addition to some smaller odd plants here and there.

We still have a few more deliveries to make and some smaller herbs and flowers to sell but we’re pretty happy with this year’s results.

Next year I want to have more variety available and to see how feasible it would be to start a nursery. Licenses aren’t terribly expensive; I would just want a small lot next to a semi-busy road and maybe a small hoop house or something to use for propagation.

The nursery scene around here is about 99% landscaping and traditional flowers with some places having some basic edible perennials (apples, pears, cherries, peaches, raspberries etc) but all of them are sourced from the same place the big box stores purchase their stock from and there is very little variety and no focus on edible landscaping.

That said, I think there’s a real market in my area for selling perennial food plants, I just need to figure out a few things first.

Produce Available

This year we’ll have much of the same produce available as last year (herbs, foraged goods, greens, and some culinary staples). Here is our price list:

- Mullein $2/oz

- Chamomile $4/oz

- Wild Rose (Flower) $4/oz

- Elderberry $6/lb

- Elderflower $3/oz

- Thyme $2/oz

- Basil $3/bunch

- Mallow $2/oz

- Purslane $2/oz

- Spearmint $2/bunch

- Calendula $2/oz

- Clover (Flower) $2/oz

- Tomatoes $4/lb

- Microgreens $2/oz

- Garlic $3/bulb

- Chard $3/bunch

- Walking Onion (Basically shallots) $1/bulb

- Radishes $2/bunch of 9

The reason we don’t have more items like squash, eggplant, beans, peppers, or other common annuals is because we simply don’t live close enough to put in the effort of reliably producing those items right now. If we could be there more often, we would, but young family life is logistically tricky and even harder when you don’t make much of a living (not that we’re complaining!)

In the future if we ever lived somewhere that we could have a decent sized plot right near the house we’d definitely try to offer a lot more, but as it is right now we can only afford to get out to the garden about once per week if that so low-effort crops will have to do for now.

Project updates:

Watermelon landrace

I have officially planted my watermelon landrace! I’m very excited for this project. While it may not be very groundbreaking, the goal is simply to breed a watermelon that is regionally adapted to my area.

I’m looking for these main qualities:

• Fast production for a short season

• Wants to grow (low maintenance)

• Tastes good

I have chosen the following varieties to get as much genetic variation as possible while also increasing the chances of getting the traits I want:

'Katanya'

'Lemondrop'

'Early Girl'

'Blacktail Mountain'

'Sugar Baby Bush’

'Silver Yamato'

'Kaho'

'Art Combe's Ancient'

'Janosik'

'Leelanau Sweetglo’

Going to Seed Watermelon Grex

Some of these are yellow, some are orange, white, red, or pink, all of them are fairly short season (no more than about 90 days, most are under 80) and they all have pretty varied genetic backgrounds.

The project is pretty simple: whichever varieties survive with little effort and taste good; I keep the seeds. Each year as they grow, they’re crossing with each other and building onto the previous generation’s genetics. By about year 3 we should see some really interesting results.

Tomato Trials

This year I’m also trialing a few different tomato varieties. I’m mainly just looking for varieties that taste pretty good and want to grow like weeds.

Cherry tomatoes of any kind pretty much always want to grow on their own, but larger tomatoes (which our customers enjoy) typically need to be babied along a bit.

So anyway, the varieties we’re trialing are:

Buratino - A Russian heirloom

Gold Medal - A larger multipurpose tomato

So we’ll see how they perform!

Citrus Seedlings

Sad news: none of my citrus seedlings survived the winter. They took pretty heavy frost damage and very weakly started to grow a little in the early spring but very quickly died completely.

I was definitely being a little too ambitious with my neglect. That technique works in theory, but with something so far out of its element like citrus I think I should’ve babied them a little bit at least until they had formed some bark for protection if not until they flowered and fruited for me.

Then as I get each successive generation, I can treat each one a little more harshly until it survives to the level I want.

Lesson learned. I’ll order more seeds and try again.

Thankfully I’m not even 30 so I have plenty of years in my life to work on it!

Stone fruit seedlings

Last year as we ate various stone fruit (nectarines, cherries, and pluerries in particular) and I planted all of the seeds.

I’m not actively breeding these for any specific traits; I’m just looking forward to seeing what comes from them. So far we’ve had slow germination but since I got these for free and I’m not necessarily looking for any specific results, I’m ok with neglecting them completely.

I am also growing beach plums from seed via Ken Asmus of Oikos Tree Crops. I have about 10 popping out of their pot and looking healthy, many of the others I suspect have double dormancy and will sprout next spring. I’m pretty excited for these.

*For all of you who ordered beach plums from me, this fall is when I’ll deliver the little seedlings since they’re very small still

New Plot

And finally, I have added a new garden plot to our collection!

This one is at my church where I’ve gotten permission to “go wild” with the plot and plant whatever I see fit. This is where I’m hosting my landrace.

I’ve already planted some fruiting shrubs and cane fruit as well as some tomatoes, watermelon, walking onion, and some herbs.

The nice thing about this plot is everything is going to people at my church, it’s not for sale so there’s very little pressure and one of our pastors and his family now lives in the house next to the church so when I’m unable to tend things, someone else will be able to.

This will help me with my watermelon too because if I end up getting a lot of plants producing a good amount of fruit, I can hand them out and have people save seeds for me from ones that they like.

The other two plots are a friend’s parent’s house where most of our plants are (also the garden that is quickly getting weedy since we visit it the least) and the other is where we’re living and is a family member’s garden. That one I mainly use for storing plants I want to take cuttings of in the future and for some food.

Thanks for your continued support, I appreciate everyone who reads this newsletter and everyone who buys our plants and produce no matter how small scale we are! Every little bit helps.

What plants are you most interested in us carrying next year or by fall of this year? Reply to this email or comment on the article to let me know!