Summer look

Our urban farm is full swing! What a big contrast when comparing with the barren winter look.

Leek -- 2nd planting

New spaces are available for more planting after we took down all the shelling pea and snow pea. So we decide to go for some winter crops: purple broccoli (transplanted, started seedlings indoor) and leek (seedlings brought from the local nursery). Pic shows the leeks that I just transplanted today. Some of the leeks that were planted in this late spring are ready to eat. We just had our first 2008 leek yesterday.

The tomato plants are getting a bit bushy now. Among the four roma tomato plants, the one closest to the house is the biggest. A lot of flowers but not many fruits...but they are coming!




Another excitement is to see the Red striped roman. The physical look of the plant is very unhealthy. The branches are soft with no strength. Water nor fertilizer helps to improve the look, and yet the plant keeps growing. We figure that maybe that's the way the plants look. I only saw two tomatoes growing (have to look really hard to find them as they are "hidden" in the middle of the plant), but that's enough to raise my heartbeat.

Just a quick report on the pole bean...the report: see pic ;)

Hop Bracteoles

I should have been posting more often about the hops. Maybe when they reached the railing, twelve feet, or when the reached the arbor, thirty feet ... instead, they waited until today.

They've started to actually create bracteoles. These are the little cone like flowers that are actually used in beer. They will mature for about another month before we harvest them.

Dinner: Beet cucumber feta salad

So today we went to the Pride Parade. It was two o'clock before it was done and we were hungry, so we ate bar food ... it was very bad. I have nothing against bar food, but nowhere good was open, the place we ended up sucked badly. We felt so gross there was no way we were going to cook a nice full dinner.

Yesterday however, we roasted a nice pork rack over charcoal, and as is our habit, we roasted some roots at the same time. Both beets and potatos. The beets were ours, but the potatos were from the farmers market. So for dinner today we cut up the beets, half of one our cucumbers, one of our carrots and some chives. The dressing was a bog standard vinaigrette made from the beet juice, evoo, cider vinegar and white wine vinegar. To finish it, some local "Feta" cheese. Quoted since it's made from cows milk. I like it better than real feta actually. We've done this before with just the beets and cheese, and it's delicious. In the future I won't add carrot, it didn't suit the flavours or textures.