Turning Dirt To Food: Surprise Kale harvest

Sunday, Deb and I finished building and filling two 4' x 8' raised beds for one of her coworkers. The beds took four tractor buckets worth of compost/topsoil mixture to fill. She (the coworker) has already planted spinach and beans, and has several seedlings about to settle into their new cozy home.

Later this week, I learned that Kale is not a perennial, it is a biennial. I found out because our four overwintered Russian Red(aka Ragged Jack) Kale plants have started producing florets. When the florets turn to flowers and go to seed, the plants are useless as edibles; the taste becomes wild and bitter. A quick decision Tuesday yielded 2 pounds of kale greens in the fridge. We cut the kale just above the lowest leaves, so that they can continue flowering and we can harvest the seeds for our fall crop.

The plastic is off each of the cold frame tunnels. The smaller one now sports a lightweight material row cover, to keep the bugs looking from the outside. The wider tunnel doesn't have any cover whatsoever now. So far, a few days later, we haven't noticed any bug damage yet.

We have too much lettuce! I may have to make some lettuce smoothies to help us consume all of it. Today I picked 1.75 lbs of lettuce and you can't even tell. Also harvested today was 1/2 pound spinach, 1 3/4 pound lettuce, 1/8 pound mache, and 1/2 pound miners lettuce. We've got dozens of strawberries growing. Most are as big as a pencil eraser, but the largest is up to 1" and growing. Since the strawberries are still in the greenhouse, the birds and bugs won't get them.

The mostly-self watering bucket system is finished. The Starbucks cups have holes which (if it works) let water soak into the soil inside the cup, which wicks it up to the rest of the dirt and the plant's root system.

We have a new worm composter! After purchasing a manufactured worm farm in February, I realize just how simple the structure is. With the help of Deb, we created another one from two five gallon buckets. When the working tray gets full, we will purchase another bucket, and then another one. The store-bought worm farms come with three working trays already. The worm tea nozzle was easy, we used a threaded hose nozzle faucet. Total cost with one tray, not including worms is $12.00. I can add two more trays for $3 each. To buy a 3 tray worm farm is $79.99.