It feels like spring on the farm as we plant more and more into the field, but to the eye it looks like we're growing a field of sheets! Check it our when you come by, we use this 'row cover' to protect our crops from the prolific cold nights this time of year. It gives them a little extra protection from the cold and minimizes the damage to these tender transplants and newly emerging seeds. We're hoping that tonight is our last hard frost of the spring, but you never know around here! A hard frost is below 28 degrees, which is enough to kill or badly injure many plants, especially little tender ones. Tonight is forecasted to be 27 degrees on the farm, so we'll be tucking everyone in tight. Then it's looking a bit warmer which is good because we're planting almost 5000 onions on Wednesday!
This week we're very excited to offer you green garlic. Spring green garlic is essentially a young garlic plant, planted from a clove last fall in this case. Some of our garlic seed (aka cloves) are hard to separate and more than one garlic plant emerges from what we thought was one 'seed' but is in fact 2 (or 3 or 4). We carefully thing out these extra plants, bunch them, and thus our bulb garlic will have plenty of space to mature this summer. Green garlic is delicious, having a slightly more mild flavor than bulb garlic, and looking more like a green onion. You can sauté up the white (or red in this case, this is a red garlic variety) parts for a spring delicacy. It's great cooked with mushrooms, or check out this simple pasta that even uses the leaves!
We've also got stir fry greens available for boxes this week. These are a mix young mustard greens and asian greens and because they're young they're so easy to cook, just sauté them for a couple minutes and enjoy. They're especially great when eaten with red meat, or something hearty like a bowl of polenta-- just put an egg on top and done!
Happy cooking,
Caleb, Ashley and the Sungrounded Crew
