The Eventful Harvest

The Weekly Big Farma Drama

This week, we had our first bountiful harvest! We harvested zucchini, summer squash, green and red basil, zinnias, marigolds, scallions, and pak choy. Everything was so fresh and delicious, we enjoyed cooking with this organic produce. Here is Eva happily showing some of our recent harvest. We are looking forward to the next couple of weeks, as the cucumbers grow more and our incubator farm comes to life. We continued to transplant some lettuce and spinach into our bare bed, and our watermelons are looking great!

Here is some of our basil before we harvested some of the leaves. It may be hard to tell, but those green leaves on the basil used to be red! When we first transplanted this red basil plant, almost all of its leaves were completely red. Due to stress or simply new growth, we now have some green leaves with little red spots on our red basil plant. Either way, the basil is thriving, and made for a delicious homemade pesto!

Last Friday, we used the class period to really spruce up our farm by laying down hay for weed control, as well as trellising the cucumbers, corn, peppers, and eggplants. We used bamboo sticks and drilled them into the soil, and then tied twine around them. Our cucumbers are very happy about this, as they were already ready to climb and were starting to grow on our corn. Our cucumbers are now very supported and can continue reaching for the sky. 

This week we got to harvest our first zucchini! Zucchini, unlike cucumber, likes to spread out and grow, as you can see in the bottom of this picture. Zucchini is a warm-weather plant, so it has been loving the Florida weather recently. With all of the rain, sun, and weed suppression from the plastic mulch, the zucchinis have the perfect place to grow. There are even more smaller zucchinis growing on the plants that will hopefully be ready to harvest within the next few weeks, while the weather is still warm!

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We learned a new trellising technique this week that involves wrapping twine around either side of our crops in order to keep them upright. This will help our corn plants continue to grow tall, while they provide support for our cucumbers to grow. Usually, corn would be planted alongside squash and beans, otherwise known as the three sisters. However, our cucumber and corn combo are happy to be close to one another, as we have already seen some corn ears beginning to form!

Our arugula has sprouted! We will be keeping these arugula young and tender; they will serve as part of our salad greens. These were directly seeded about two weeks ago, and in another week, they will be ready to harvest! To harvest, we can either thin them out or just chop off the entire top. We are leaning towards thinning them out because it will make them grow faster! Arugula has so many health benefits, such as immune support and providing antioxidants for the well-being of the entire body. We are so excited for our arugula!