Farmers, It's Cold Outside!

Here are Naomi, Eva, and Stanley holding an abundance of veggies from their harvest. We come outside after every class to check up on our vegetables. We are still harvesting so much, especially our leafy greens such as arugula, lettuce, and kale. We are also still getting squash and cucumbers. Our flowers have been doing amazingly, attracting a variety of butterflies and bees. We just got news that next week there will be a frost, so we are harvesting as much as we can before it comes! We will be covering our watermelons with frost cover, as well as our tomatoes. We will be covering our other crops with hay.

Here is Stanley holding a big armful of hay; we put lots of hay all over our crops to prepare for the upcoming frost next week! We hope that the hay will help conserve warmth around the crops. We covered our herbs, peppers, and eggplants with the hay. For our watermelons, we also laid down paper mulch beneath them to prevent rotting, pests, and disease from getting to them. We are buckling up for the freezing temperatures and hoping for the best!

IN MEMORIAM: Unfortunately, in the freeze, we lost our zucchini, zinnias, and marigolds. We prioritized our watermelons and tomatoes that were less cold-tolerance and lost some of our other warm-season crops. Even though we lost many crops, we are still going strong with our cold-season plants such as broccoli, lettuce, kale, and collards. Our smaller tomato varieties, chamomile, lemongrass, and pepper plants did well in the cold due to our hay coverage over the beds.

                                        

Here is our first watermelon and strawberry harvest. As the cold is rolling in, our fruits and vegetables are slowing down, but our watermelons are still growing!!! The watermelon needed a little longer; we weren't sure if it was ready when harvesting, but it was still fairly sweet. The strawberry was delicious, and we picked it just in time. We are hoping that we are able to get some more before the end of the semester.

Naomi is shocked by the quality of the harvest of the watermelon and strawberry. As we are sad that we lost most of our plants to the winter frost, our winter plants are starting to come out and grow, and we are hoping they grow quick enough for us to possibly be able to harvest some of the vegetables. 

Now that’s an eggplant harvest! These beauties look like they came straight out of a magazine. Huge shoutout to the team for all the watering, weeding, sweating, and praying over these plants. Nothing beats seeing that deep purple shine after weeks of hard work! Now, what should we make with the eggplants? 

Luckily our smaller tomatoes survived  the cold! In this video we see a handful of tomatoes ripening! Tomatoes ripen fairly quick and even if they are harvested while green, will continue to ripen if left out. We have had an abundance of small tomatoes this term and even got to share some with attendees of our fall festival!