Hilling Potatoes and Harvesting Baby Greens
April 7th, 2021
Our potatoes have put on a lot of above-ground growth and some are even beginning to flower which means it’s time to hill them up. Once the vegetation of the potatoes gets to about 6-8 inches above the soil surface, we “hill” or build up soil around the vegetation so that only the top leaves are left sticking out. Though this might seem odd, this process encourages the potato tubers to grow deep and wide and even allows more space for new potatoes to grow on top of more mature potatoes. The varieties we have growing are Red Norland which has a smooth red skin and white flesh, and Adirondack Red which has red skin and red flesh.
Remember all of the crops we interplanted with our tomatoes in order to maximize our growing space? Some of those crops are already reaching harvesting maturity! We’ll be harvesting the baby kale and baby mustard greens from our tomato row for the farm stand this weekend. Baby kale and mustards are harvested when in the young “baby” phase which means they are often more tender and suitable for enjoying raw than their mature counterparts. They can be enjoyed in salads, sandwiches, tacos, or a batch of pesto.
The first succession of summer squashes we planted are just beginning to set fruit. Summer squashes produce both male and female flowers. Pollen from the male flowers must pollinate the female flowers in order to yield a fruit. This process is helped along by pollinators like bees and wasps. You can easily tell male from female flowers because the females always have a tiny version of the squash attached to the base of their stem (like you see in this photo of a patty pan squash). We’re hoping to make the first summer squash harvest in the next couple of weeks!
If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, we delivered spring onions, rainbow chard, green garlic, snap peas, spinach, and arugula to Ostia. We also delivered Hinona Kabu turnips, green garlic, and snap peas to UB Preserv.
