We have two special pop-ups at the Heights Mercantile Farmers Market this month on Sunday, December 10th and Sunday, December 24th! The Heights Mercantile Farmers Market is located at 714 Yale Street in Houston on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of every month from 9am-1pm. Farmer Anna will be there with a delicious selection of our  farm-fresh produce including the gorgeous purple mustard greens below.  In addition to our produce, you’ll be able to peruse a curated selection of local vendors while enjoying live music. We hope to see you there!

Our last Farm Tour of the year is coming up on Saturday, December 16th at 10:30am. We’ll be discussing the importance of planting cover crops and highlighting our cool season crop diversity. These tours are a great way to see what it takes to farm year-round in our climate while sampling delicious seasonal veggies. Our tours are open to the public and free of charge. We hope to see you there!

Our onion starts arrived last week and we are really excited to get them in the ground! An onion start (above) is a young bare-root onion plant that has been grown from seed. Planting starts over seeds frees up both time and energy and allows us to get a head start on their lengthy growing season. We’ll be planting short day varieties that will grow well during the decreased daylight hours and cooler temperatures of winter. Our onions will spend a long time in the ground developing their bulbs until we begin to harvest them as spring onions in March/April and mature onions in April/May.

In Season at the Farm Stand: Broccoli, Cauliflower, Collard Greens, Napa Cabbage, Mustard Greens, Curly Kale, Dino Kale, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Tokyo Bekana, Bok Choy, Hakurei Turnips, Green Beans, and Dill

Coming Soon: Radishes and Lettuce Heads

The greenhouse is starting to fill up with summer crops! Even though we just started harvesting our first round of summer squashes, we’re already planting seeds for the next one. This is called succession planting and it helps to lengthen our harvest window and maintain more of a steady supply of produce throughout the season. In addition to summer squashes, we’ve also been starting seeds for hot peppers, melons, and okra (pictured below). Before you know it, it will be time to plant these crops in the field!

Our onion crop sized up nicely in the field so now it’s time to harvest and cure them. Curing involves spreading the onions out in a single layer with plenty of air circulation so that their papery skins dry and tighten around the bulbs. We’re doing this on the tables in our greenhouse. After the curing process, the onions become a storage crop and can last up to a few months if kept in a cool, dry spot. This was a bountiful harvest so make sure to stock up on onions next time you’re at the farm stand! They make the perfect addition to so many recipes and can even be cooked down into a savory and flavorful onion jam. 

We know you enjoyed our baby carrots so we’re happy to share that we will have bunches of full sized carrots at the farm stand this weekend! Did you know that you can eat both the root and the leafy green portion of carrots? Once you bring your carrots home, make sure to separate the greens from the carrots. The greens can be used like an herb and they make an especially delicious pesto. Farmer Anna recommends roasting your carrots, then pairing them with a carrot top pesto for a simple and tasty springtime side dish.

In Season at the Farm Stand: Carrots, Zucchini, Zephyr Summer Squash, Beets (red, golden, & Chioggia), Fennel, Spring Onions, Cabbage, Collards, Kohlrabi, Celery, Kale, Turnips, and Icicle Radishes.

It’s already time to pot-up our tomatoes! “Potting-up” is a process that involves removing the seedlings from their trays and replanting them in larger four-inch pots. This allows more space for their roots to develop and prevents them from getting root-bound. Our goal is to plant our high tunnel tomatoes in mid-February and our field tomatoes in early March. If you want to add tomatoes to your garden this spring, we’ll have plenty of extra transplants for sale at the farm stand in March!

Salad mix is making its way back into season this week! This is one of the many quicker-growing crops we seeded in our high tunnel right after the freeze. It took just about a month to reach harvesting size! Our salad mix is nice and tender and perfect for whipping up a winter salad. Farmer Alex loves dressing it with a homemade maple dijon vinaigrette. You can pick up some salad mix at the farm stand this weekend.

Remember the onion starts that we planted at the end of November? It’s already time to thin them out! Thinning out our onions allows more space for the remaining bulbs to develop and grow. The great thing about this process is that we can eat the immature onions that we remove! As you can see in the photo below, these young onions look similar to a leek but have a mellow flavor like a scallion. Farmer Alex recommends thinly slicing and sprinkling them over a bowl of ramen or using them to make onion confit.

In Season at the Farm Stand: Sugar Snap Peas, Rainbow Carrots, Arugula, Scallions, Lettuce, Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, and Cilantro.

We’re offering a special pre-order option for our farm-fresh produce this Thanksgiving! We’ll gather the items you want and have them ready for you next Tuesday, November 22nd. This is a great way to save some time shopping and incorporate locally grown veggies into your holiday meal! You can choose from any of the items in our “in season” list at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to place an order, email us at JordanRanch@Agmenity.com with a list of what you’d like along with the quantities. Make sure to put “Thanksgiving Pre-Order” in the subject line and send it to us no later than Tuesday morning.

Broccoli and cauliflower just made their way back into season! This is the first of many successions of broccoli and cauliflower that will be harvested throughout the fall and winter months. Since both of these are typically a “single-cut” crop, we space out plantings of them in order to ensure a fairly steady supply. How do you like to eat these delicious members of the brassica family? Farmer Alex loves to roast broccoli and enjoy it with pasta. She recommends combining pasta with ricotta, lemon, herbs, and roasted broccoli for a simple and delicious meal.

Our onions starts just arrived and we can’t wait to plant them! An onion start (pictured below) is a small, bare-root onion plant that has already been started from seed. We’ll be planting a mix of yellow, white, and red onions in our prepared beds for a spring harvest. Since we’ll have some starts left over, we’ll be offering small bundles of them at the farm stand for $3 each beginning this weekend. Onions are a great addition to your home garden because they’re fairly easy to grow. And, we’re more than happy to offer you some planting tips when you stop by to pick up your starts from the farm stand!

In Season at the Farm Stand: Beets, Salad Radishes, Watermelon Radishes, Broccoli, Cauliflower (limited), Dragon’s Tongue Beans (limited), Scallions, Roselle, Bok Choy, Kale, Cabbage, Napa Cabbage, Collard Greens, Salad Mix, Arugula, Sweet Peppers, Eggplant, Cilantro, and Dill.

This week we find ourselves preparing for the next bout of freezing temperatures. This time, we’ll have what is referred to as a “hard freeze” as temperatures will dip below 28 degrees for an extended period of time. In order to prepare, we’ve been doing a lot of bulk harvesting, covering what we can in the field, and making sure our greenhouse and high tunnel are secure and warm. We’ve also delayed a lot of spring planting, namely our high tunnel tomatoes, until after the freeze passes.

The good thing about bulk harvesting before the freeze is that we ended up with a whopping 200 pounds of beautiful cabbage! We highly recommend stocking up at the self-serve farm stand because cabbage is a great storage vegetable. Once you bring your cabbage home, don’t remove any of the outer leaves. You can store it as-is in the crisper drawer of your fridge for at least 3-4 weeks. Or, you can try your hand at making a big batch of sauerkraut or kimchi.

We’re really excited about alliums at the moment! Allium is a genus of flowering plants that includes onions, scallions, garlic, shallots, and leeks. In addition to the leeks we planted a couple of weeks ago, we’re also growing bulb onions. And, we have scallions germinating in the greenhouse! You can see the sprouts in the photo below. In order to spread out our allium enjoyment, we plan on harvesting some of our bulb onions young as “spring onions”. Spring onions have a delicate flavor that works really well with other spring produce like peas and fennel.

In Season: Cabbage, Beets, Spinach, Rainbow Chard, Kale, Kale Hearts, Little Gem Lettuce, and Broccoli

April 21st, 2021

Our cucumbers were trellised this week to give them space to sprawl vertically while they produce fruit. Like our snap peas, cucumbers produce specialized leaves called tendrils that can wrap around solid objects (like our trellis) to provide support for the plant as it grows. The trellising for the summer doesn’t stop there as we’ll eventually be adding support for our climbing beans, peppers, and eggplant. Since the farm is prone to strong winds, this will help all of our vining and upright crops have a better support system. And in the case of our vining and climbing crops, it will make it much easier to harvest!

The green beans are just about ready for the first harvest. Though we’re starting to see the first beans of harvesting size this week, we’ll most likely be making our first official harvest next week as more beans mature. This first succession of green beans is a variety called “Jade”. It is a classic green bean with long, slender pods that are tender and sweet. We plan on having multiple successions of beans throughout the spring and summer so once our green beans are done for the season we’ll have Bai Bu Lao pole beans ready for harvest followed by Chinese noodle beans.

New to the harvesting lineup this week is our lettuce mix and bulb onions. Our lettuce mix, made up of a few different leaf and head lettuces, will be available in bags making it salad-ready. As for our onions, they are a yellow onion variety called “Madalyn”. These onions are relatively mild and sweet and they make the perfect base for a multitude of recipes. Or, if you want to enjoy them on their own, you can make a batch of French onion soup or caramelize them for burgers, tacos, or salads.

If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, check out Better Luck Tomorrow and Squable.