Not yet quite spring, great vegetable varieties deserve great names, Lake Washington Technical College, priorities and deadlines

The after a moderately dry and calm week, the weather has turned back to cold, windy, and wet. Monday I walked all around the fields on the farm. Many of the fields were reasonably well drained. I was considering starting to spread compost on the fields, but I knew the forecast was for a strong rain Tuesday, followed by a week of showers. For once the forecast was accurate and the weather has remained wet & windy. Even so, barring a long wet spring, I’m optimistic that we should get a good start on the spring fieldwork. The plants on and off the farm are responding to the coming of spring. I noticed that our lawn is in need of mowing. Many of the ornamental flowering trees around town have been coming into bloom in the last few days. We do expect a few setbacks like the snow/hail storm we had Friday. We just hope to avoid any more nights where the temperatures reach the low 20’s.

The raspberries continue to leaf out. If you read my entries of the last couple of weeks you will remember a hard freeze weather forecast that had me concerned about the raspberry buds. When I checked a week later it looked to me that the raspberries had come through the freeze with no impact. An Extension raspberry expert I was chatting with at the Agriculture Commission meeting Thursday cautioned me that I needed to examine the growing tips for damage, not just the tiny leaves.

The raspberries continue to leaf out. I’m not seeing tip damage due to freezing.

Friday I walked the farm again. The fields are wet but draining. The raspberries continue to leaf out, although there are still plenty of fat buds that haven’t opened. The blueberry buds are swelling. I didn’t find any opening buds. The apples have not yet noticeably changed. The garlic and shallots appear fine, with not much change.

Seed shipments arrived this week from FEDCO and New England Seed. While I don’t choose varieties based on the names, a good name is always a plus. This week I received seed for Winter Luxury Pie pumpkins, Atomic Red carrots, Pingtung Long eggplants, and Rattlesnake pole beans, all new to us this year. The Winter Luxury Pie has been given a number of very high recommendations, both as an outstanding cooking pumpkin and for its beautiful russeted skin. Winter Luxury Pie was introduced in 1893. Our strain originated in Portland, OR in 1917. I wanted to try Winter Luxury Pie last year, but couldn’t get the seed, so I’m excited to see if it meets my expectations. Atomic Red carrot is part of the movement to bring back carrot colors from the days before the development of the ubiquitous orange carrot. We are also growing a purple and a yellow carrot this year. Although not as refined as their orange cousins, these new varieties are sweet and flavorful, lacking the harshness of the ancestral carrots. We chose Pingtung Long to replace last year’s purple Asian eggplant, Little Fingers. This was due to a comment by one of our Asian customers that the variety tasted fine, but had a tough skin as compared with her ideal eggplant. She did continue to buy eggplant through the season, but I’m hoping that the Taiwanese variety Pingtung Long meets her expectations this year. Rattlesnake is another vegetable that is purported to combine outstanding flavor with beauty. I’m hoping this old-time favorite variety of green bean with streaks of purple will grow and produce well at our farm and become a new favorite for us.

I’m looking for a part-time greenhouse manager to start and care for all our transplants. I called Don Marshall at the Horticulture program at Lake Washington Technical College (LWTC) in Kirkland, not so far from the farm. Rob took his welding refresher course at LWTC and I knew just a little about the Horticulture program there. Don promised to post our listing with his students and graduates. We talked a little about the deal in the works for LWTC and King County to purchase the nearby Muller Farm, and their ideas if the deal goes through on training programs LWTC might create there in addition to moving the Horticulture program to the farm Don told me that there is an increasing interest in training in sustainable and reduced chemical use horticulture from their students. Before we finished the conversation I found that I had agreed to join the advisory committee for the Horticulture Department.

I devoted some time this week to pulling together all my to-do lists and sorting by priority and by completion target dates. The transplant and fieldwork calendars are just starting to take shape. That’s one of my big priorities for next week. Another is ordering the rest of the supplies I’ll need this spring. This includes seedling mix for potting the transplants, organic fertilizer, dripline for irrigation, and the like.

I have a few thoughts on the theme for the corn maze this year, but one idea has won out yet. I’d like to settle down on the theme soon, so I can devote some time to drawing out the design. I’ve collected a number of ideas for activities and features to add to the farm this year. We’ll get some of them done this year.

What’s playing in the Jeep CD today? Wolfstone – The Chase