We're digging, cleaning and hanging the garlic and will be in touch with everyone who pre-ordered in the coming weeks to make plans for pick-up :)
Going, Going . . . .
After a hectic few days of onion
transplanting, taking young bulls to the vet for fixing (we do
it this way so they can be sedated) and the usual tilling,
mowing and general farm work we did a reckoning last night and
here’s what we found:
We are sold out of two varieties of garlic—Music and German Red. We still have Chesnok Red, Russian Red, Tibetan and Yugoslavian. We are receiving significant orders for the garlic every day.
We are sold out of our Highland cross beef for the Fall of 2022. Price is $900 a half and our beef is grass fed, lean but well marbled, from medium carcass animals and raised on the farm.
Our veggies are also being pre-ordered, particularly our wonderful onions and potatoes.
Our growing season is off to a great start. The Highland cows are starting to calve (we’ve had five little guys so far, one this morning) and the veggies and garlic look fantastic. Send us a message if you’d like to reserve some great food at harvest time and send us an email if you’d like to be added to our email list.
Videos:
We've started planting the transplants in the garden (May 24th, 2020) again live action and storyboard version.
We did a couple of videos showing tomato seedlings in newspaper pots. The first one is live action and the second is pictures with captions.
And two more videos putting the toilet paper tomato seedlings into soil in compostable bags.
We love to eat garden tomatoes throughout the winter. Most years there are many ready at one time, so we process them as they’re ready. This year we don’t have any large tomatoes ripe yet, but the cherry tomatoes are ripening a few at a time. We lay them out on a cookie sheet in the freezer until they’re frozen solid and then transfer them into a bag either until there are enough to make into puree or else to use individually in soups or sauces when needed. The flavour is spectacular and it’s cool to have what looks and sounds like a bag of marbles in the freezer. There’s a video on you tube if you’d like to see.
We made a video of frying potatoes – just in case anyone wonders how we do it.
We've been using scapes in our marinade and loving it.
Highland Beef:
If
you haven't checked out our instagram
feed please do when you have time.
Garlic Information:
Here are pictures of the bulbil
planters in June 2019 - they look great!
Everything is grown outside in our garden without fertilizers or sprays of any kind.
Newspaper Pots:
One of the best innovations we’ve tried in the last couple of years is our newspaper pots. We start seeds usually in peat pellets or flats of soil and then when they’re well sprouted and need more room and some room we put the pellets or rooted soil into a dirt-filled newspaper pot where they continue to grow until they’re ready to go out to the garden.
Newspaper
pots
go straight into planters or the garden so there seems to be
very little transplant shock. Roots grow easily through the
paper when they’re ready to, and the newspaper composts over
the season. Everything I’ve read says that the ink on the
paper is no problem for the plants or the soil. If a plant
seems cramped in its pot you simply put soil in a bigger pot
and put the smaller pot into the larger one without removing
the smaller one, then put the whole thing in the garden. If
the pot gets weak from a long season indoors or if one waters
a lot and the pot seems shaky it’s easy to put it into another
pot, again without removing the first pot. There is no
disruption of the roots with these pots. Another super feature
is that you can feel how moist the pot is - you can feel it
from the outside, which is really useful. I can find it
difficult to know when seedlings need water, but there is no
such difficulty when you can see and feel the
moisture.
I
made a video showing how to make the pots and
there is another video
showing the box in a square form, which makes it easier to see
the tucks. There is another short video showing the geranium cutting
in a newspaper box.
Lorraine & Kevin Bannister
35540
RR12
Red Deer County, AB
T4G 0M9
403-506-2129
farm@garlicgoodness.ca
Member of the Alberta Farm Fresh Producers Association
Copyright © 2022 garlic goodness