Elisabeth

Reopening the playground heralded the return of Field Day to Robbins Farm Park for the first time in three years. And Robbins Farm Garden was, once again, part of this popular event. Thanks to Suzy, Brian, and Steven for opening the garden to the event’s many visitors. Here’s Suzy’s report:

We had a great field day in the garden today! The bounce castles were set up directly in front of the garden, but that didnt seem to detract too much attention as we still got lots of visitors. Some kids came in with their scavenger hunt sheets, on which it seemed they were simply tasked with finding and writing down “something grown in the garden”. We had some carrots, salad turnips, bell pepper, and broccoli cut up for kids to sample, which were all popular. The stevia and mint were big hits as well, and the inflatable snakes drew intrigue from the kids as usual.

Over a decade of experience, and ideal storage and slip-starting conditions in Lisa’s basement have led us to reliable success with growing our own slips from the previous year’s sweet potato crop. (See The Great Sweet Potato Experiment by Lisa for more info.)

The process began on April 12. We currently grow three types: standard (originally from Beauregard and Georgia Jet tubers), Murasaki (a Japanese type), and Purple (from tubers donated by Daphne Gould of Daphne’s Dandelions). The purple sweet potato slips were slow this year, and needed to be put under lights for additional warmth to begin producing.

The sweet potatoes were harvested yesterday, upon the discovery of exploratory digging in the bed by the local wildlife. It was a joint effort, starting with Celia and me, with David adding as much work as the two of us combined. We harvested a total of 29.25 pounds of tubers from our 36 square foot plot, or 0.8#/sf. Below are the detailed results of the harvest, with thanks to Carol and Suzy for their careful documentation and to Alan for the photos.

Standard (18sf)
12 plants produced 19.6# = 1.6#/plant

Murasaki (12sf)
8 plants produced 5.4# = 0.7#/plant

Purple (6sf)
4 plants produced 4.25# = 1.1#/plant

The photo above is our kale bed on May 24, stocked with well-established seedlings started indoors in early April. The photo below is from May 25 last year. I don’t think we will go back to seeding kale in the soil. With our springtime weather, the results are far too unpredictable.

We’re in the second week of harvesting salad veg at the garden: lettuce, spinach, arugula and radishes. There’s really nothing like growing your own salad. Pictured above are five of our six lettuce varieties. (Left to right are Little Gem, New Red Fire, Salad Bowl, Pirat, and Kagraner Sommer.) Yum.

Opening Day at the garden was brisk, but dry. (One of the few blocks of time without rain in a while.) We planted radish and pea seed in the ground, and planted the fava bean seedlings started indoors in early March. The soil was prepped for next week’s plantings and we had a harvest of wintered-over parsnips, Egyptian Walking Onions, and (surprisingly) scallions. It felt great to be back at the garden!