What a Weekend

I hardly know where to begin! This weekend brought us all to the point of physical exhaustion, but it was well worth it. The opening day of the Carolina First Saturday Market was superb on all fronts - the weather was overcast but refrained from all but the hint of a drizzle, we were busy all morning with a constant stream of customers, and I managed to get almost everything ready in time to take (the digital picture frame that we've been wishing for since last year - and finally purchased - got edged out in favor of the handspun yarn, but it should be ready for next week). I think our new tablecloths, custom-made by my mom to fit the market tables, are a vast improvement over last year's sheet.

We also expanded to two tables from our one last year, and have plans to add a third within the next week or two - we have that much to sell this year!

The green garlic made a lovely presentation and sold well, so I'll be bringing more next week. I've posted the recipe we were handing out at the market on the website with a few additions that space didn't allow for on the printed card. My mom whipped up another batch of it to send home with me this afternoon and tossed in some black olives, which were a great addition - I'll be taking it to work for lunch this week as a chilled pasta salad.

In other market news, I was thrilled by the response to the tomato plants this week, and was thanking my lucky stars that they simply stayed "enormous" and didn't quite get to "gargantuan" before we could sell them. Those suckers need to go in the ground! We sold nearly all of the plants we took to market yesterday, so when we got home it was time to plant what was left. That means the first wave of tomatoes is entirely gone except for the smallest of the Costoluto Genovese, which will still be saleable next week. The tomato table looks positively empty right now,

but those tomato plants should double in size by next Saturday, and there are more in the seed starter that need to be potted up, much like this little guy:

In the meantime, we're awash in basil. There's the Greco, which is starting to form little bushes,

what I can only term as a sea of Summerlong,

and there's only more in the offing.

The Genovese is by far the slowest growing of our three varieties, but the first batch we potted up is finally starting to put on some noticeable height, so it won't be long before I'll be up to my elbows in it - literally. My record Genovese plant size from last year was 3 feet high by 2 feet wide, so we'll see how big it'll get this year.

Also in the greenhouse, the zucchini are up and raring to go. They'll need to be set out sometime in the next week, and will go in the space behind the barn. We've got five or six varieties this year, but decided to pass on yellow squash. I prefer zucchini over yellow squash because I think the flavor's better, and many of the yellow squash varieties don't keep quite as well as zucchini. Besides, I have to have enough to keep the zucchini fries coming this summer! I also want to try one of the "zucchini spaghetti" recipes I keep seeing - that looks tasty. (That reminds me of a cookbook review I need to write up and post - "Fast, Fresh, & Green" is one of my new favorites, and it's all about making vegetables the star of the meal.)

Out in the garden, the cucumbers I planted during the week got a little bleached out by the sun but the new growth is nice and green, so they should start climbing the cattle panels in a week or two. But this is what gets us all dancing around with barely contained anticipation:

Pea flowers! They're popping up everywhere, so it won't be long now before the sugar snap pea pods begin to appear. The plants look much stronger this year than last year's crop - that may be due to something as simple as the sturdier trellis, or maybe it was the wet spring weather. Regardless, I'm hoping for a sizeable harvest.

Since my mom insisted that I take a picture of the clematis that's blooming right at the corner of the barn, I'll leave you with that for now. Expect a few more posts during the week about upcoming events - one will have more information about the CFSA Farm Tour we're participating in, and one will be about an upcoming event at Bioway Farm, which is just down the road from us and is another great sustainable farm. I'm also going to be starting an ongoing series of posts about container gardening using my deck as the testing ground, and first up is a post about growing Italian parsley in containers.