Progress on the Farm

Here on the Farm we have already planted the majority of what will, hopefully, be our late spring and summer crops. 

The first to go in were, of course, the greens. Cabbage, lettuce, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower. Planted in early March, the greens are doing well. We have already enjoyed spinach and romaine salad. 

The broccoli and cauliflower and have good size florets! The early cabbages are developing good solid heads as are the lettuces. We have staggered the cabbage and lettuces in hopes to have multiple harvests.

We also have celery, which I have recently learned is not easy to grow. But we have it, and it is left over from last year! Funny how things survive even in bitter conditions. 

And for the returning crops, the perennials are many...! The parsley never really went away. I enjoyed it's greenery even in the dead of winter. Now it is starting to complete its biennial cycle and beginning to flower then seed. 

The fennel is another that never disappeared. It's fuzzy, feathery leaves poked through the snows in January. Now, my fennel is the largest bush in the herb garden. 

The Spanish lavender was the first of the flowers. I was expecting to have the French lavender return and the Spanish to perish but to my surprise the opposite happened. I expect weeks of flowers from the Spanish lavender. The Munstead, Dutch and English lavenders all survived the winter and are huge and full of bud shooting out of their mounds of silvery green leaves.

The second to flower was my common sage. It never fully died back in the winter and made a beautiful return with bright purple flowers. Currently something seems to be ailing the sage which resulted in a hard cutting back. Today it looked healthy.

Of the 3 rosemary plants from last year 2 have made modest returns. With each day brings new growth and they are both coming around and looking healthy. I planted a new rosemary in early April along with one each of cilantro and basil all of which are essential to Rothe Farms family cooking. 

In addition to the ever expanding oregano plant, which stayed also green through winter, I planted another type of oregano. 'Kent Beauty' is an ornamental oregano with pink 'bracts'.

The Doone Valley and lemon thyme returned nicely. So much so that I planted more. 

The most exciting return of the season has got to be the Stevia. Stevia, or commonly know as the sweet plant is typically only perennial in tropical climates. Needless to say WNC is not tropical and yet about a month ago I saw some little bits of green shooting out of the ground where my Stevia plant was last year. Of course I knew that there was no way that it was the Stevia. I thought perhaps in was pineapple sage but the little leaves didn't have the familiar rich pineapple aroma. So about a week ago I decided to taste them. And sure enough the leaves were sweet! This represents a little miracle which is the beauty of spring.