*Spoiler Alert* You’ll have to scroll to the very bottom to get to the Super Important Announcement.  In the meantime, and with patience, you’ll get a farm update.

We have gotten an ass-load of rain.  So much so, the garden is on the edge of exploding.  Just take a look at the Snapdragons. They have erupted in the past two weeks.   

 

When I took pictures a few days ago, they were budding and have since popped open.  Here’s a snapdragon bud:

 

Remember when I talked about obtaining a wealth of knowledge?  Here is a very brief tid-bit I’ve learned about snaps.  To encourage longer and more branches, it’s recommended you do a soft pinch when the plant has 5-6 true sets of leaves.  In other words, when the plant is about 4″ tall, you pinch off the very top with your hands.  If you don’t pinch your snaps, they bloom earlier, but don’t have as many flowers on the plant.  I tried pinching on a few rows and here’s what happened:

The two rows on the left are significantly smaller and aren’t budding yet.  The row on the right has not been pinched and is taller and popping open flowers.  You may be like, “wow, don’t pinch the plant. Der” But look at a close up of the plants.  Here’s non-pinched snap:

 

Here’s a pinched snap:

 

Look how many more long stems I’m going to get off the pinched snap.  So here’s my advice to other flower farmers, pinch half your entire crop of snaps.  It will succession your snaps so you’ll have blooms early and well into the rest of the season.

Chris also completely installed our drip irrigation system a few weeks ago.  Needless to say, we’ve only run it once.  I have to keep thinking of our irrigation system as insurance, you don’t need it, until you need it.  And then you’re really glad it’s in your field.

We have flowers popping open and zucchini already putting on.  This puppy is going to blow up here in a couple of weeks:

Which leads us to our Super Important Announcement:

 

In a couple of weeks we will have flowers and produce.  We are opening a self-serve farm stand and would love to see you there!  After a super slow and frustrating start, we have worked our asses off to even be able to have a product for you to enjoy during our first year. So please come visit and see our little, windy hill-top farm. See you there!