The first job this past week was to prepare the onions for curing. About 1/3 - 1/2 crop of onions (red, white and yellow) were harvested. Now one hundred onions (maybe two hundred) needed to be placed on top of each other on the greenhouse tables, similar to laying roofing tiles. These tables are about 5ft by 20ft, and three of these tables, previously used for seedlings, will have onions "curing" for a few months.
The next assignment was harvesting kale. Oh, I didn't harvest kale last week; I harvested swiss chard. I am sorry for getting all these vegetables and greens mixed up; it's just that I have never been surrounded by so many different varieties of unlabeled living plants. There were 3 kinds of kale to be harvested: green, purple and dinosaur. The "dinosaur" kale is more bumpy like lizard skin and its stalk is white ribbed like lettuce. It looks weird.
Next we harvested carrots. This was fun. Like potatoes, carrots are dug up after the soil has been loosened by a pitchfork. We found carrots formed in strange shapes (for example, chicken feet). It's funny to think that just because a store never sold these strangely shaped carrots, could they not exist? Does the plant know that it must grow according to the way we expect to grow? A re-evaluation process is happening: must the healthiest and tastiest vegetables must be in the shape and have the color that I have been accustomed or "sold on"...?
We also harvested fennel and beans. I learned that long beans must be harvested, or the plant will stop making beans.
Labor of Love
7 years ago
