The mild weather of the fall season creates ideal conditions for the lettuce, arugula, mizuna and other
greens that are growing in the “Towers” in the greenhouse for the Garden Salad that we serve here at the winery.
Here are a few pictures to show you how this humble, but very necessary and nutritious part of our diet
has a very cool place here on the farm.
Pots ready to be filled with great compost made right on the farm.
See the mizuna growing on the edge of the grass. It is a volunteer,but we could pick it and eat it too!
Here , we start filling the pots that make up the grow towers, with potting mix that is decomposed strawberry roots, leaves and stems that were taken out of the towers in August. Here, in the compost pile, the warm air, sunshine and the rains have created an idea condition for decomposition of this plant material, and now, in just a few short months,
it is ready to be recycled back into the pots to grow the greens.
After these pots are filled, we stack them in the greenhouse.
These lettuce plants are about 3 weeks old and are ready to be transplanted into the
tower.
Here is a tower, with just planted lettuce. In a few weeks these will be ready to start harvesting. They love this cool weather.
Here the towers are filled with new seedlings that will be happy in the greenhouse, away from the
wind and enjoying the sun.
Lettuce, arugula, mizuna are ready to harvest for the farmstead salad served on The Patio Pavilion.
Here are the two towers with plants ready to harvest. These greens are very young and just the outer leaves
are picked off, thus leaving the small leaves to get a little larger for the next pick. In fact, these towers
were just picked 4 days ago and they have so much growth that they are ready to harvest again.
And here we are on a very comfortable Patio Pavilion, in October, with our farmstead salad, ready to eat, with
a glass of award winning Strawberry Festival Wine.
Farm to Table, or was that, Tower to Table!
Those chairs are empty, come join us!
Debbie's Blog 