Helloooooo gardeners!

Which is the pumpkin?? In fact, the left image is a Kabocha winter squash.

If you're checking out your local farmers' markets, lovely things are starting to sprout up: here, we've noticed things like beans, sweet plums, corn, blackberries, potatoes, broccoli, eggplant, apples, okra, among other delicious, farm fresh goodies. Really cool things are starting to grow large and plentiful for us, too: a short update about what's been going on up in the garden!

We, in fact, sold at the South Hadley Farmers' Market for the second time: this week's offerings were okra and sweet peppers. Adorableness continued.

The No-Till Plot produced its first harvest: a beautiful zucchini. Garden Interns Reesha and Crystal broke ground on the No-Till last year and this year was the first anything was planted in it. Also, in doing some weeding, you can see that the plants root themselves into and through the layers of cardboard and newspaper -- so not totally decomposed yet, but still so cool!

We had some of the most diverse harvests yet last week. For a Student Garden on a sixth of an acre, it's packs a lot of color in its punch. My favorite to look at so far is the marbled eggplant. Also, WE HAVE A TOMATILLO FRUIT. Actually though. Pics or it didn't happen.

Sometimes, when a day or two passes without harvesting zucchini, they become monsters. See the horrors for yourself:

Worst phone call of Brittany's life or attack of the giant zucchini??!!

The Student Garden has also diversified its attempts at keeping out Team Bunny. We've definitely scored one in using root control bags as planters: they're kept off the ground, in a prime sunlight area, and our veggies are safe. Yay happy kale. Also, look at this lettuce!!

Our corn is so huge -- and continuing to pollinate! The dry corn is now taller than Annie AND the trellis! AND HAS ACTUAL HUSKS FULL OF CORN!!!

Speaking of trellises, we discovered that the beans we thought to be pole climbing beans (and, thus, reason for the trellis erecting debacle) are ACTUALLY bush beans, much to the baffled relief of the worry-warts of Team Garden (not fixing enough nitrogen?! too little sunlight?!). The Tongue of Fire variety of bean produces small, compact bushes of beans that are white with red flecks: instead of being focused on what they WILL be (we saw how confused that got us), let's focus on what they are: young, green and purple-y pods of beauty. Though they're drying beans, they're also good to eat young as snap peas -- and so delicious!

We've also put up chicken wire around the plot that was pillaged by the rabbits and, in it, there's now broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, and kale, all of which are surviving and thriving.

For those of you in the area, this weekend is the Northeast Organic Farming Association's Summer Conference to be held at UMass Friday-Sunday. There are SO so many cool workshops it's actually kind of a problem. (http://www.nofasummerconference.org/)

Check back for a photo bomb later this week, Annie took so many great pictures upon her return on Monday!

Peace, love, and veggies,
Annie and Brittany,
MHC Student Garden Interns