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Garlic Scape Pea Tendril Pesto

After years of hearing customers at the markets rave about Garlic Scape Pesto, we finally made some and it totally lived up to all the hype! Even Joel, who is famously anti-pesto wanted seconds.

Garlic Scapes are the flowers of the garlic plants, they start growing in an upwards direction but quickly take a nose dive then back up and back down until someone notices them . Once the scapes start making their loopyloops we start walking up and down each of the garlic rows pulling them out. One, because we want to eat them. But mostly because we want to trick the garlic bulb into growing more. We planted over 110 pounds of garlic last fall, so needless to say we have A LOT of scapes.

I found a recipe from motherearthnews.com and adapted it to fit the ingredients we had available. Here is what they called for:

  • 1 Bunch of Garlic Scapes (10-12 roughly chopped)
  • 1/2 Bag of Pea Tendrils (3 ozs)
  • 1 Bunch of Basil
  • 1/2 Cup of Olive Oil
  • 1/2 Cup Walnuts
  • 1/2 Cup Parmesan

We didn’t have any other nuts besides peanut butter and cheese besides cheddar so I went for it and was not disappointed. I also added juice from half a lemon. Throw all those ingredients in a food processor or immersion blender and voila!

To make it vegan, use nutritional yeast. And to make it nut-free use sunflower seeds/butter.

So far I have enjoyed the Pesto on pasta, scrambled eggs, crackers, salad and toast! So, basically everything I’ve eaten since I made it last night.

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Tomato Pruning Refresher

It’s Tomato Jungle Season around here now. We figured this would be a good time to give some quick tips on pruning your tomato plants so you get the most out of them. Pruning will increase airflow, giving leaves and fruit more room to breath. Most importantly, it allows the plants to concentrate their energy on creating bigger, better tomatoes!

All of the plants we plant and sell are indeterminate, this means they will grow as tall as they possibly can. So, some sort of support is necessary. We hang strings from the top of the hoop houses, but a tomato cage or stake would work fine too. Next we train the plants down to two main leaders. These are like the brain of the plant. To determine the leaders we look for the ones that are the thickest, and have the most well established blossoms. Once the leaders are chosen, the rest are suckers. Suckers grow from the armpit of the leaders. See picture below.

Suckers get their bad rep because they can suck the energy out of the plant. If left unkempt, tomato plants could have many,many leaders but still a limited amount of energy to produce fruit. By removing suckers the tomato plant only has to focus on a few leaders and their fruits. This results in large fruits and yields.

Once you’ve decided on the leaders and have removed the suckers, make sure to also clean up the bottom of the plant. We like to remove the bottom 4 inches or so of foliage so the plants have more airflow and there is less room for disease.

Before
After

This is a weekly or biweekly task for us, the suckers keep coming back so we try our best to keep up on it and advise you do the same to get the most out of your plants.

There is a ton of information out there on tomato pruning. And of course, feel free to reach out to us with any questions! Happy Gardening!

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New, new, new

Welcome to our new website! Unfortunately, our long time website platform dissolved with the new year so here we are now. Admittedly, website building is not our forte but we hope that you will find it to be user-friendly. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or have run into any trouble.

Aside from the new website Star Light experienced a lot of “news” in 2020. New customers, new CSA market cards, new wash station, newly covered high tunnel and nursery, new pick up days, new cat (just one this year..). Probably the most notable “new” of 2020 were our 2 new Caterpillar Tunnels.

Our new Caterpillar Tunnels are named Frida and Lulu,David’s youngest grandkids. Now all 7 grandkids have  a covered structure named after them. Frida and Lulu (the tunnels) are going to be great tools to help extend the seasons and help us grow “on the backside of the calendar.” They will also help us get started earlier in the Spring. That’s right, once we get through this Winter, it will be Spring again, hang in there!  Right now both Frida and Lulu are planted with salad greens like lettuce, baby kale, claytonia as well as turnips, spinach and some radishes too . We are planning on using them in the spring for early beets and radishes then again in the summer for a late round of flowers. But the possibilities are endless and nothing is set in stone so we are looking forward to the future of the newest addition to our farm landscape.