flora vista farms – Page 2 – Flora Vista Farms

Suyo Long, to other cucumbers.

August 2, 2015August 2, 2015Leave a comment

The Suyo Long cucumber is one of my favorites to grow. They are easy to care for and seem to do well in our micro-climate here on the Mesa. This wonderful Chinese variety produces fruits 10″-16″ long.

The fruits are spiny when young, and become smoother and less ribbed at maturity. The cucumbers tend to curl on one end, which makes for a unique looking fruit. I trellis mine, and for the most part they grow straight.

For those of you who purchased Suyo seedlings from me this year, I hope you are enjoying them! For those who did not, and would like to purchase the actual cucumber, keep an eye on my blog or Facebook for updated lists of vegetables for sale.

I will leave you with a simple recipe for the upcoming warm summer evenings.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
A dash or two of sesame oil
2 Suyo cucumbers, seeded and thinly sliced
1 small Thai chili or Black Cobra chili thinly sliced

In a medium bowl, mix together the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sugar, oils and chili slices. Mix in the cucumbers, chill before serving.

Wood Lice

July 30, 2015August 1, 20151 Comment

I’ve never had any issues with wood lice until now. They seem to love one of my raised beds due to the excessive amount of organic matter in the soil. In this case, Google was my friend. A tuna can with a bit of beer, and the edge of the can at soil level really does the trick!

June Showers

June 10, 2015June 10, 2015Leave a comment

Photo Credit: Mrs. O'Hare — Photo Credit: Mrs. O’Hare

We were blessed with some much needed rain in Santa Barbara yesterday. I guess I hadn’t really been paying attention to the weather report as much as I do during our “storm season”, it sure took me by surprise! I just checked the rain gauge, and in the past 24 hours we received 0.9 inches at the farm. The rain barrels are full once again, the plants look happy, everything is rinsed clean, and one of my raised beds sunk into a gopher-hole-mud-trap. Yeah, I love the rain!

Blanca, the second hurricane of the season in the Eastern Pacific, was downgraded to a tropical storm before it hit Puerto Cortes, Mexico on Monday. It is the earliest tropical cyclone to make landfall on record in Baja California. This amount of rain certainly is unique for Southern California this time of year. I sure do hope there is more of this exciting summer weather to come!

Seeds of Progress: Seed Savers Exchange Celebrates 40th Anniversary, Plans to Keep it Growing

May 28, 2015May 28, 2015Leave a comment

The Seed Savers Exchange, known to many of you as the leader in the heirloom seed movement, is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2015! The SSE was founded in 1975, and is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and sharing heirloom and open-pollinated plant varieties. SSE is looking ahead to a year full of progress and celebration, while continuing to grow and maintain a collection of more than 20,000 seed and plant varieties at their Iowa headquarters.

More information about the Seed Savers Exchange can be found here – http://www.seedsavers.org/

Beets!

May 27, 2015June 3, 2015Leave a comment

Beets are probably the most loved vegetable in our family, especially when roasted. The earthy sweetness is so unique, there is nothing quite like it. Beets taste like dirt, and that’s what I love about them. Last night I was able to acquire some fine beets from our downtown farmers market. Today they will be roasted!

Here’s how I do it:

4 Tennis ball sized beets

Sea Salt

Olive Oil

First, I cut the root and the stems off, close to the actual beet. I then boil them in salted water for about 45 mins or until tender. Let the beets cool a bit before you attempt to peel them. After they’ve been peeled, you can cut them into chunks or slices. Don’t slice them too thin, they will turn to mush. I slice mine about 3/4″ thick. Place beets into a roasting pan, along with other veggies if desired. Sprinkle olive oil and roast at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the beets start caramelizing on the bottom. Simple and delicious!

Tomato seedlings for sale!

April 27, 2015May 26, 2015Leave a comment

The table is filled with tomato seedlings once again. Today we have Arkansas Traveler, Brandywine, Sweet 100’s, and Lemon Boy. This is a self-serve operation where you just drop the money in the box on the table. They are $2 each.

60% of the time, it works every time.

April 26, 2015April 26, 2015Leave a comment

Mornings are usually pretty hectic around here with all of the creatures demanding food and attention. The cats are up at 5:30, the dogs around 6:00. The chickens pretty much run dawn ’til dusk along with the wild birds. Chickens are noisy creatures, and this flock seems to be especially vocal. Any wild birds trying to steal their food will be squawked at relentlessly.

Recently the noise level was getting a bit out of hand for 7:00 AM. I went to investigate and found many house finches and a few scrub jays bombarding the run, stealing the hen scratch I had put out for the chooks. The girls despise this, and were protesting accordingly. I tried to shoo the wild birds away, a failed attempt. It didn’t phase them and they returned immediately.

Contemplating my options, I walked back inside to talk to my fiancée. She had the brilliant idea of removing the old plastic owl we’ve kept in a cage in the patio for years, and placing it in the chicken run. I snatched the owl from it’s cage and ran back behind the garage to scare those robbers away! The only thing I scared was the chickens. In fact, I scared them so bad, they ran around the other side of the garage and didn’t come out. I left the owl on the roof of the coop, thinking they’d get used to it. Nope, that was not the case. A half hour later the chickens were still behind the garage and the finches were having a garden party.

I removed the owl, and he now resides next to my seedlings to keep the birds away. 60% of the time, it works every time.

Delivery Day

April 24, 2015August 23, 2017Leave a comment

The new chicks have finally arrived! We’ve been waiting for these babies for almost two months now. Happy and healthy little girls ready to join the flock. It’ll be awhile before they can join the big girls outside, and will be inside the next four weeks under the heat lamp.

We are adding Golden Comets to our flock this year. They are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn. I was introduced to this breed by my friend Katherine at Island Seed and Feed in Goleta, and am eager to see how they produce. Supposedly they lay up to 330 eggs a year!

We are also adding two more Ameraucanas to the mix, they are just so cute with their puffy cheeks.

The Golden Comets are the ones with the blue mark on their head. The Ameraucanas seem to be a day or so younger, they are not quite as active yet. Alfie Sassafras sits in the background, enjoying the new members of Flora Vista Farms.

Newly Raised Beds

April 20, 2015April 20, 20151 Comment

The gophers took over the last raised beds I built. Time to show them who’s boss!

I was reluctant to put chicken wire under all of my old raised beds, and within a few months the gophers had discovered the bounty. Discouraged and annoyed, accompanied by occasional feelings of guilt, I decided to take on the project again. This time the gophers wouldn’t get the best of me.

I recycled the cedar fencing I had used for the original three boxes, and turned those into two boxes with legs, and a floor in each one. I suppose the gophers wont climb out of the ground and into the beds. But, honestly now I am not so sure. As I was building the second bed last Friday, one of my neighbors from up the street warned me they are known to do such things! I am still in the “this won’t happen to me” phase. Time will tell.

Attention Gophers! Heed my warning! Stick to the ground, and you are safe. Disturb my raised beds, and you will most certainly be met by an untimely death, and be transported to the Great Dirt Pile in the Sky. Or, the great dirt pile in the back yard.

Here is the second raised bed with newly planted peppers. This is my experiment combining French Intensive, Square Foot Gardening, Hügelkultur, and raised bed gardening all in one! Purple Bells in the back, Jalapeños in the middle, Habaneros in the foreground. I’m expecting a Pepper Forest, and suppose pruning will be in my future.

Tomatomania!

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015Leave a comment

The tomatoes are doing fabulous, and are just shy of 4 feet tall. It’s crazy, just one month ago they were only about 6 inches in height. The first petals are dropping, exposing the tiny fruits. Just another couple of weeks and I should be harvesting the first outdoor Cherry Buzz tomatoes of the season. I’ve had tomatoes producing in my greenhouse since November, but unfortunately there isn’t much space in there for more than a few plants due to all the seedlings. Black Krim, Gold Nugget, Early Girl, and Sweet 100’s are the varieties I have in the greenhouse. They all are doing quite well in 5 gallon black nursery pots. The only complaint I have about greenhouse tomatoes is the stalks are always a bit daintier than the thick robust stalks and stems seen on outdoor tomatoes. I’m too lazy to set up a fan in there to strengthen the stalks. Conserving energy is also important.