Dog Days of Summer

The heat of July has faded into the lazy days of August here at The Open Gate Farm. We have gone from sheltering the lettuce from Summer's inferno to transplanting new baby lettuce plants as fast as we can.

The Harvest Jubilee is coming! September 19th, it will feature about 20 local farms. We are on the tour, of course, and have to make certain we will have something to sell on that crazy day. Our lettuce takes about 60 days to get full size, so these may be a bit small. But given enough warm days and lots of water, there is hope we have not missed the cycle.

Read about starting seeds in worm castings. Aha! We have a green plastic circular compost bin out back where for the last 9 years we have put most all our household wet garbage. Full of red worms, this is full of their castings too! I dug out a couple shovels full and spread it on top of one of the seed beds in the master garden. Absolutely amazing. Normally it takes from 6 to 10 days for lettuce to germinate and show their first baby leaves. I just checked and this latest set in the worm castings did it in 4 days flat.

Now to see if this cuts the time to maturity in half...or just gives them a head start. Stay tuned!

And just to make the day complete, here is a picture of Elaine enjoying quality time in the garden this afternoon.