New plants settling in

Here are some photos of some of our new flowers, with fruit trees in the background. At top is a blooming Leucospermum with citrus behind it, the middle photo shows our beautiful Bird of Paradise, and at the bottom is an Agapanthus with buds just about to open, squash blossom, kangaroo paws in top left of the photo, statice in the middle, and one of our big lavender in the rear. The aroma in the greenhouse is amazing! All are making the transition fairly well, adjusting to our intense sun and cool nights.

I have squeezed a few annual vegetables and herbs into the few spaces between all these flowers and fruits and perennial herbs, and of course we continue to cycle through our salad greens.

Cinco de Mayo!

We had a successful import and planting of our new citrus, berry trees, vines, herbs, and flowers. It is very exciting! The greenhouse is packed with all kinds of delicious and beautiful edibles, and also plenty of exotic flowers for cutting. It will be a busy spring getting everything settled in and getting to know all these plants. Luckily, winter is hanging on here in Routt County, with record breaking snow pack for all of Colorado, ever. Should be an interesting spring... if we ever get to plant outside!

Busy days at the office...

We've been preparing for our big spring cleaning these past few weeks, removing soil and raising the bed level of the south bed, seen in this top photo (look closely- you can also see we have the front vents wide open, while the snow is still mounded up out there). We're hoping that bed will receive a bit more sun in the winter months. Also, the crew has been laying flagstone, which will help keep the dust down. And, we've been preparing for the arrival of our exciting new plants, which include lots of citrus and herbs, more pineapple guavas and pomegranates, dwarf figs, and exotic flowers. And, of course, we continue to harvest, enjoy, and sell the last of our cold season annuals.

The snow continues to melt, and Bohai draws nearer and nearer to completion. We're having a typically erratic spring, with 60 degree days followed by blizzards. Ahh, mud season! It's been summery inside though, and we're opening the greenhouse up and enjoying the warmth and fresh air.

Spring Cleaning

Coming out of our second winter, we're ready to take what we've learned about growing in Northwest Colorado and adjust our practices to make our farm more beautiful, efficient, and deliciously productive! We plan on making a few changes in the next couple of months inside the greenhouse, removing a few plants that have been disappointingly unproductive or less than tasty (mango, lychee, jujube, two of the four passion fruit, & olive) and focus on what what has been successful. This will result in a more Mediterranean planting focus, with lots of citrus and a strong emphasis on herbs. The fruit and herbs that we harvest from the greenhouse will be used mainly in value added products, but of course we will continue to sell our fresh produce as well, narrowing down our crops to what we've grown that we really like and that grows well in our unique climate, and continuing to try interesting new varieties. We will keep the farm in the permaculture style, with polyculture or intermixed plantings, as seen in the top photo, rather than row cropping, or monoculture. This helps maintain healthy plants, soil, beneficial insects, and micro-organisms.

We've started our hot season crops from seed, and the seedlings have been loving all of the sun we've had lately. We'll have numerous varieties of tomatoes, a few cucumbers, and some peppers inside, as well as plenty of basil, dill, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and lavender- lots of lavender! For outside we've started squash, melons, beans, and herbs, too.

The perennials have already started leafing out, as seen in the photos of the Meyer Lemon and the Mars Grape. The Peter's Honey Fig even has tiny new fruit! I am really looking forward to getting growing this season.

Winter in Strawberry Park

With 2010 behind us, we at Elkstone Farm are taking what we learned last year and are ready to put that knowledge to work, and do it all over again! This year will continue to see a lot of the foundation of our farm being laid, building on what we accomplished last year: building soil, grading it, installing the fence, and planting fruit trees and shrubs, perennial vegetables and flowers.

With the Orchard behind the greenhouse and the fruit trees and shrubs around the Pond Garden planted out, we will likely put in the understory plants this year: perennial fruit, herbs, vegetables, flowers, and probably annuals too. We will continue to build the best garden soil we can by adding our composted sheep manure and the mulch that was made from trees felled on the property. Jeannie and I spread about 60 giant trash bags of leaves in the Pond Garden last fall, which will break down this winter and help to add some good organic matter to that compacted clayey soil.

In the greenhouse, we're currently growing salad greens, herbs, beets, onions, carrots, and of course the exotics which are hanging in there through this cold, gray winter. I tried to be earlier with seeding our winter plants, but I found it so hard to pull productive summer tomatoes, cukes, basil, & peppers in order to get the winter greens growing well before the days got so short and cool that growth is snail- like in pace. Next year I won't be such a pushover, and will yank those plants in early September! Our goal is to have summer plants, mainly tomatoes, producing earlier. This will not only help with our succession planting later in the season, but early tomatoes fetch a better price than those of mid summer, when the market is overflowing with them.

Meanwhile, the Caretaker House, newly dubbed Bo Hai, nears completion! It will be so nice to have a workspace out of the greenhouse.

Our newest team member, Henry, is so excited to get to work that he has started smiling.

While inside the greenhouse the plants are still chugging along, a little on the dark side but staying warm enough to continue growing. Even the pineapple is getting bigger and the size of the papayas is not to be believed