Hutchinson Farm

Squash Tomatillo Soup

2011-11-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

We've been fans of Moosewood cookbooks since the late '80's and finally made it to the restaurant itself in Ithaca, NY last summer (2011) where we had a fabulous dinner and, as it just so happens, bought the cookbook where this recipe appears ("Moosewood Restaurant New Classics" p 75).
One day in October we were looking for something new and seasonal to make for dinner. We were still harvesting both squash and tomatillos on our farm (as well as onions and tomatoes), so this recipe just leapt out at us. It is a superb soup, both our kids love it, and it has quickly become part of our standard cooking repertoire -plus it's a cinch to make!

Tomatillos
Fresh tomatillos are still very hard to find in Ontario. We grow and sell them at our farm from early August to late October. To extend the tomatillo season, you can keep them in the refrigerator for about a month, and they freeze very well -just remove the husk, wash, and freeze whole in freezer bags. Avoid canned tomatillos at all costs!

Squash
We often use butternut for soups, etc. It tastes great, has a rich colour and smooth texture, plus it's the easiest squash to peel and cube. This soup would also be great with any of the great tasting heirloom pumpkins that we grow, such as Musquée de Provence, Flat White Boer...

Our first batch of Squash-Tomatillos Soup, a memorable meal, Oct 30, 2011

Recipe (original Moosewood version)
This recipe makes a lot of soup (serves 8-10), reheats perfectly.

18 fresh tomatillos (about 2 pounds)
4 - 5 cups chopped onions
8 garlic cloves chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 cups peeled and cubed winter squash
6 cups vegetable stock
3 cups chopped tomatoes
1 - 2 teaspoons minced chipotles in adobo sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Toppings
sour cream
chopped fresh cilantro
avacado cubes
crumbled tortilla chips

Preheat the oven to 450°
Remove and discard the husks of the fresh tomatillos. Rinse the tomatillos, cut them in half, and place them cut-side up in a single layer in a shallow baking dish. Roast for 30 - 35 minutes, until soft.

Meanwhile, in a soup pot, cook the onions in the olive oil on medium heat, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes, until golden. Add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes, until fragrant. Stir in the squash, stock, and the tomatoes with their juice, cover, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 15 to 25 minutes, until the squash is quite tender. Add the chipotles and the roasted tomatillos.

In a blender, purée the soup in several batches and return to the pot. Add salt, pepper, and more chipotles to taste, and gently reheat if needed.

Serve hot, with some or all of the toppings.

Our latest Newsletter, August 2011

2011-08-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

A Great BLT!

The Worlds Greatest BLT

We are now in peak tomato season, with lots of roma, cherry, beefsteak, heirloom, and good old field tomatoes coming in from our fields every day. It's time for freezing, canning, making chili sauces and salsas, and most importantly, eating as many yummy tomatoes as you can, especially in the form of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches! To make a truly great BLT, you need to do it yourself. If you order one at a restaurant, it will never be as good as homemade. Enjoy it with a glass of milk for lunch, or maybe a glass of Chianti for dinner. Then make it a meal with a delicious heirloom watermelon for dessert.

Fresh Picked Field Tomatoes

The Real Tomatoland!
It's time to celebrate and wallow in great tasting tomatoes. I think the ones we grow on our farm are probably about the best you can find anywhere. Under our tender loving care, our tomatoes have survived drought and deluge, and have ripened into delicious maturity. They are being picked at their field-ripened best, so you can't go wrong with whichever type you choose. They're at their peak for the next few weeks.

Photo: Our just a few of our fresh picked field tomatoes ready for grading.

I just finished reading Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland, all about growing tomatoes in Florida (everything you didn't want to know about growing tasteless tomatoes). A fascinating read, now I know why our tomatoes taste so good, and why so many others are not worth looking at.

Brattleboro, NH Farmers' Market

Best Farmers' Market Yet!
At the end of July my family took a quick vacation to Bretton Woods, NH to visit Mount Washington (the highest mountain east of the Mississippi, and home to the highest wind speed ever recorded). While traveling, we always keep a lookout for farmers' markets, and we found ourselves one Saturday morning at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market in southern Vermont. It is perfect in size, with about 50 vendors situated in a park with huge trees providing shade, gravel pathways and a grassy centre courtyard. The vendors could only sell what they grew themselves (in other words, none of the "reseller" nonsense that you find at Burlington and Milton), so it was refreshing knowing we were buying from real farmers. The market also had a good selection of artisans/craftsmen, and what we really liked was the vendors offering prepared food. Everything from African dishes to Indian yum yums to gourmet pizza, all made by people passionate about their culinary heritage. You could eat at the market or take it home for dinner. In addition, each Saturday there is a different musician serenading the market. We love the Burlington and Milton farmers' markets, but the diverse array of goods, and the relaxed community atmosphere at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market was a delight, we didn't want to leave!


Heirloom Watermelons

Not Seedless! :-)
One of our sources for heirloom seed is the Seed Savers Exchange. While browsing through their gorgeous catalog last winter, I was intrigued by all the watermelon they had listed. Big ones, small ones, early ones, late ones, pink ones, yellow ones, white ones and orange ones. I thought to myself, you don't suppose the breeders of modern seedless watermelons are sacrificing flavour as they try to breed out the seed?
There was only one way to find out, and that was to grow some heirloom watermelons ourselves. Our harvest has begun, and we like what we're tasting. Our favourite from yesterday's taste test was "Cream of Saskatchewan" (bottom centre of photo).

For the next few weeks it is peak season for all the summer goodies growing on our farm, including melons and tomatoes (see the full list at the upper right corner of this email).

There are a million ways to make a BLT, here's mine:

4 slices of your favourite bread (I'm a big fan of sourdough), toasted lightly
8 slices of bacon, cooked almost crisp (don't succumb to grocery store bacon, get the fabulous thick sliced bacon from J&G Meats at Burlington Mall Farmers' Market, or Maziarz Meats at Milton--- if you're going to do this BLT thing, do it properly!)
6 big, thick slices of your favourite heirloom tomato (in the photo we used Aunt Ruby's German Green, and Pineapple)
Lettuce
Mayonnaise
Salt & Pepper to taste

Enjoy your sandwich(es). Follow it with an heirloom watermelon, and if you have kids, have a watermelon seed spitting contest! Enjoy summer's bounty. Life is good.

Bye for now,

Zucchini Salad

2011-07-16T06:43:00.000-04:00

I think this recipe comes from Jamie Oliver. It's become one of our favourites, the key is to use zucchini that was picked that day.

Use a potato peeler to thinly slice green and/or yellow zucchini lengthwise (remember with zucchini, the smaller the better).

Dressing:
Equal parts olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice
fresh red chile -deseeded and very finely chopped

Strawberry Shortcake

2011-06-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

Strawberry Shortcake
You can't let a strawberry season go by without making strawberry shortcake. Here's our recipe, a traditional, complete from scratch version (and that's my bowl, hands off!).

The three parts of a superb strawberry shortcake:

The Biscuits
(makes 8, freeze the extras for next time)
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
¼ tsp baking soda
½ cup shortening
¾ cup buttermilk

Mix the dry things, cut in the shortening, mix in the buttermilk, roll ½" thick, cut into 3" round shapes, bake @ 450º 12 mins.

The Strawberries
Wash and slice 1 quart of berries. Mix in 1 tbsp. sugar.

The Whipping Cream
Nothing beats the flavour of home made whipping cream!
Whipping cream, mixer, a spoonfull of sugar, beat it!

Assembly
Slice the biscuit in half, and layer the berries and whipping cream in any which way you can!

Enjoy!

Where have all the blogs gone?

2011-04-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

I don't think it's just me, but it seems that a lot of blogs die. There are probably many reasons, the novelty has worn off for the writer, and Facebook, are a couple that spring to mind. I am not posting very much to this blog, and Facebook is the main reason. I write this blog for two reasons. 1) I like to write. and 2) I like to spread the news about what is going on at our farm. Facebook does a better job at that than this blog! I plan to continue posting copies of our newsletter here (some people with old email software have troubles reading it), and I will continue to post recipes here. Heck if there were two of me we would have lots of recipes posted here.
So, if anyone is reading this, I sure hope you're following us on Facebook, because that's where all the action is these days!

Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 15 No. 3

2011-04-17T18:02:00.000-04:00

April 17, 2011

As I begin to write this newsletter, it is a cold and blustery Friday morning. With the sun shining bright, it is a lovely place to be. The greenhouses are comfy and warm, and one is surrounded by plants with deep vibrant green leaves, with splashes of colour from the blooms that are starting to open up. The air is moist, and smells alive. I set the greenhouse temperature to about 23 - 25C, great for growing and enjoying. It feels great. Short sleeves and all that. With the sun streaming in through the greenhouse plastic, the greenhouses gradually heat up, and the thermostat sends a signal to the ventilation fan: "start blowing, it's getting hot in here!" If you are standing at the back of the greenhouse, the temperature gradually falls a few degrees as the fan blows out the hot air, and draws in the cool air from outside. If you can picture our greenhouse fans, they are pretty big, about four feet across, so they can move a lot of air in a hurry. Now, if you happen to be standing near the front of the greenhouse, you're basking in 25C air, and then the fan goes on and WHAM, you are hit with a blast of frigid 3 degree air. Ugh. It gets worse: our greenhouses aren't connected, so you have to walk outside from one greenhouse to another (which I do a lot). Today was simply unbearable, the shock made it almost too cold to breathe, and you've got to feel sorry for the plants by the doors!

Third Annual Open House (pun intended)
All our greenhouses will be open for a sneak peek on Sunday April 24th from 1:00 - 4:00 pm.
It's a time to see what we've be doing for the past three months (growing annuals), check out the new flowers, get some ideas for your garden, enjoy some time in the country, and just have a nice visit with my family while enjoying the beautiful flowers in our greenhouses.
One of my favourite parts of our open house is that everyone gets to vote for their favourite flower. It may be an easy decision, or hard decision, but either way, it's a lot more fun voting for flowers than politicians!
We also have a couple of special activities for kids. Rebecca is going to be running a seed planting station where kids will be able to plant their own pot of seeds to bring home. We also have a little treasure hunt exploring the diveristy of our flowers, and there is a rumour that the Easter Bunny may have hidden a few goodies amongst the flowers.
New Flowers
This year we have close to 400 different flower varieties growing in our greenhouses. Lots of the tried and true varieties, and some new ones too. Calibrachoa (aka Million Bells) has the most new colours. If you've never grown cali's, you should. With an outstanding colour range and season long flower power, cali's are a welcome addition to any garden. There are two new cali's this year: SuperBells Blackberry Punch, and SuperBells Coralberry Punch. For the first time we are also growing the complete series of trailing calibrachoas, so in total, we have 26 different cali's in our greenhouses. Also of note: Lanai Strawberries and Cream Verbena, Luscious Citrus Blend Lantana, some 'new' heirloom nasturtiums, plus a few more. We had requests to grow ivy, so new for us this season is German Ivy, and three varieties of Engish Ivy.
Sustainability
As we continue to strive to reduce our environmental footprint, some of our actions affect our customers, such as:
- Flower Labels: We are now only using labels when we are forced to by the flower patents. Our unlabeled flowers will have their name hand written on the pot.
- Flower trays: Please bring your own boxes to take your flowers home in, or skip the tray completely and gently place your flowers in your car. We will have many free used boxes, but not enough for everyone. New flower trays are available, $2.00 each. Donations of boxes are most welcome!
- Coffee: lots of customers enjoy a cuppa, we know, because our store garbage can is primarily full of Tim Horton cups! We will have complimentary coffee, tea & juice available at our open house, but YOU MUST BRING YOUR OWN MUG!
We hope you embrace our sustainable philosophy!

Our official selling season begins Sat April 30, and we'll be open every day until the second Monday in August. We're looking forward to seeing lots of you at our open house, bring your whole family, and please invite your friends and neighbours as well. The long range forecast looks sunny and warm, so it should be a fun afternoon. Don't forget your camera!

Bye for now,

More than a newsletter: Our FaceBook page is becoming more and more popular, and this month we're posting almost every day with lots of pictures and quick stories that aren't in the newsletter.

Spring in the greenhouse

2011-03-15T16:46:00.000-04:00

We've been planting in our greenhouses since Feb 23. The first thing that gets planted are the ivy geranium hanging baskets. Normally we'll cut off all the buds, but it is nice to leave a few so that we can enjoy the colour! In the foreground of the picture is "Minicascade Pink", in the background are "Minicascade Lavender" and "Minicascade Red". If you talk to me in May, I'll tell you that Mini Red and Mini Lav. make the greatest hanging baskets (colour all season, extremely low maintenance, and they're forgiving if you forget to water them)! I'm not so keen on Mini Pink -it fades, but right now in our greenhouses, with relatively low light conditions, it is a beautiful colour. Click to see the full size image.

New Heirlooms

2011-01-26T16:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to everyone who voted in our 2011 heirloom tomato poll, and double thanks to Alexander who voted twice. Six new heirlooms have been decided on for planting in our fields this May, giving us a total of about three dozen tomato varieties. If you discover a tomato cultivar you would like us to grow next year, let me know, and I'll add it to next years poll.

Here are the winners:

Andrew Rahart's Jumbo Red: This will be the first "regular" red heirloom tomato we've grown. I keep coming across more and more growers who love this tomato not just because of its flavour, but also for the quality of the fruit and health of the plant.

Blondkopfchen: This is a yellow cherry. We've grown lots of yellow cherries before, and like most yellow tomatoes, they are mild flavoured. This one is supposed to be the best tasting yellow cherry, we'll see! Anyone speak German? Tomato websites say it means "little blond girl", but Google translates it as "blond brains!"

German Red Strawberry: We grew an orange strawberry last year, so this is a welcome addition to the strawberry, or heart shaped tomatoes.

Indian Stripe: This one wasn't on my top six list, and come to think of it, I don't think I voted, oh well. It's described as being similar to Cherokee Purple (one of our favourites) but with occasional stripes.

Stupice: One of the best tasting red tomatoes. This small tomato is the earliest tomato to ripen, maybe we'll taste these in mid July! Stupice is from the Czech Republic and is pronounced "Stoo-peach-ka"

Speckled Roman: This is a red plum with orange stripes that looks great in photos, and supposedly tastes great also. Can't wait to see it!

The photo is of our three colours of plum tomatoes, about to go into the oven. In our poll, I was hoping that "Black Plum" would get enough votes, it would look so good next to the red, yellow, and orange plums. Better luck next year.

How to dry an apple gourd

2011-01-05T14:51:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps an odd time of year to write about gourds, but bear with me, you'll see why. We grow too many gourds, but what's not to like about all the crazy shapes and sizes, multitude of colours, and textures? Most gourds are simply used to decorate your homes for the autumn harvest celebration, and probably get thrown in the compost when it is time to put up the Christmas decorations. Some of those gourds will have started to pass to the other shore, I know I've found my share with a puddle underneath where they are sitting, these are the ones you're sometimes afraid to lift up!

"Apple Gourds" have a much longer life span. They start off looking like a big apple, with their mottled dark green and light green skin, they even have a cute little stem on top. We've had one decorating our kitchen counter for three months now, and until recently it looked great, and its colour even matched our Christmas decorations.

As you can see from the photo, it is now time to banish it elsewhere. It is covered in white mold, which will soon turn black. If you saw any other vegetable covered with this mold, you would throw it out. With apple gourds (or any other of the "bottle" gourds), I'm don't have to do that. I don't want all those spores in my house, so I could wash it, but the mold would come back quickly.

I'm going to let that gourd dry out all by itself, covered in mold, in my garage. I'll post an update in a few months.

That Darned Highway

2010-12-16T11:44:00.003-05:00

On Monday Dec 13th, 2010 we attended an information meeting hosted by the City of Burlington and Halton Region. This is what we learned, please forgive and correct me if I've got any facts wrong, I'm basing this on a tiny bit of research, and what I remember from the meeting! I have provided links to the official documents that I know of.

Links:

The presentation from Monday's meeting, maps, etc.

Burlington Post Coverage of the meeting

Niagara to GTA Corridor Planning and Environmental Assessment Study

Halton's Regional Official Plan

Map from Halton Region, I added our farm

-Part of Halton Region's official plan (ROPA-38) calls for development to stop at Hwy 407, land north of 407 is designated as farmland or part of the Natural Heritage system (ie Niagara Escarpment).
-ROPA -38 was passed unanimously by Halton Region, fully supported by all four of Halton's municipalities (Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton, and Oakville).
-This would mean Burlington's development is nearly complete, land to the north of the 407 would remain unchanged, as it is today.
-ROPA-38 was submitted to the province.
-The province sent it back (only three days after the municipal election, coincidence or not?) wanting an amendment.
-The amendment is for a highway corridor to be included in ROPA (see green arrow on map)
-Everyone at the meeting, residents and politicians, is against this highway. No one at the meeting expressed any sort of support for the highway.
-The purpose of the meeting was to inform residents and jump start opposition to the new highway. The elected officials indicated that even though construction of the highway is years away, once the corridor is put in the plan, it will be virtually impossible to stop the highway, so the time to stop the highway is now.
-The message from the municipal and regional politicians is to write as many elected officials as you can (the premier, minister of transport, your MPP, etc.), indicating your opposition to the highway.

Following the presentation, questions and comments were taken from the floor: Here's a summary of what struck me, and what I remember (I wasn't taking notes, so I may have got some things wrong). The general tone being that the proposed highway is ridiculous.

-Development in Burlington would sprawl north to the new highway.
-Building a highway across the environmentally sensitive, world biosphere heritage site of the Niagara Escarpment is ludicrous.
-Air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution
-If oil prices continue to rise, will we be driving the same way 20 years from now? Will we need this highway?
-The proposed highway is based on Hamilton growing a lot. Is economically depressed Hamilton actually going to see this growth?
-There is no super highway going from Hamilton directly to the 401, that's what needs to be built.
-Upgrading existing highways, and increasing mass transit such as rail is the way to go.
-You can't buy local if there are no local farms
-Where are all those vehicles to go once the new highway connects to existing highways that are already gridlocked?
-Assuming the new highway connects to the 407 (there is really no other option) drivers will be forced to pay the tolls. Is the new highway going have tolls?
-The 407 should not be private, if anything is to be expropriated, it should be the 407. Canadians should never allow the privatization of infrastructure.
-The arrow goes straight through Halton Conservation head office on Britannia

Stay Tuned!

Too many tomatoes

2010-12-15T14:33:00.001-05:00

One of the fun things farmers get to do when it is cold and blustery outside, is to look over the seed catalogs that are arriving in the mail, and decide what to grow next year. With thousands of different tomatoes available, it can get hard to choose. It's impossible to grow them all! We'll keep most of what we grew last year, eliminating a few, and trying a few new ones.

I've made my "short" list of tomatoes that I want to try, but there are too many. I need to choose about half a dozen new varieties to grow next year. I can't decide, I can find reasons to grow them all, but it will be too confusing in the field if we do!

Help me decide what to grow by voting in our tomato poll (see the column to the right)

Varieties under consideration

In addition to the 30 varieties we liked from last year, we will be growing a few more taken from the following. The descriptions are from seed catalogs

Andrew Rahart's Jumbo Red -Deep Red Beefstreak great taste and aroma, healthy plant, HHS's main red variety
Andrina Red Cherry -dwarf plants, we'll try them in hanging baskets
Aunt Gertie's Gold Yellow Beefsteak -one of the best tasting yellow tomatoes (most yellows are "mild")
Austin's Red Pear -SSE's best tasting red pear (we used to grow a pear that was tasteless)
Beam's Yellow Pear -as above, except yellow
Black From Tula Black Round -one of the best tasting black's
Black Plum Black plum? we don't grow that yet
Blondkopfchen Yellow cherry -excellent sweet taste, enormous yield -we need a good tasting yellow cherry
Gary Ibsen's Red Red Round -Tomato guru Gary Ibsen loves it
German Red Strawberry Red Heart -best tasting
Gray's Sweet Cherry -Red best tasting red cherry
Hahms Gelbe -yellow cherry -dwarf plants for containers
Indian Stripe -purple round -offspring of Cherokee Purple, great taste
Lutescent -Novelty ripens green, pale yellow, deep yellow, red
Mule Team -Red Round, Classic tomato, great taste, productive, blemish free
Orange Cherry -great tasting orange cherry
Pendulina Orange -orange cherry -dwarf plants for containers
Persimmon-Orange round -best tasting orange
Speckled Roman Red with orange stripes plum -meaty, tastes great
Stupice Small red round -very early, high quality, taste test winner
Sweet Pea Red Currant -best tasting currant (smaller than cherry)

For further information on heirloom tomato varieties, check out Tatiana's Tomato Base

Fresh Picked Peppers

2010-11-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

Poblano chile peppers -large, firm, blemish free, and so fresh they squeak when when they rub against each other. We picked these yesterday. If you're from more southerly regions of the continent this is unremarkable, but we've endured night times lows of -6ºC, so even these chiles that were growing in our unheated greenhouse are at the cusp of death by frost. Actually the plants within 12" of the greenhouse sides got zapped. I thinks these chiles are pretty amazing, especially considering they haven't had a drop to drink since October!

We made rajas with the poblanos. This is the same as roasting red peppers, but you use poblanos instead. Under the broiler go the whole poblanos, as the skin bubbles and blackens, you flip them over. Once that's done you take them out of the oven and leave them sitting in a covered bowl. After 10 minutes remove the blackened outer skin as best you can, and remove the stem, core and seeds. For authentic rajas cut them into strips, but we don't. We sprinkled them with a bit of olive oil and put them in the freezer. For the next few months we'll use them in sandwiches, sauces, fajitas, etc. etc. Yummy!

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-10-07T22:36:00.000-04:00

Our latest newsletter....

Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 14, No. 8

Many years ago, back in the days when we entered our produce in the Milton Fair, one of the competitors had entered a large Atlantic Giant type pumpkin, and the judge disqualified it, by saying it wasn't a pumpkin. I don't remember what type of pumpkin we entered, nor do I remember how we did in the "pumpkin" class. I do remember wondering how the judge knew it was a squash, and why it wasn't a pumpkin. Did the judge think cucurbita maxima (Atlantic Giants) were squash and cucurbita pepo (jack-o-lanterns) were pumpkins? I just don't know, but I think it might have been the same judge that awarded first prize in the tomato class to an entry that consisted of five cherry tomatoes displayed on top of test tubes. I also remember that second place in the tomato class, went to an entry that consisted of five beautiful red ripe slicing tomatoes, with the attractive green stems still attached, grown on Walkers Line by a certain John Hutchinson.

Thanksgiving Pumpkins If you've been up to the farm recently, or you follow us on facebook, or have read our latest blog entry (it has some great photos), you already know that we have some really cool pumpkins this year. From Australia we have Jarrahdale, a Queensland Blue pumpkin (no orange pumpkins for the men down under). France provided us with three heirloom pumpkins, one that is possibly what the pilgrims ate, and another that is "embroidered with warts" -you've got to see it to believe it. One of my favourites is a new release called "One Too Many" -it's white with thin red veins running across its face. Now I'm in charge of making the pumpkin pie this weekend (a note of clarification may be needed here, I'm only making a few pies for our family dinner, we won't be selling any pies, sorry), so I want to know which pumpkin tastes the best. For years and years I've always used the standard "Small Sugar" pie pumpkin. Do these French heirlooms taste better? I'm having a pumpkin cook off on Friday night, watch for the results on facebook!
Dog toy season
It's a hard life being a dog on our farm. There are all the customers to greet, and then they want to take your picture, you walk out to the pumpkin patch with them, they throw your stick for you...after all that sometimes you just have to lie down in front of a big pile of pie pumpkins, and watch what's going on. Yes, the little puppy has grown over the summer, and if you can't tell our dogs apart (that's the pup in the photo), Molé, (six years old) is the one with the gourd in his mouth -he wants you to throw it for him (yes, we even grow dog toys on our farm). Our puppy, "PawPad" (he was born the same day as Apple's iPad) is the dog who is eating the gourds. He also likes green beans, tomatoes, peppers, corn on the cob...
Thanksgiving Traditions
Thanksgiving signifies change at our farm. It's the time that the summer crops end. It's the time Rafael, Marco, and Ricardo return to Mexico. It's the time we stop going to market. It's the time the harvest is over. It's the time we sleep in a bit (it's too dark to work). It's the time customers come to the farm for their last visit of the season. I guess because there are so many changes, we mark them with customs and traditions every year. In spite of it being a hectic and busy weekend at our farm helping customers get their thanksgiving decorations and pumpkins, we manage to have a large Thanksgiving dinner with grandparents, one uncle and one aunt plus our extended Mexican family. We'll have the traditional turkey, with a bowl of gravy as well as a bowl of mole, and lots of veggies that we grew on our farm. Dessert is, of course pumpkin pie, but this year, if I can pick enough of those Seascape strawberries, we'll have strawberry shortcake as well. Sounds like the start of a new tradition.

So what makes a pumpkin a pumpkin? The quick answer is that nobody knows. If we turn to botanical taxonomy, we discover that there are four major botanical species in the cucurbita genus (which includes pumpkins/squash/gourds) and each of the four individual species has what we call pumpkins, squash and gourds in it. For example, acorn squash, Crown of Thorn gourds, and the classic carving pumpkin all are members of the Cucurbita pepo species. If we look at different cultures, we learn that what some people call squash in one country, will be called a pumpkin in another, and explains why in Spanish "calabaza" means pumpkin, squash, gourd, and even zucchini! For me, I'm sticking with pumpkin guru Amy Goldman's definition: If you carve it, it's a pumpkin. If you just look at it, it's a gourd. If you eat it, it's a squash!

Heirloom Pumpkins

2010-10-05T10:14:00.004-04:00

For many many years, we have grown, a wide variety of pumpkins. Big pumpkins, small pumpkins, tall pumpkins, wide pumpkins, round pumpkins, cooking pumpkins....our seed catalogs would devote a couple of pages to pumpkins, probably close to a hundred different varieties.

With all this selection and variety, it was amazing that these pumpkins had one thing in common: they were all orange! Every single one of them. We learned that pumpkins are orange.

But, but, but, that isn't the case! Just as not all tomatoes are red, not all pumpkins are orange. There are a lot of really neat pumpkins that have been making there way into the seed catalogs in recent years, and we're growing them all.

The funny thing is, many of them are being marketed as "new" and some of them are new, but a lot of them are old, first described over a century ago, but their undocumented history goes back a lot longer than that.

Pictured are a few that we're growing this year.
You "might" be able to get a bigger picture if you click the images, but the blogger isn't co-operating with me. In future I'll just do one image per post!

You can tell from the names, that a number of these pumpkins are from France. These heirloom pumpkins go back 100's of years. If, like me, your French needs help from a dictionary, don't worry, stick to the french names, they sound much more exotic than their English translations, and you'll be able to impress your friends and family with your pumpkin knowledge!

We have one Australian pumpkin, the land down under does not grow orange pumpkins, they are all blue, and grown to be eaten.

One Too Many is, to the best of our knowledge, a new modern variety.

Red Warty Thing is a pumpkin that dates back to a variety in the late 1800's called "Victor" -we like the new name!

Orange pumpkins? We grew lots of those too!

Taste Happiness

2010-09-30T22:51:00.006-04:00

They are so good
They are catching on
Every day people phone about them
We only grew four rows
Time is running out
The lucky few who have discovered them
They are the best
Forget about the June ones
Seascape strawberries are so good
They smell like we imagine strawberries
They taste like wild strawberries
I nibble on them
They are so good
I took their picture
I ate the big one
Maybe for Thanksgiving
There will be more
Next year

Size Matters

2010-08-26T15:01:00.000-04:00

I always say, the bigger the melon, the better it will taste. When all the melons are supposed to be big, a small melon simply hasn't grown as well, and doesn't taste as good as it's big brothers and sisters. This year there is a new melon on the block. It's small. It's supposed to be small, about 6" in diameter. It's called "Sugar Cube", and it tastes great, and is the perfect size for one or two people to eat in on sitting. For a size comparison, see the photo in our previous post. "Sugar Cube" is the small melon at the front. I guess the moral of the story is that size doesn't matter.

Lambkin Melons

2010-08-24T08:46:00.001-04:00

A few days ago we gathered all our different melons together, tasted them, took a few pics as well, and did our best not to get all the varieties mixed up.
It's been a good summer for growing melons, those hot days do wonders for their flavour and size.

A new melon for this year is called "Lambkin" (you know they're running out of names when they start naming melons after meat).
Lambkin is a medium sized oval melon, easily identified by it's unique skin -it is a mottled green and yellow. The flesh is green, but it tastes more like an orange cantaloupe (musk melon), than a honeydew. The flavour is superb, you have to try one.

Lambkin

For what it's worth, Lambkin is known as a 'Piel de Sapo' or Christmas melon -for superior long term storage, something we haven't put to the test, we're eating them up too fast! All American Selections winner for 2009.

Some like it hot

2010-07-14T07:52:00.000-04:00

Text from our latest Newsletter...

The crops are growing well. Anytime it is uncomfortably hot for you or me, our field crops are soaking up all that solar energy, doing their little photosynthesis dance, and producing a plethora of branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, which is just what we want. We are already picking the early crops such as zucchini and beans, we've just found a handful of ripe cherry tomaotes (the yellow ones, they're always ready first), and the early peppers should be ready in a few days. The past two summers have been cool, comfortable for people, but they produced so-so melons, and hardly any red sweet peppers. It is nice to have a true summer this year, with lots of hot days, meaning we'll have some great melon-eating days this August.

* Raspberries
So far we have had a great raspberry season, with lots of happy pickers, and a few hot pickers too! Right now the late varieties are at their peak. The weather was a bit too hot for a few days, but we were able to give the canes lots of water, and we had some good gentle rains, so the pick your own is still running full steam ahead. For the next week, we will have great picking, but with raspberries, the further we get into the season, the harder the picking. In other words, the sooner you come (or come back) the better!

* Pasta with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta
It's time to dig out those summer veggie recipes. Here's one we dug out after picking the first cherry tomatoes a few days ago...

4 medium zucchini halve lengthwise then cut into ½" slices. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp kosher salt, drain for 30 min, then rinse
1 lb farfalle or other small pasta
5 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion chopped fine
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp lemon zest
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
¼ cup fresh mint leaves chopped fine
2 tsp vinegar
½ cup kalamata olives quartered
4 oz feta cheese crumbled

Cook pasta, drain and set aside in a large serving bowl.
While pasta is cooking:
In a large hot pan, brown rinsed zucchini in 1 tbsp olive oil (if pan is crowded, do it in two batches, you want air spaces between the pieces of zucchini), remove zucchini from the pan and set aside.
Cook onion with 1 tbsp olive oil (3 mins.)
Add garlic and lemon zest. Cook for 1 min and remove from heat.
To the drained pasta add: 2 tbsp olive oil, and everything else except for the feta. Toss, then sprinkle with feta. Serve warm or cold. Make lots -it's great as leftovers!

* Flowers
No sooner have we wrapped up the season, than it's time to get working on next year's crop. Yes, the 2011 flower catalogs started to arrive in the mail this week. As you enjoy your flower gardens this summer, take a look at what's doing well, what's not, and if you feel so inclined, let me know!

That's all for this newsletter. I hope everyone is having a terrific summer. I know from the number of "out of office" replies this newsletter will get, that lots of you are away on vacation and I do hope you're having a great time, but I have to confess, since I really haven't had a day off since I planted the first flower seeds (that would be way back on Feb 1st), I'm so jealous!

What we did with those cherry tomatoes

2010-07-13T17:43:00.002-04:00

Pasta with Zucchini Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta

It's time to dig out those summer veggie recipes. Here's one we dug out after picking the first cherry tomatoes a few days ago...

4 medium zucchini halve lengthwise then cut into ½" slices. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp kosher salt, drain for 30 min, then rinse
1 lb farfalle or other small pasta
5 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion chopped fine
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp lemon zest
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
¼ cup fresh mint leaves chopped fine
2 tsp vinegar
½ cup kalamata olives quartered
4 oz feta cheese crumbled

Cook pasta, drain and set aside in a large serving bowl.
While pasta is cooking:
In a large hot pan, brown rinsed zucchini in 1 tbsp olive oil (if pan is crowded, do it in two batches, you want air spaces between the pieces of zucchini), remove zucchini from the pan and set aside.
Cook onion with 1 tbsp olive oil (3 mins.)
Add garlic and lemon zest. Cook for 1 min and remove from heat.
To the drained pasta add: 2 tbsp olive oil, and everything else except for the feta. Toss, then sprinkle with feta. Serve warm or cold. Make lots -it's great as leftovers!

A walk in the mud

2010-07-10T07:48:00.000-04:00

It's been too darn hot to spend any unnecessary time in the fields, but with a good rain on Friday we were willing to venture out to the tomato patch, even though we were ankle deep in mud. Why would we do this? Because there just might have been a few ripe tomatoes, and there were! Yellow cherry tomatoes are always the first to ripen, and sure enough we found a few. About a pint. Just enough for dinner. Well worth getting covered in mud! Keens are easy to rinse off anyway.

In the picture of our field (click on it for full size), we're looking down the tomato patch towards our greenhouses. You can see our deep footprints in the muddy lane that cuts through the field. The big sprawling tomato plants in the foreground are the cherries, next to them are two rows of plum tomatoes, next we have three rows of our standard red slicers, with the raspberries in the background. To the right of the lane we are growing peppers. If you look very carefully, past the peppers are melons. The melon rows start in front of the greenhouse on the right. We'll blog about the melons later, they will be great this year, unlike me, they love hot weather!

Nothing but Calibrachoa

2010-07-05T07:56:00.000-04:00

A well known journalist, lecturer, and grower in the Ontario flower industry figures that as growers, we should be growing nothing but Calibrachoa (sometimes called 'millionbells'). He's joking of course, but given their wide range of colour, non-stop blooming, and absolute ease for the gardener to grow, we understand what he's getting at! Just look at that photo! It's SuperBells White Calibrachoa from Proven Winners, just a single plant growing in a 6" pot in our greenhouse. It has a mounded, semi-trailing habit, so it makes a great filler, and as you can see, trails over the edge of the container (yes, behind all those blooms is an ugly green plastic pot).

We are puzzled by something: it doesn't sell very well. I think it should be planted instead of Gulliver White Bacopa, because it has more blooms, and it blooms all summer (Bacopa is finicky and stops blooming in the hot summer unless it is babied along). We sell five times as much Gulliver White as we do SuperBells White. Maybe that's because we've been growing GW longer, and it trails more. Oh well, next year we are growing the trailing version of SuperBells White, so watch out Gulliver White, your days may be numbered!

Our latest Newsletter

2010-06-29T07:35:00.000-04:00

From our latest newsletter (Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 14 No. 5 Sunday June 27, 2010):

Hot cold hot cold wet dry wet dry. That pretty much sums up this past spring. As a result the strawberries bloomed all at once, which makes them ripen all at once, so the season was much shorter than normal. We've been talking to the cherry growers at market, and it's the same thing -the cherry season will be short. And the weeds, they're coming on all at once too! Yes, Mother Nature sure makes farming, shall we say, "interesting!"

    * Raspberries
      "David, I have never seen a better looking patch of raspberries" said our crop consultant a few days ago. It sure was nice to have good news about a berry crop this year, we knew the raspberries were looking fantastic, but our consultant has seen a lot of different raspberry patches over the years, so that really means something. The canes are absolutely loaded with berries. Right now we've got enough berries for a steady supply of "ready pick" berries at our store.

    * Pick-Your-Own
      We are all set to have a fantastic pick-your-own raspberry season, and it will begin in a few days -depending on the weather of course. We're checking the patch each day, and as soon as there are lots of ripe berries for easy picking, we'll open up the patch for the pick-your-own. The best picking will be over the next two to three weeks. Please note, picking starts at 9:00 in the morning this year, an hour later than other years. In the photo, Rebecca is enjoying an evening walk through the patch -what a great dessert! By the way, the currants are ready to pick right now.

    * Seascape Strawberries
      If you missed out on the main season of strawberries, don't worry, you can still enjoy our "day neutral" summer strawberries. This is experimental for us this year, so we only planted four short rows, so that we can learn how to grow them best. They are just starting to ripen, and we like them -the flavour is very good. We'll be picking them every Sunday (we don't have enough for every day). We had our first taste last week, they were good, tasted just like strawberries should, but it was an unusual harvest. We picked a few from the field, but most of them came from the hanging baskets and small pots that we had planted up!

    * World Cup Fever
Did you notice Rebecca's jersey? With four Mexicans living on our farm, we are, of course, rooting for the Mexican team. As I write this early on Sunday morning, I'm looking forward with great anticipation (and trepidation?) to this afternoon's game against Argentina. Any sensible fan would just close the farm so that we all can watch the game without any interruptions, and you customers would be out of luck. But we are also devoted to providing you with that "just picked" freshness, so of course we will be open, and we're recording the game. As it turns out we won't be able to watch the game until Monday night, and we want to watch it without knowing the outcome. This is where you come in: If you are coming to the farm Sunday afternoon or on Monday, please please please don't mention the game! Thanks!

You'll be seeing more summer crops coming in over the next few weeks, everything is growing very well, and I'm keeping a close eye on those heirloom tomatoes. We'll do our best to keep ahead of the weeds!

Bye for now,

The first pint

2010-06-23T11:42:00.000-04:00

It's their irresistible smell that makes them so wonderful. In our farm store this morning, we had a table full of strawberries, and in came the very first tray of raspberries for the season. All you could do was smell raspberries as their bouquet enveloped the area, overpowering everything else. What a delight, I had to nibble a few right away, then run for the camera before I ate too many!

So the raspberry season has begun! We now have a steady supply of raspberries (hopefully until the end of July). We will have lots of pick-your-own raspberries soon.

Crop of the Century?

2010-06-17T07:55:00.000-04:00

Raspberries Raspberries Raspberries

We have never seen the canes so loaded! Fifty years from now you'll be telling your great grand children how back in 2010 you picked two six quart baskets of raspberries without moving your feet (what's wrong with a little exaggeration?). Our crop consultant says he has never seen a better crop of raspberries anywhere in his entire 40 year career.

We have picked the very first red rasps (they went straight into the mouth). We'll have some for sale next week, and the famous 2010 pick-your-own by the end of June into mid July.

Hutchinson Farm News Vol.14 No.4

2010-06-06T11:53:00.000-04:00

Our latest newsletter:

What a month it has been! We've gone from short pants in April, to ice on the strawberries in mid May, followed up by a record breaking heat wave. Just a few days ago we were struggling to keep everything watered, and believe me it was a battle, thank goodness we've sold all the lobelia -it needed watering three times a day in our hot greenhouses! Oh, well, at least we finally got some rain, so we can give the irrigation pump a rest! It is hard to believe that a mere three weeks ago, we had gale force winds, temperatures barely above freezing, and customers purchasing flowers dressed in winter coats, hats and mittens. Wow, that's just not right!

Berry Update
An almost snow-less winter, mid-winter thaws, an early spring, a dry spring, three nights of late frost, and a heat wave. It's a strawberry farmer's nightmare. The season will be short. Yield will be down, maybe not enough berries for pick-your-own. That's the bad news out of the way. We do have good news: The first strawberries will be picked very soon (this weekend?), the raspberries will be early, and they look excellent, as do the currants. Look for raspberries towards the end of June.
Flowers Update
We still have a great selection of flowers, you could even say there is still too much choice! Certainly we have sold lots of things (including Pretty Much Picasso), but as I look down our list to the right, there are only a handful of flowers that we're completely sold out of. Maybe I'm getting better at predicting how things will sell? Maybe not: Black Magic Ivy Geraniums, White Superbells Calibrachoa, and Tidal Wave Petunias. Three flowers I can't figure out why we still have so many of them left.
Milton Market Don't forget there is no Milton market Saturday June 5th. The downtown businesses decided to have some kind of street festival, and booted the market off the street so that they could have lots of time to set up. The lack of support for the market by these businesses and the town council (who supported the closing of the market) leaves me speechless. If you're unhappy with the market being closed, the downtown merchants are who you need to talk to. We'll be at the Saturday Burlington Farmers Market as usual. Check it out, it's never canceled!
Not everything makes the newsletter: The first rhubarb, a big kiss, a scary beetle... posted on our FaceBook page and our Blog

As I was writing this newsletter, I kept thinking that there was something else I had been meaning to mention, but it wouldn't come to me, even though his sharp teeth were gnawing on my toes! Yes, we got our new pup a few days ago, so we now have two Chocolate Labs in the family, so far so good, he's managing to pee outside most of the time, but you may see me wearing some tattered shoes!

What's under your hat?

2010-05-31T15:29:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I'm walking between our greenhouses (water water water) and some bug flies into my glasses, with a thump that makes me think whatever it was must have been pretty big. About 10 minutes later I either I look up, or take off my hat, and you can see from the photo what had taken a ride under the brim of my hat, just a hair's breath from my forehead. To give you an idea of it's size, the thread lines of my brim are a 1/4 inch apart, making this fellow about 1.5 inches long! Yikes! At least he was a good sport and stayed on my hat long enough to get his picture taken!

My entomological sources tell me:
"It is definitely a Buprestid Beetle - Metallic wood boring beetle.
Which species I am not sure although from the look and size it could be
a Flat-headed Pine Heartwood Borer (_Chalcophora virginiensis)_ which is
one of the biggest at 25-30mm."

The first red strawberry

2010-05-31T14:54:00.000-04:00

This should have been posted three days ago, forgive me, it's either do a blog entry or water our flowers.

This is the first ripe strawberry of the year, the variety is 'Pikan'.
Pikan is an ornamental strawberry, grown in our greenhouse, and it's the only strawberry I know which has pink flowers. It's a great trailing plant for mixed containers -trails lots, has a nice colour bloom, the foliage is a beautiful deep shiny green, and you get a little treat every few days all summer long! Yummy.

The first field berries will be ripe soon, btw

Greenhouse Visitors

2010-05-25T09:21:00.000-04:00

This morning during my daily tour of inspection, I discovered a swallowtail butterfly on the geraniums. Luck was with me, for I had my camera, and was able get this picture. He (or she?) was almost upside down, so this shot is of the underbelly. Obviously she had no experience as a model, or maybe she was camera shy.

Does anyone know exactly what type of swallowtail this is? I got out our butterfly book and tried to identify it, but failed miserably.

Smooch

2010-05-12T14:19:00.000-04:00

The sun came out today for about twenty minutes, which was just enough time to snap a picture of this new gazania (gazania blooms close at night, and when it's cloudy). This is 'Big Kiss Yellow Flame' one of two new gazanias for 2010, the other is 'Big Kiss White Flame'. The 'Big Kiss' series is slightly bigger than the regular 'Kiss' gazanias which we have grown for many years. Gazanias have a mounded habit (10 - 12" round), and are great for that hot dry spot in your garden. They look great, we think it's neat that they open and close, the only drawback to them is that unless it is sunny, you can't see them! Click on the image for a great looking full sized pic.

Just add sugar

2010-05-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

In spite of the stinking cold weather of recent days, we are now harvesting our first field crop of the season. Just look at those glorious red stalks of rhubarb, makes your mouth water doesn't it! I must confess, rhubarb is not my favourite _______, hmmm, it must be a vegetable I suppose, definitely not a fruit, although it is best eaten as a fruit crisp....actually, I think you could argue that rhubarb is a herb! Why do I say this? Hang onto your seat belts, this blog entry is about to change into a philosophical question about the difference between a herb and a vegetable. Go ahead check out your dictionaries and Wikipaedia, but I think a herb is something you add in small quantities to your dish for flavour, and a vegetable is the non-seed or non-fruit part of a plant, and you can eat it on it's own. I don't think you can eat rhubarb on it's own. I think Rhubarb is a herb, that you add in small quantities to sugar!
Asparagus (definitely a veggie) in a few days, if we ever get some heat!

In the Newspaper

2010-05-07T09:55:00.000-04:00

Kathy Renwald wrote a great article today about our farm, specifically about Rafael Gonzalez, one of our Mexican workers. Everyone is talking about it, and it's well worth reading. Kathy writes a weekly column in the Hamilton Spectator, and you'll find the article on Rafael in the Thursday May 6th edition (GO section, pg 10), or you can download the PDF version here: Field of Dreams. Thanks Kathy!

Bring your own boxes

2010-05-04T11:06:00.002-04:00

Is it safe to plant now? It sure felt like summer yesterday and again today, and with the trees in full bloom, the freshly mowed lawn, it even smells like summer. But what about that old rule of thumb: wait until the May 24th weekend before it is safe to plant? That's three weeks away! Hmmm. Now I'm not going to stick my head out and say it is safe to plant, but the 14 day 'forecast' looks mighty good :-)

And we're off...
It's official, we're open for another season! We're now opening at 9:00 in the morning (actually 8:53, when Alexander gets on the school bus). We're open every day, even Mondays until the second Monday in August (guess what day I'm looking forward to). Wendy and I were wondering if there would be any interest in us staying open late for flower sales. We were thinking just a couple of Friday evenings. Let us know, and if there is sufficient interest we can stay open, and as I said to Wendy, "I'm bribable!"
And the winner is... Remember our speculations in the last newsletter concerning the first flower to sell out? Would it be Pretty Much Picasso? Calliope Dark Red? Or my guess of Raspberry Blast? Well, it was a geranium called 'Rocky Mountain Orange'. Not my pick, in fact none of us picked it to be the first one to go. Lots of Raspberry Blast Supertunias still available, btw.
Farmers Market... Just a quick reminder, Wed May 5th is the first day of the Burlington Mall Farmers' Market. Gillian and Mike will have our truck filled to bursting with our flowers, so please drop by and say hello. Be gentle with Mike, he's still recovering from his first year at U of T.
Flower Trays In our last newsletter I talked about the surprisingly high cost of empty flower trays, and you had a chance to vote on our blog poll: Should we hide the cost of our flower trays, or price them separately? The results were overwhelming, you want the trays priced separately. So, the price for our 4½" pots (geraniums and everything else) will be $38/doz.
I have good news and bad news. The good news: this price includes $4.37 in taxes. The bad news: this price does not include the price of our trays (they're $2.00 each). I have more good news: you don't have to buy our trays, in fact we don't want you to. Please bring your own boxes, bins, etc, or skip the boxes altogether, and gently lay your plants down in your car. Extra boxes? Leave them here, they'll get used!

It has been a busy couple of weeks in the greenhouses, and I can't believe I actually found the time to write this, but this newsletter is done! Hope to see you up at our greenhouses soon, they are bursting with colour, and the selection is outstanding (except for Rocky Mountain Orange). You'll probably find me at the end of a hose.

Bye for now,
David

P.S. The photo, taken this afternoon, features our 12" mixed hanging baskets: Bordeaux Supertunias, Gulliver White Bacopa, and Deep Purple Lanai Verbena. A beautiful combo we call 'Grape Expectations'.

Seascape Strawberries

2010-05-03T16:29:00.000-04:00

We're just too busy in the greenhouses these days to do much blogging, but here's an entry on a new strawberry for us. We'll be growing them in the field this year (and we have a few extras left over that we've potted up to sell with our flowers).

Ahhh, strawberries all summer long! You can have your cake and eat it too with these Seascape berries. Introduced in 1988, this UC Davis berry has Californian size and appearance, with Ontario's sweet delicious flavour. Once it starts bearing fruit this July, it will keep producing until it gets cool in autumn.

Garden Performance: Great for containers or in the ground. Clipping off the first set of blooms, and any runners, will promote a more vigorous plant, and higher (but later) yield.

It's our Open (green)House

2010-04-24T17:00:00.000-04:00

Sunday April 25th, 2010 1:00 - 4:00pm
It's too early to plant, too early to buy, but now's the time to plan your garden. Come up for a visit and a chat to see what's new in our greenhouses, and this year there is a lot of new stuff. The choice of flowers for your garden has grown exponentially in the past ten years. 2010 has even more choice than ever: full sun impatiens, the unheard of Lobularia, a petunia called "Pretty Much Picasso", and much more....

Your Favourite Flower

Everyone who comes to our open (green)house will receive a small flag. As you stroll through our greenhouses, place the flag in your favourite flower. Rebecca and I have already placed ours.

Our fabulous flower finder treasure hunt
Rebecca helped design this new game for kids to do when they're at our farm: what's the biggest flower, which one smells best....

Proven Winners

2010-04-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Proven Winners

We grow lots of Proven Winners flowers. Proven Winners is just a brand, by the way, and if you are into gardening, you likely have heard of PW. Of all the flower brands there are, PW probably is the best at branding, "Wave" petunias being the only other well known flower brand.
PW has a great website, with tons of information, photos, it even has little audio files with the correct pronunciation of all their flowers. I was looking up something the other day and discovered that you can now order plants online from them! I'm not sure if we can get them here in Canada -their website says something like plants ship to US only, $40 extra for shipping to Canada. huh?
What really caught my eye was the price! $7.45 or a 4.24" pot. Taxes and shipping extra. Wow. Of course the price is in $USD, so it's not like the almighty Canadian dollar.

We grow our plants in 4.5" pots so, I guess we win the pot size contest.

Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 14 No. 2

2010-04-17T13:29:00.002-04:00

Here is our latest email newsletter:

April 17, 2010

Spring is running about three weeks ahead of time here in North Burlington, our grass needs mowing already, the forsythia is so full and 'yellowy' that it's almost painful to look at, the spring peepers give a beautiful concert each evening, and the cardinal....hmmm, actually we can't exactly say we're enjoying the cardinal this year. We've had this beautiful red male cardinal around our house for maybe a month and a half. Each morning he wakes us up with, now I know you're probably thinking the songs of the cardinal are lovely, but that's not how he wakes us up. Every day, just a few minutes after sunrise, that cardinal flies straight towards our bedroom window, and BONK, crashes beak first into the window. You'd think that might hurt. Apparently not. He does it about a dozen times at the bedroom window, then he flies off to do something else for a while, then he attacks our dining room window, then moves on to the playroom window, and throughout the day we'll hear him periodically crashing into our windows. Needless to say they are very dirty right now, but there is no point in cleaning them!
Alexander posted a video of him on YouTube: Crazy Cardinal

2nd Annual Open House...(open greenhouse) Come for a sneak peak at what's available this year in terms of our spring annuals. It's too early to plant, but it's not too early to plan. All of our greenhouses will be open for viewing Sunday April 25th in the afternoon, and just about everything will be blooming. We'll be on hand between 1:00 - 4:00pm for a chance to chat and show off the new stuff (such as Raspberry Blast SuperTunia, which you can see in the photo that I took earlier today in our greenhouse).
Remember, no wagering
We are quite excited about all the new flowers we have this year, and there is great speculation among us as to what we will sell out of first. Rafael's thinking it will be the Calliope Dark Red Geraniums, Wendy is thinking it will be our new 12" mixed hanging baskets, and Deb is leaning towards the new crazy petunia Pretty Much Picasso. These are all worthy contenders, and there are lots more that I haven't mentioned. Now, as the newsletter writer I have an unfair advantage in our little contest. All I really need to do is mention a certain flower in the newsletter, say Raspberry Blast SuperTunia, talk about how beautiful it is (a terrific deep pink with a light pink striped picotee effect, on a great shaped plant), maybe include a picture (like the one above), and casually mention that because this is the first year for them, I didn't grow very many (after all, they may not grow very well -I could have planted them at the wrong time! or used the wrong fertilizer! or grown them at the wrong temperature!). If I said stuff like that, then all you newsletter readers would start thinking about it, and maybe start wanting it, and I would win our contest. That's not fair to the other contestants, so I'm just going to keep quiet and not mention the wonders of Raspberry Blast SuperTunia.
Flower Trays In our continuing effort to reduce garbage we have been trying over the past few years to use less of our "Hutchinson Farm" flower trays, or rather, encourage our customers to use them less. The thing is, they are shockingly expensive, non-recyclable, and they may hold green things, they are definitely not 'green'. Our earlier efforts have helped a bit, but they were complicated, so we're going to do something different this year. We are thinking about charging for the trays separately ($38 for the flowers, $2 for the tray), instead of including the tray with your flowers ($40). We hope a lot of people will start using their own boxes, bins, etc. What do you think? Vote on our blog.
Facebook I'm not into facebook (is this a sign I'm getting old?), but I know lots of people are, so we have a facebook page: Hutchinson Farm on Facebook. We've actually been on Facebook for over a year, but I completely forgot about it!

Before I go, let me say a few more words about our "which flower will sell out first" contest. I mentioned a few other contenders, and they deserve some press space too:
Calliope Dark Red - it is indeed the greatest red geranium of all time, and we have over a thousand of them, that should be enough for everyone. Maybe.
Pretty Much Picasso with its green edged bloom (that's right, this petunia flower has green in it) is an oddball, and some may even call it ugly.
12" mixed hanging baskets These are our newest introduction, and we've never done anything like them before, so potentially it could be a big disaster. They were planted over the March break, are looking very good right now as they come into bloom, and we have a feeling they will look fabulous by early May.

Bye for now, hope to see you next Sunday (the 25th),
David

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These trays aren't cheap

2010-03-29T12:30:00.001-04:00

You know those waxed trays that hold a dozen of our geraniums? The last time we bought them they were just under a dollar each, that was 4 years ago (that would be the empty tray, with no flowers ;-) ). The next time we buy them, they will be about $1.50 per tray (this doesn't include handling or assembling them, etc.) We have always encouraged our customers to return the trays, re-use them, or use their own boxes. Lots of our customers do just that, but most of them don't. Last year we gave a discount off the price of the flowers if you used your own trays, and kind of had a deposit thing going when people brought them back. It was too complicated, so this year we're trying something different.

The price of our flowers is going to be $38.00 per dozen, including all the taxes.
Should we:
1) Charge $38.00 for each dozen, and then charge $2.00 for each of our trays? (customers could use their own trays, and wouldn't have to use ours)
or
2) Charge $40.00 for each dozen, with the tray included in the price?

What do you think? Vote on our poll.

SunPatiens

2010-03-24T15:19:00.001-04:00

Another exciting new release for your garden this year is Sunpatiens, or to be precise SunPatiens®. It is possible you may have heard of these already, because last year they were available exclusively from a certain big box hardware store (aka Home Depot). I'm not sure if they were available in Canada, so it may have been only in the States, it doesn't matter, because they're available to all growers this year. Since this our first year to grow them, we won't have very many, but I suspect they are going to disappear in a hurry. The photo is taken by yours truely, last summer at the JVK trial gardens in St. Catherines, Ontario.

Here's our description:

Winter Hardiness: Annual
Light Requirements: Full sun - part sun 
Where to plant: Large Containers or Beds
Height: 24 - 48" 
Width: 18" - 48" 
Spacing: 16 - 20"  

They're the flower we've been waiting years for: a true sunshine impatiens. SunPatiens® are the first Impatiens to thrive in full hot sun, all summer long. Their ability withstand the heat of summer is truly extraordinary, and amazingly they also are happy in shade -even indoors!   

Garden Performance
SunPatiens® are easy to grow, and will thrive until frost. They're available in three habits: Compact, Vigorous, and Spreading, but watch out, even the 'compact' ones are big (24” - 36”) so they'll do best in the ground, or in very large containers. We have eight varieties this year, and even more coming next year. 

Growing Guide
Lots of room and lots of sun! SunPatiens® are new, so we've never grown them, but it sounds like a easy flower to grow and keep in bloom. 
Fertilizer: Moderate feeder, any all purpose, compost, etc 

Colours and Varieties 
There are three series with a total of 15 cultivars. We are growing 8 varieties in 2010 (marked as*) 

Vigorous SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 36 - 48"
Garden Width: 36 - 48"
Container Height: 24 - 36"
Container Width: 24 - 36"
Colours: Variegated Coral*, Lavender*, Magenta*, Orange, Red, White*

Compact SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 24 - 36"
Garden Width: 24 - 36"
Container Height: 18 - 24"
Container Width: 18 - 24"
Colours: Blush Pink*, Deep Rose, Light Coral, Lilac*, Magenta*, Orange, White

Spreading SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 36 - 48"
Garden Width: 36 - 48"
Container Height: 24 - 36"
Container Width: 24 - 36"
Colours: Variegated Salmon, Variegated White*

Further Information (links) :
SunPatiens are developed by Sakata 
Even better, there's an exclusive website: SunPatiens®

Lob-U-What?

2010-03-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

Lobularia
Snow Princess Lobularia is a new release for 2010. I bet you've never heard of Lobularia before, and I bet you think in the picture it looks an awful lot like alyssum. You're absolutely right. Lobularia is Alyssum. Seems the botany taxonomers have decided that from now on Alyssum should be known as Lobularia, so Snow Princess is indeed an Alyssum, and I don't mind if you call it alyssum, we won't tell the botanists. We saw it for the first time last summer where we took this picture at the Proven Winners® trial gardens.
We thought it looked pretty good, so we're growing them this year.

Our Description of Snow Princess:
Annual
Full sun - part sun 
Large Containers or  Beds 
6 - 8" Tall 
12" - 24" Cascade

Snow Princess is a new release from Proven Winners® for 2010, best described as a trailing alyssum. The mounding white blooms have great staying power, require little maintenance, and have a beautiful fragrance.   

Garden Performance: Snow Princess will put on a great show all season. It's more heat tolerant than regular alyssum, but watch out, it's a hearty drinker, so we don't recommend growing it in small containers. It is a vigorous grower, so be careful with your combinations, as it will outgrow its neighbours!

Flower Update Week 6

2010-03-12T16:30:00.001-05:00

March 8th, 2010

Here we are in greenhouse #1, the second greenhouse to be filled with plants. Mostly what you can see are the seed geraniums.

Back in our ivy geranium greenhouse we are in the process of putting on the wire hangers. It is a slow and tedious job. Each wire is threaded through a tiny hole, then wrapped around itself to secure it. Each basket has four wires and we have hundreds of baskets to do. We don't do them all at once, just a few everyday, and after four weeks, they'll all be done.

There is a faster way to attach the hangers. If you use plastic handles instead of the wire ones, they only have three strands each, and you just insert the end, and it snaps into place. It is about 10 times faster than the wire ones. The plastic hangers are also way cheaper than the wire ones. This is why you almost always see the plastic handles. Wire handles have one great advantage though, they look so much better. The wire hanger is practically invisible, the plastic ones are in your face with their artificial ugliness. We want our baskets to look their best, so that's why we are happy to spend a little more, to get a better basket.

Flower Update Week 5

2010-03-12T15:50:00.001-05:00

March 1st, 2010
Our first greenhouse is open! For the past few days we have been planting up our ivy geranium hanging baskets. We've had some beautiful sunny days, just what geraniums love. The Mini-cascade geraniums are bigger than ever, we can't wait to see them in May.

Here is a close up of one of the hanging baskets. They start off growing on benches for a few weeks before we put them up in the air. This makes it easier to water, and they're spaced tight together so they don't take up much space. This way we can grow them all in one greenhouse, and save the heating costs. Eventually they will be spread out through six greenhouses. If you look carefully at the label you'll see this variety is "Contessa Pink". We also have Contessa Purple, Lavender, Rose, Burgundy.... You haven't heard of these varieites before have you? Are these new varieties? Nope, these are Syngenta geraniums. The used to be Fischer geraniums, but Syngenta bought out Fischer and decided to rename all the geranium varieties. Sheesh, it was hard enough keeping track of all the geraniums before this huge name change, but between you and me I think we'll keep calling them by their old names.

Flower Update Week 04

2010-03-12T11:34:00.001-05:00

February 22, 2010 -The photo's are on time, but it took a few weeks to get them posted on our blog, as you might have guessed it's getting busy around here!
The geraniums are looking great, and are ready to be transplanted. You can barely see the tray anymore, we have a dense forest canopy of tiny geranium trees.

Flower Update Week 3

2010-02-15T11:40:00.001-05:00

This week we planted a few more things: Emerald and Silver Falls Dichondra, most of the coleus, the first variety of petunias, and the second batch of Salvia. So far everything is going according to schedule. The photos are not very interesting, all we can really see now is growing media and small green leave. That will certainly change as the weeks go on.

The seed geraniums are starting to grow quickly, most varieties have started to put out a second true leaf, and by now nearly all of the slow pokes have sprouted.

Here's the Dichondra just coming up. Just think, in four months it will be trailing over three feet.

The Ptilotus Joey (right row) and strawberries (middle two rows) are now visible, but the helichrysum (left row) is still hard to make out.

This bottom photo shows Salvia on the left and Rosemary on the right

Flower Update Week 2

2010-02-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

It's Monday, and it's been a week since we started with our flower planting, so it is time for our weekly update.
We are still in our grow room, we haven't planted anything new since last week, but everything that we planted last week has sprouted!

The first photo is of our seed geraniums. The cotyledons (seed leaves) are fully open now for most of the varieties. Germination is very uniform except for Horizon Orange Ice (you can see them on the right side second flat from the bottom). If you look at the enlarged image (click on it), you can see that HOI is smaller and not all of the seeds have emerged -don't worry, that's normal! Germination is probably 102%. Geraniums seed is sold with 4% extra seeds, so a package of 100, actually has 104 seeds.

Next we have Salvia. So far, so good. Salvia seed is tiny, so it is planted in rows.

Here is rosemary. It grows slowly and the seeds will germinate over the next three weeks.

There are four rows of plants in this flat. On the left is helichrysm (commonly called 'Licorice Plant'), the leaves are so small you can barely see them even on the enlarged image! The middle two rows are strawberries -again, the leaves are very tiny. On the right is Ptilotus Joey.

Simi's Chilli Paneer Recipe

2010-02-04T16:41:00.002-05:00

One of the closest restaurants to our house is Bombay's Chutney, just down Walkers Line at Dundas St. We've been there a number of times exploring what is a new cuisine for our family. One of our favourite dishes is Chilli Paneer. To our delight a colleague of Wendy's just happens to have a great recipe. It turns out it's easy to make, doesn't take long, and uses three ingredients that we grow on our farm. What more could you ask for!

Simi's Chilli Paneer

1 tbsp oil

1 tsp cumin seed

1 large onion

1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala

½ tsp ginger (powdered)

1 jalapeño chopped

1 quart tomatoes chopped fresh (or canned minced)

Salt to taste

400g paneer (1 pkg) cubed

Heat oil and cumin seed over medium heat in a sauce pan.

Add onion, cook 5 mins until done.

Add turmeric, garam masala, ginger, jalapeño, and tomatoes, continue to simmer until fresh tomatoes are soft (10 - 30 mins depending on how thick you want the sauce to be).

Add paneer, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 10-15 mins

Serve with rice

Tofu can be substituted for the paneer (makes this a great vegan dish).

Jalapeños can be substituted with any chile, or left out for a non-spicy version

Paneer

The first time we ordered chilli paneer we really had no idea what it was. The dish had these yummy cubes of something best described as the curd part of cottage cheese. Well, it turns out that's the paneer, and paneer is an unaged cheese similar to cottage cheese or queso fresco (its Mexican cousin).

So, where do you get it? We haven't seen it in our Burlington grocery stores (YET! I'm sure it will appear one of these years).

In Burlington you can get it at:

"Indian Grocers"

1450 Headon Road, Burlington

(that's just south of the Shopper's Drug Mart at Upper Middle)

And we're off!

2010-02-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

It's the beginning of February, and that means we started planting today! It is a welcome job at this time of year. It may be bitterly cold outside, the city may be closed down due to a blizzard (not this year), but inside our grow room it is warm and bright; the air is moist, and in a couple of days we'll have thousands of lush green plants to look at.

Our first photo is of our grow room -it's in our basement. The plants don't take up too much room right now, so we don't need to use any greenhouses just yet. Everything has been cleaned and sterilized and I'm ready to start planting. Today I mainly planted our geraniums that we grow from seed. We'll be growing over 3,000 of them, and the seed, which is the size of ½ a grain of rice, are planted by hand one at a time. Once that's done (it takes a couple of days), I'll plant some rosemary, salvia, and a few pots of greens that we might get to eat in a month!

In the second photo you can see the geraniums all planted -in 14 weeks we'll have the first blooms and you'll be able to plant them in your garden. I'll do a blog entry about once a week, and you'll be able to see how they're coming along.

"A health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food"

2009-12-16T10:02:00.000-05:00

I just like that quote by Michael Pollan -it makes you think doesn't it?
I've been reading a few books on food recently: Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Mark Bittman's Food Matters to name a couple. Both authors really make you think about the food that we put in our mouths, and I of course think about how our farm fits into it all. I think the food we grow on our farm, and what you do with it before it gets to your table, is a refreshing and uplifting contrast to the stuff that "Big Food" wants us to eat.
We'll be talking a lot about this in the days, months and years ahead.

Last field job of the year

2009-12-14T11:14:00.001-05:00

Strawberry plants don't survive our winters without a something to keep them warm and protected. All they need is a few inches of straw to keep them happy, until the warm weather returns next spring. In the photo, you can see the straw blowing out the side of the straw chopper. The yellow drum holds one of those giant round bales, and slowly spins around. It's loud and dusty, I'm glad I have a sealed cab on the tractor -it's heated too!

It's best to wait until the plants are dormant before covering them, so I start mid to late November, and timing is everything:

too warm -the ground is soft and squishy
too cold -berries suffer
to late -danger of deep snow or bitterly cold weather
wet straw? doesn't spread evenly, and the twine may be frozen to the straw and a challenge to remove.
too windy -the straw blows away
too rainy -the farmer gets grumpy
too snowy -can't see what needs covering, can be too deep to drive through.

Our berries are now all covered, I just need to take off the straw chopper and put on the snow plow. We're all ready for winter!

No More Pumpkins

2009-11-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

Another season has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who came out to our farm, buying what we've grown, and supporting local farming. We're ready for our winter break!

The very first job of the postseason, is to collect all the unsold pumpkins. The goal is to have just a few pumpkins left over. If we don't have any left over, that means we haven't grown enough, and if we have lots left over, that represents a lot of waste in terms of seed, fertilizer, other growing and harvesting costs, etc. I think we grew the perfect number this year.

If you were in our greenhouse (GH #3, it had the bumpy pumpkins in it) earlier in October, you will remember the tables covered completely with pumpkins. By Halloween, it was almost empty, not too bad considering the weather was not terrific this pumpkin season.

What happens to the left over pumpkins? They go to our compost pile where they will breakdown, and eventually end up back in our fields providing nutrients and organic material that keep our soil healthy and fertile.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Who gets voted off the greenhouse?

2009-09-22T10:07:00.001-04:00

As we continue to add more great flowers to our spring line-up, some of the old flowers need to be put out to pasture to make room for the new stuff. My nominee is Gypsophila. If you have any feelings about this flower, please vote on our poll.

Reasons to Stay:

Gypsy Deep Rose Gypsophila, is a small compact plant, covered with flowers, that blooms all seasons. This pink Baby's Breath won the All American Selections award about 10 years ago. It looks fabulous in our greenhouses in May.

Reasons to Go:

Actually, there is only one reason for it to go. "Gypsy" has very fine leaves, so it is prone to drying out. Depending on your container, it may require watering every day, possibly twice a day if we have a heat wave. It is absolutely unforgiving if you forget to keep it watered. If you forget to water it, and it goes a bit droopy, it will recover. It will let you do this once or twice, but after that, it is pretty much a gonner. We're not very good at watering our containers, and as you can see, it didn't do very well for us. Next to it was a container of geraniums that did great with the same amount of watering.

Pretty Much Picasso

2009-09-18T09:59:00.001-04:00

Would You Buy This?

Named "Pretty Much Picasso" this may be the most unusual petunia you've ever seen! I like it, I think it's refreshing and new, but I'm not sure if would plant it in my garden. Hmmm, what do you think? To help us decide if we should grow and sell it next year, vote on our poll!

For further information on this new petunia: Proven Winners

More from our garden

2009-09-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

Calliope Red Geranium Here's a pic of the best new geranium in a number of years. It's Calliope Red, and it's terrific. It's called an "inter-specific" geranium because it is like a regular zonal geranium, AND has a trailing habit. When grown in hanging baskets, to will completely hide the basket. The red is probably the nicest red geranium colour available, impossible to do it justice with a photograph. It will need occasional dead heading, and as you can see ours could do with a little trim. We've had more comments from customers who bought it this year and loved it, than any other flower we grow. Definitely we'll be growing a lot more for next year -and watch out for a new Calliope colour too!

Interesting tomato article in today's Spec

2009-09-17T10:07:00.000-04:00

There was a brief article on this year's tomato blight in The Spec this morning. I thought it was balanced, covering the major issues, from differing points of view. A bit brief on the research, but it was a short article after all. I couldn't have written it better myself. Well, actually, sure I could.

Views of our Garden

2009-09-16T17:12:00.002-04:00

Here's a look at some of the flowers that we've grown this year:

Silhouette Red Double Impatiens. We've got them growing in morning sun which they really like. There are about three plants in the photo. No work other than watering occasionally. Actually the hose doesn't reach that far, so I guess they were ignored all season long!. My kind of plant.

Whirlybird Nasturtiums. Nasturtiums are a great filler. Plant them in a "hole" in your garden, and they will fill it in with beautiful blooms that are good to look at, and also to eat! Nasturtiums spread out over walkways as you can see in the picture.

Have your tomato and eat it too.

2009-09-14T10:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, another post on tomatoes, and I'll start with a few questions:

What would you prefer, sun ripened tomatoes or chemically ripened tomatoes?
What would you prefer, hand picked or machine harvested tomatoes?
What would you prefer, Roma tomatoes for $24/bushel, or $12/bushel?

Lets go out on a limb, and figure that most people want a bushel of sun ripened, hand picked tomatoes for $12. On our farm, we hand pick sun ripened tomatoes, and they cost $24/bushel (we actually pick in ½ bushels for $12). They taste great, but why can't they be cheap like the ones at the grocery store?

It all comes down to economics, and as you know, modern industrial farming goes to great lengths to satisfy consumers' demand for cheap food. On our small farm, Rafael can pick about three bushels an hour. In the large farm roma tomato business, one man can pick over 1,000 (yes, one thousand) bushels an hour! How is this possible? They are picked by machines such as the Pic Rite HC290. On our farm, Rafael only picks the ripe tomatoes, and leaves the green ones to continue ripening in the sun. If you are harvesting by machine, you need all the tomatoes to be ripe at the same time! How is this possible? The tomatoes are artificially ripened with chemicals such as ethephon. Forcing tomatoes to ripen all at once is great for the bottom line, but there is a huge loss of flavour and sweetness of the tomatoes.

Large tomato farms have a huge economic advantage over small farms like ours. Through economies of scale, and automation, they can produce tomatoes that are very very cheap in comparison to ours. At this time of year we get lots of inquiries about our tomatoes from people shopping around for their sauce tomatoes. Some ask about flavour, or how they are grown, but the vast majority are asking one thing, "How much?" For an extra 25¢ a serving, they could enjoy superb tomato sauce all year long, but off they go in search of cheap tomatoes, that look good, but are tasteless.

I am constantly amazed at how little our society cares about taste, and that that so many people taste only with their eyes. If it looks good, it must taste good? Maybe its got something to do with us all being in a big rush, and we've got time for a quick look at what we're eating, but we don't take the time to sit down and enjoy great tasting food.

I'm glad there are enough of you foodies out there who do pay a little more for our tomatoes, so that our crop is profitable, and we'll grow them again next year.

Tomatoes - 05 - Black Zebra

2009-09-11T14:50:00.000-04:00

Another (and last) of our striped tomatoes. Black Zebra is dark orange with green stripes, and a deep red interior.

Black Zebra has an exceptionally rich, complex, really delightful tomato flavour that contain hints of smoke and sweetness, characteristic of the best black tomatoes -one of our favourites for looks and taste.

Tomatoes 04 - Tigerella

2009-09-10T11:00:00.001-04:00

There is confusion between Tigerella and Mr. Stripey. I bought and planted Tigerella seed, and this is what we got. Image searches of either tomato will get you many images that are the same. Maybe they are actually the same tomato, known by two names. Who knows? 'Tis the nature of heirloom tomatoes.

Tigerella is a small tomato about 1½" in diameter. We use it sliced as wedges in salads, and that probably is its best use. It's texture is similar to cherry tomatoes -firm skin, with a juicy interior.

Update: This is Tigerella. Mr. Stripey is a large red tomato with yellow stripes, and it actually isn't very stripey!

Tomatoes 03 - Green Zebra

2009-09-09T17:35:00.001-04:00

Is this not the most eye-catching tomato you've ever seen? This beauty is ripe when it is yellow with green stripes. The flesh inside is green (like Aunt Ruby's), and tastes just like a yummy red tomato. This tomato is not too sweet, which really lets the pure tomato flavours dance on your tongue, and put a smile on your face.

"Green Zebra" is a modern heirloom (Tom Wagner "created" it in 1985). It's is famous for being served at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' revolutionary restaurant in Berkley, CA.

Try this tomato, you'll enjoy it for years to come!

First Day of School

2009-09-08T10:56:00.003-04:00

It's quiet here on the farm this morning, there's some fog so you can't see Mount Nemo from our house, which gives us a feeling of isolation from the rest of the planet. It's just me and our dog Molé, and maybe a few customers. The rest of the family is back at school (Rebecca is now in grade 3, Alex grade 6, and Wendy is teaching at Nelson once again). The buses for school were late, typical for the first day, new drivers and all. Alexander's driver asked me for directions, so who knows if they made it to school!

I took the photo just before Alexander and I headed off to the end of the driveway to meet the bus. This is our bed of Tidal Wave Petunias, which I posted on this blog earlier in the summer. As you can see they are doing great. If you want a carefree bed of flowers, you can't beat the Tidal Waves. Water as needed, they fill in quickly so you don't have to do much weeding, they're maintenance free to!

Sorry about the picture quality, I hadn't noticed my camera was set to "night time"....oops!

Tomatoes 02 - Aunt Ruby's German Green

2009-09-03T17:25:00.003-04:00

You are blindfolded and someone feeds you a slice of "Aunt Ruby's."
What colour is it?
Red, orange, yellow?
You picture a big luscious ripe red beefsteak.
Wow, that's a great tasting tomato.
You will never in a million years guess you're eating a green tomato.
"Aunt Ruby's" is new for us this year, and we love it. It is a "must have" (must eat?) variety.
Use it just like any red tomato -sliced thick on sandwiches, salads, etc. It will look particularly good mixed with other tomato colours.

Stay tuned to this blog, one of these days you will see a review of our green spaghetti!

The Problem With Heirloom Tomatoes

2009-09-01T19:51:00.002-04:00

Okay, what's for dinner tonight?

Spaghetti was on the menu. I wanted to make green spaghetti out of our Aunt Ruby's German Green heirloom tomatoes. Aunt Ruby's tomatoes taste absolutely fabulous, although it is somewhat peculiar, in that they are fully ripe when they are green (to be precise, they are green when they are ripe)! I was out-voted, red was the color de jour, and our first instinct was to make the sauce from our regular field tomatoes, which do indeed taste darn good; however, I have a heck of a lot of faith in my taste buds, and I know that almost all of our heirloom tomatoes (with the exception of the yellow ones) taste better than the regular ones, so we made our spaghetti sauce out of Brandywine Pink heirloom tomatoes (and if you are keeping score, this is the longest sentence in our blog so far, so there). Phew.

You know what? That sauce was fantastic: Brandywine Pink tomatoes, Ailsa Craig onions, garlic (not from China), portobello mushrooms, sweet red pepper, a touch of jalapeno, and a splash of vino tinto (we grew everything except the 'shrooms and garlic, btw). Usually we use our regular tomatoes, with some tomato paste, plus the other goodies (no cow in either recipe), and to be perfectly honest Wendy and I were both, independently, blown away by the superior taste of the heirloom tomato sauce. Heirloom tomatoes taste so good!

So, what's the problem?

Well, heirloom tomatoes tend to have funny shapes. The Brandywines come in assorted shapes and sizes, and often have awkward marks on the bottom -it takes a bit of work to cut them out, especially if you're making large batches. We were planning on canning a couple of bushels of tomatoes this weekend. Usually we use the Romas -they're perfectly shaped, consistently sized, blemish free -fast and easy to work with! The choice is clear: fast and pretty good, or slow and scrumptious! I guess I'll be chopping tomatoes this weekend.

One last thing: I almost forgot the economics of the whole endeavour -heirloom tomatoes are about three times the price of Romas!

Name That Tree

2009-09-01T15:00:00.003-04:00

Yesterday Wendy, Alexander, Rebecca, and I enjoyed the last "family day" (school hasn't started, and the farm store is closed) of the summer. We ended up in Fort Erie. The Niagara Parks Commision does an outstanding job of their flower beds (they must plant millions of them), and they are fantastic to look at. As a grower I enjoy seeing what they've planted, what combinations they're using, how they are doing, and seeing if I know the names of the plants. In the bed in front of the historic fort, we encountered something I've never seen before.

We saw a short tree, about 4 feet high, with a 1½" thick trunk, supporting a beautiful ball of orange flowers and green leaves. Now, I know what the flower is, we grow it, it's Lantana, and Lantana is not a tree. It is a beautiful flower, but it grows down at ground level, and certainly won't survive our winters. This is clearly a fake! So I look behind the foliage to see what type of pot they're using, and to my surprise, it is indeed a Lantana standard. Wow!

This Lantana is clearly a number of years old, I've no idea how they grow it in this form, I suspect it involves a lot of work and moving it into a greenhouse for the winter.

Heirloom Tomatoes

2009-08-24T09:07:00.006-04:00

It's been a long wait, but our most anticipated crop for 2009, our heirloom tomatoes, are all ripe! After a busy weekend, we went out to the tomato patch yesterday (Sunday, after we closed) to check how they were doing, and even the late varieties had a couple of ripe fruit waiting to be picked. Needless to say, we had a yummy dinner of bread and cheese and tomatoes (along with a glass of red wine), sampling all the different heirlooms. They all have different flavours and textures, but to sum up, they all are great tomatoes, and it was impossible to choose a favourite.

I'll do a detailed entry on each variety in the days ahead, but here is a quick summary of the varieties in the photo. I took the picture (before we started eating) on our kitchen counter, and the colours are quite accurate (Brandywine Pink is pinker than pictured). There are two of each variety, one stem side up, the other stem side down. Starting at the upper right, Aunt Ruby's German Green is ripe, and tastes just like a red tomato. Green spaghetti anyone? Amana Orange looks almost the same as Brandywine Yellow, hard to tell them apart without knowing where in the field they were picked. Brandywine Pink is the classic heirloom tomato, and it's flavour lived up to its reputation. Cherokee Purple is a dark purple tomato with a solid, yet soft, texture. Brandywine Red and Brandywine Pink came from two different seed companies, each labeled simply as "Brandywine". I had a sneaking suspicion they might be different, and you can see that I was right (yes, it does happen). The three smaller tomatos are all striped, we especially liked the Green Zebra. Carbon is similar to Cherokee Purple, it's slightly oranger, and less "beefsteak" in shape.

World's largest tomatillo?

2009-08-21T08:38:00.007-04:00

The summer veggies are starting to come in, including tomatillos! As you can see they are doing great. Usually they are about the size of a plum, maybe as big as a large strawberry, but this one is a handful. The kids are away, so I took this one on the kitchen counter. Same variety as other years, and bigger than anything you'll see in Mexico too, according to our tomatillo guru!

Never heard of a tomatillo? They are not well known in our neck of the woods, but super popular in Mexico and the southern U.S. where they are used to make Salsa Verde. Salsa Verde is a delicious green salsa, if you've never had it, it is a must try. Here's our favourite recipe:

Roasted Salsa Verde

1 quart tomatillos
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1 (or more) serrano or jalapeño peppers
¼ cup fresh cilantro
½ fresh juice of a lime

Remove husks from tomatillos, rinse. Place tomatillos, onion, garlic, and chiles on cookie sheet, and place under broiler until skins brown. Cool and puree. Add cilantro and lime juice prior to serving.
Keeps three days in refrigerator, freezes well.

If you're interested in blogging, and love food, Julie & Julia is a film not to be missed. Meryl Streep is absolutely superb as Julia Child. I think I put on a couple of pounds just watching the movie! Bon apitite!

Tomatoes 01 - Black Zebra

2009-07-31T20:21:00.005-04:00

I went for a stroll through the tomato patch today, and look what I found! It's one of our new tomato varieties this year, called "Black Zebra". It's a heirloom variety, large cherry sized, dark red with green stripes, and the flavour? Well, we were so busy eating it (there were only two ripe ones), we almost forgot to take it's picture! Full of flavour, sweet, nice and acidic, the way a tomato is supposed to taste. Firm texture.

Tomato Taste Test #1
Since it's early in the season and our tomatoes are not quite ready, we had bought some at market -a few greenhouse tomatoes, and some field grown yellow cherries (both from local farms, of course). The standard greenhouse tomato had a nice flavour, and looked beautiful. The yellow cherry tasted better, it was very sweet, but not acidic enough. Our Black Zebra was the ugliest (it had skin blemishes characteristic of most heirloom varieties), but in terms of flavour, it was the clear winner. Ok, maybe we're biased, but what the heck. Stay tuned for more tomatoes, we've got about two dozen varieties this year! Ahhh, two and a half months of great cheese and tomato sandwiches!

Zucchini Blossoms

2009-07-26T10:49:00.003-04:00

Beautiful to look at, and delicious to eat. We use them to make quesadillas. I'll put a detailed recipe up on our website soon, but basically you remove the stem from the blossoms, and fry them up with a bit of onion, then add it to your tortilla with the cheese. Yummy.

They're best picked first thing in the morning -the blooms open, so they look lovely, and it's easy to shake out any bugs! They keep best in water, and should be used the day they are picked.

Views of our Garden

2009-07-22T11:44:00.005-04:00

Here are a few highlights from our garden this year. I guess you can say we do a pretty good job of growing flowers in our greenhouses, but I must confess to almost completely ignoring our garden. Here is an assortment of flowers we're growing this year that are doing well, in spite of neglect!

Mini Cascade Red Hanging Baskets: These are simply the best hanging baskets you can possibly grow. Almost all you can see is colour, the pot is completely covered with a profusion of blooms that last from May until October. It's completely maintenance free, with an invisible wire hanger, all you need to do is water (and they like it on the dry side which is great if you're not good at remembering to water!). We even add slow release fertilizer so you don't need to bother with that.

Sparkler Cleome: This tall background flower is another of our maintenance free favourites. Plant it. Ignore it. Extremely drought tolerant.

SuperBells Dreamsicle Calibrachoa: Commonly known as "Million Bells", these flowers bloom and bloom all season. They're easy to look after, all you have to do is water them. In this planter, we've combined them with Horizon Orange Ice Geraniums.

Tidal Wave Petunias: Best flower bang for your buck!

What do farm kids do in the summer?

2009-07-13T11:30:00.003-04:00

Ahhh, summer on the farm, endless hours of picking, weeding, chores, chores, and more chores. Work the kids from dawn to dusk, they'll thank you for it when they're older! Well maybe not. It's not our philosophy anyway, and we don't want the kids to grow up hating our farm.

This summer, Rebecca spent a week at sailing camp (at the BS&BC here in Burlington at LaSalle Park), and as you can see from her smile, she had a great time. In the photo she's sailing an "Optomist" (Opti's) back to dock after a morning out on the water.

Our family took up sailing a couple of years ago. It is a great way to escape (mentally and physically) from the stresses of the farm. We go out on our Laser 2 when we have the chance, which isn't nearly as often as we'd like.

Are you my Mother?

2009-07-01T08:11:00.006-04:00

A Mother bird sat on her egg. The egg jumped.
“Oh oh!” said the mother bird, "My baby will be here! He will want to eat."
"I must get something for my baby bird to eat!" she said, "I will be back!"
So away she went.
The egg jumped. It jumped, and jumped, and jumped! Out came the baby bird!

The baby bird sat up and looked around.
"Mother!" he said, "What have you done to the tree?"
"This is not a tree, this is a hanging basket!"
"And what are those large, noisy, two legged, flesh coloured, creatures doing in my story?"
"I am not in the right story!" "Help!"

This May was pretty cool, so the kids weren't spending much time out by the swimming pool. A robin decided she found the perfect spot for her nest -quiet, secluded, sheltered. Oops. We had a robin trying to build a nest in a couple of hanging baskets in our greenhouses in early May. It's a bit puzzling as to why there are pieces of string coming out of the hanging basket, but it all makes sense when you have a closer look and find a partially built nest in it! I move those hanging baskets before the mother robin gets settled in, and I guess she gave up on the greenhouse subdivision, and started building on the waterfront property! She chose to build in a Calliope Red Geranium basket -new and trendy indeed !
We're carefully watering the flowers so the leaves continue to provide shelter for the four baby birds, other than that we try to leave them alone. We've had nests in hanging baskets before, and the birds make out just fine.

California Strawberries

2009-06-24T13:14:00.005-04:00

Interested in the strawberries that are for sale at your grocery store? Check out this article: A Strawberry's Journey (Toronto Star, June 21, 2009) It's a fascinating read (there's a video too) about California strawberry farming, and how they get from the field to your plate.

Wendy's parents grew up in California, and over the years we've been out many many times visiting her relatives in the Sierra Nevadas and the Monterey Bay area. Ahhhh....the ocean, the surfer dudes in Santa Cruz, fisherman's wharf, Big Sur, deep fried artichokes, authentic burritos....and of course Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the world. Needless to say we are very interested in California strawberries.

The photo is from our vacation in 1994, taken near Watsonville, just off Highway 1

Watsonville is a great place to grow strawberries -great soil, excellent supply of water, and a great climate -I remember Wendy's grandfather saying it was the perfect place to live: It never got cold in winter, so you didn't need a furnace, and it never got too hot in summer, so you didn't need air conditioning!

It's tough being an Ontario berry grower competing with California. California berries are big, look fantastic, and I know we like to complain about their flavour, but a California berry picked in June tastes pretty good. It's those berries picked in March, and the winter Florida berries which have a flavour and texture problem.

Strawberries are way cheaper to grow in California -their season is longer, yield is more than 10 times ours, and they have cheaper labour costs. We also have huge costs protecting our berries from the extreme cold of our winters. You might think that transporting strawberries all the way from California would cost a lot. The environmental cost of all those trucks carrying berries to market is certainly high, but the cost where it counts -the price you pay at the store, is only a few pennies per box.

Methyl Bromide is great at clearing soil of all pathogens such as nematodes, bacteria, fungi, weeds, etc. Believe me, if we had used Methyl Bromide on our field last year, our berries would have been so much better this year. Banned globally because it destroys the ozone layer, we can't use it; however, California is exempt from the ban, so once again advantage California, disadvantage Ontario berry grower, disadvantage planet Earth.

If the truth is to be known, I'd love to go and pick my own strawberries in Watsonville....ahhhh....wake up to the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean at the Monterey Beach Resort, drive 45 mins up the coast to Santa Cruz where the kids (of all ages) can ride the carousel (Alexander and Rebecca are fifth generation riders of that merry-go-round in our family), a 15 minute drive to the berry fields, not enough time to pick, so we'll just buy (we always spend too much time playing in the ocean), Cioppino for dinner at Phil's in Moss Landing....okay I'm leaving tomorrow!

A tale of three quarts

2009-06-18T09:57:00.006-04:00

Strawberries are sold in all sorts of different containers. For years the quart has been the standard size, and we've been picking into white cardboard quarts for decades. We decided to investigate what other quart boxes are available.

The photo shows three popular quarts: green plastic, white cardboard, and green fibre.
White Cardboard: It's sturdy, looks good, 100% recyclable, made in Ontario from Ontario trees. The major drawback: PRICE! At 19¢ each they are the most expensive.
Green Fibre: Not as strong, as the cardboard, but also recyclable and locally sourced. Less expensive too, 14¢ each.
Green Plastic: Strong, water proof, and cheap at 15¢ each. The type 5 plastic is non-recyclable in Halton. The thin bars also dig into the soft berry flesh. Some are made locally, but they also come from, you guessed it, China.

Size Matters
A quart is a quart right? In the photo the green plastic quart easily slips into the white cardboard quart. Surely this is impossible if they are both quarts! When filled level to the top, this is what they hold:
Green Plastic: 850 mls
White Cardboard: 1000 mls
That's a 150 ml difference! How come the plastic "quart" is 15% smaller? Turns out, the plastic quart has an optional raised lid, and the volume under the lid is the missing 15%. Yikes!
From a grower's point of view that's great, your profit has jumped 15%. From the informed consumer's point of view, "Hey, that's a rip off!"

What do you think? Vote on our poll!

First Pick!

2009-06-17T17:21:00.002-04:00

Strawberries are here at last! They have arrived a week to 10 days late than usual, but that's what happens when you have a cool spring. It is slim picking right now, taking about an hour to pick a tray of berries, so we won't have enough berries for the pick-your-own until later next week.

A late season is never a great season, and is often a short season, but fresh berries are always a treat, and there's no arguing with Mother Nature.

Just look at the shine on those berries, you only see that on berries that are just hours old.

They're growing bigger

2009-06-12T13:46:00.003-04:00

With a few more days like today (sunny and warm), we might have some ripe strawberries. Most of the berries are now small and green, but there are a few at what I call the "teasing stage" They look ripe, but when you turn them over, they are still white on the other side. We will probably be able to pick a few next Friday (June 19). Stay tuned.

A Monarch feeding on Lantana

2009-06-06T17:30:00.004-04:00

Lantana is one of the new flowers we are growing this year (see earlier post on timing). It is described as a flower you can plant to attract butterflies. Imagine my surprise this morning, as I was making my "what needs to be watered" rounds, I saw, on Bandana Orange Sunrise Lantana a monarch butterfly happily feeding! Wow! I rushed back to the house to grab my camera. This one is a male (you can tell from the distinct dot)

First berry of the season

2009-06-05T17:09:00.003-04:00

We grow strawberry plants in our greenhouse as part of our selection of annuals. We have them in hanging baskets as well as individually -they're an interesting filler or trailer for mixed flower containers. Not only do they look good, they produce a delicious treat as well! Pikan is especially nice as it has a pretty pink flower. So, the very first berry of the season comes from one of our hanging baskets, and I ate it, seconds after taking this picture.

The trouble with white geraniums

2009-06-04T17:23:00.002-04:00

White is very popular in the garden this year. It goes with everything, is great as a contrasting colour, "pops" out in shady areas, and is stunning when the entire garden is white. We sell lots of white geraniums, but we think they are a bad idea. Here's why: geranium blossoms open slowly, first at the top, then gradually the florets open, moving down the blossom, and the last ones to open are at the very bottom. That's just the way geraniums work. The trouble is, there is at least a 10 day difference in floret opening times on a geranium bloom. The first ones will be "past their prime" by the time the last ones open, and on a white geranium, this shows up as icky brown!

What's big and round and orange all over?

2009-06-03T15:17:00.004-04:00

These small plants are started in our greenhouse and are soon to be planted in the field. Right now, they look just like zucchini, or melons, or cucumbers, or squash, or gourds, but they are in fact pumpkins. If you look carefully, you'll see that the plants on the right side look a bit different from the ones on the left -that's because they are different varieties of pumpkins. Imagine: your Halloween pumpkin may be starting right here!

It's all in the timing

2009-06-01T12:40:00.004-04:00

I try to grow our flowers so that each plant has one fully open bloom by the second week of May. If it blooms later than that, customers won't see the colour, so it won't sell very well. An earlier bloom will be past it's prime for peak May sales. Timing is easy when you've grown a particular plant before, it's the new stuff that is a problem! It's always a guess the first time you grow something, and boy did I get the Lantana wrong this year. The buds are just about to open up today -that's nearly a month late! Better luck next year.
(btw, Diamond Frost was new this year, and timing was perfect for it)

Chasing hummingbirds

2009-05-31T22:09:00.003-04:00

Each spring, hummingbirds can be found in our greenhouses. One flew by me this afternoon in our ivy geranium greenhouse, and I just I happened to have my camera. The chase was on for the elusive hummingbird photo. Hummingbirds often get "stuck" in our greenhouses. They seem to think that the only way out for them is up, towards the light, which means bumping their heads into our greenhouse roof (don't worry, it's soft plastic). As evening comes, they discover that down and out through the door is the way out. It's always a treat seeing them

Lots of blooms

2009-05-29T23:51:00.002-04:00

A stroll through the strawberry patch today showed lots of blooms, but no berries, not even tiny green ones. Our guess for the first ripe berries: June 20th (later than usual).

The wave watch begins

2009-05-28T12:32:00.004-04:00

If you've been to our farm in late April or early May, and taken a look over at our house, you might have noticed our bed of daffodils. One of the dilemmas gardeners face each spring, is having to wait for the bulbs to die back, before planting other flowers in their place -the sooner you replace the bulbs, the less well the bulbs will do next year. We plant Tidal Wave Petunias between our clumps of daffodils. The daffodils are happy because they aren't cut off, and just wait to see how fast those Tidal Waves out grow the daffodils!

When will it rain?

2009-05-27T12:08:00.004-04:00

It's a quiet day on the farm, time to do some computer work, such as starting up this blog!
The guys are out weeding the strawberries, and we hope to get that all done before the rains begin. While waiting for customers, I'm tidying up the greenhouses, the flowers do look great if I do say so myself!

So far so good (for me, the novice blogger), I've uploaded an image, chose "small", maybe I should have made it bigger? We'll see.

The picture is of a cart loaded with flowers that a customer picked out from our greenhouses. Looks like Tango Orange geraniums, Gulliver White bacopa and Silhouette Red double impatiens.