The BEST Kale Plants

This September we're harvesting lots of kale. In addition to my usual favorite: the dark-green spear-leafed lacinato kale, this year we also started growing Delaway kale and it's excellent. This kale stands out for its beautiful soft-green coloring, purple stems and slightly curled leaves. The leaves are tender and not too fibrous like some other kale varieties, yet they are very flavorful and even get spicy especially in the new leaflets.

Delaway is also cold tolerant and plentiful. Two or three plants is enough to eat all summer and still have some for storage. We like to freeze our kale. First you blanch it then put it in freezer bags. Good for soup in the middle of the winter!

Of course, you can also store it in cans or jars and that's better if you want to ensure you have food in the event that there is not electricity. But for us it's just less work now to freeze much of our produce because we have a large freezer to store food in. Another good way to preserve kale is to dehydrate it, then crush it and mix with salt and other seasonings. That makes a nice salt mix with the additional nutrients, proteins and antioxidants.

Enjoy!

Mighty Roots 2017 Plant List

We're excited about the 2017 growing season and have a ton of great-looking seedlings ready for sale and available immediately.

This year we grew some familiar varieties, and some that are new to us. All seeds are from heirloom and/or Certified Organic seeds. 

The plants are available to pick up at our house, at the South Madison Farmers' Market (Sundays 11-3 at S. 1602 Park Street) or by delivery. Contact us at 608-466-6177 to set up a time to visit our Micro-Farm on the North Side. We hope to see you!

Here's our plant list for this year:

MIGHTY ROOTS PLANT LIST 2017

Tomatoes:
Amish Paste
Brandywine Sudduth's Strain
Cherokee Purple
Man of Black Sea (Determinate)
Siberian Heirloom (Determinate)
Sweet Pea Currant

Bell/Sweet Peppers:
Ruby King
King of the North
Purple Beauty Bell 
Quadrato Asti Giallo (Green)
Sweet Peppers – Marconi Red 

Hot Peppers:
Jalapeno
Mustard Habanero 
Lemon Drop 
Thai Yellow Chilli 
Bulgarian Hot 

Herbs:
Basil - Genovese
Basil - Greek 
Kaprao Holy Thai Basil (great for Thai Cuisine)
Marjoram 
Mint (Berries and Cream, Sweet Pear, Grapefruit, Lime)
Oregano, Greek 
Oregano, Syrian 
Sage - Culinary Thyme
Stevia
Thyme 
Triple-Curled Parsley

Greens:
Kale - Lacinato
Kale - Delaway
Brocolli - Calabrese
Swiss Chard – Silverbeet
Cabbage & Cauliflower:
Cauliflower - Early Snowball

$3 for plants in 2.5” pots

$4 for plants in 4” pots

Never Too Early to Start Planning the Garden

Winter months in the Mighty Roots Micro-Farm family are like an incubator for ideas and inspiration. Besides gardening, our family is also creative and loves to spend time in the winter starting new arts and crafts projects. That creativity spills over to our plant business as well.

We start dreaming of the coming growing season and thinking of new ways to do things better this time around. What seedlings will we grow this year for our customers? What new products might we make? How will we make our operation more efficient, more effective and more environmentally conscious? We also start thinking about our own gardens and what we'll do differently this year to improve.

One thing is for sure - it's never too early to start planning the garden. And, it's a great way to make the cold, long nights go by faster. Over the years we've found that the winter goes by faster than we expect and before we know it, it's planting time. Then it's a huge rush to get everything done.

That's where the planning comes in. This year, you also might want to get a head start and start planning your garden as well. The best place to start is to review last year and possibly even previous years. If you don't have garden notes, then jog your memory for what worked, what didn't and how you'd like to improve things.

Where will your garden be this year? How will you arrange it? Will you add raised beds to a section? Will you add a trellis or another feature? Does your soil need amending with compost or organic fertilizers? What will you grow and when will you plant? How will you deal with weeds and other pests?

These are just some of the ideas we think about when planning our gardens and they may be helpful to you as well. Getting a sketch pad or graph paper helps to put ideas into a vision form. Take notes, organize and prepare your supplies.

We look forward to gardening in 2017 and hope you do too. As we launch our business in 2017, we look forward to providing our customers with strong seedlings this year and helping you have a bountiful harvest. Let us know if there are any varieties that you'd like to see in your garden this year and we'll add it to our wish-list of seedlings we offer. You can let us know in the comments section or via email. Talk with you soon!

Basil Microgreens Add Flavor to Winter

It never fails to amaze me how satisfying it is to grow plants. There is something highly therapeutic to growing anything whether it's houseplants, vegetables, fruits, herbs or something else. But winter is the time of year that I really feel the therapeutic effects of gardening. At Mighty Roots Micro-Farm we're growing indoor micro-greens of some excellent Italian Basils and other herbs for our own culinary uses. It's amazing to whip up some fresh pesto in December in Wisconsin. Makes things a little warmer.

We're planning on having fresh basil to sell over the late Spring and Summer 2017 as Mighty Roots Micro-Farm LLC takes shape. Of course, we'll also have basil seedlings available Spring 2017. Take a look at the photos and get a feel for how nice it is to pick fresh basil during a snowstorm.

Timing is Everything - Patience in Planting

Patience is key in transplanting warm-season seedlings into the ground. Every year, I plant my tomato, pepper, eggplant, squash, cucumber and other warm-season seedlings later and later. That pushes back when I put the seedlings in the ground. I also don't really try to sell those plants until at least mid-May. I always warn my customers about late May frosts that catch gardeners by surprise.

Too many times in the Spring I've gotten too eager to harden-off plants I started inside and cold temperatures have sneaked up on me. This year many people I know bought seedlings early in May and planted them right away. But they regretted it because we got a hard frost the next weekend and almost everyone lost tomatoes and peppers. The first leaves of my potatoes took a hit but thankfully those are coming back.

My advice is to be patient and to realize if you have access to seedlings, wait to plant your tomato-family plants until very late May or early June when there's a seven-day forecast of good weather. If you can shoot for a time when there will be overcast days, some rain and warmth, that's ideal.

Plants get shocked when they are transplanted by things like direct sunlight, dry conditions, and variable temperatures. So be sure to allow seedlings to acclimate in a partial-shade location before putting them in the ground where they'll be in full sun. Once you do plant them, water well every day for at least a week if possible (unless there's rain).

Resilient Bees

My friend and beekeeping mentor Robert Pierce called me today with excitement in his voice. The bees in his top-bar hive were flying around outside! They made it through the long, cold winter! With the warm weather that we were blessed with today, Robert encouraged me to go check my bees. I had a faint optimism that maybe one of the colonies survived. So when I got home from work I marched over the cold and muddy ground and up through the woods to the farm where my hives are.

There on the far side of the field the hives stood like three strange monoliths. I knew one of the colonies was dead for sure because it had been taken over by hornets in the fall for some reason. The other two were not the strongest colonies so I had left the majority of the honey they produced last summer and fall for them to consume over the winter in hopes that it would give them a chance to survive.

As I got about 100 feet away from the hives, my heart jumped as I clearly could see little dots zooming all around one of the hives! When I approached the hive up close I sensed that they were strong and vigorous, yet eager to find more food. There were bees coming and going, no doubt scouting for pollen and nectar. I was so happy and amazed at the site!

My next step will be to check their honey supplies. If they have a fair amount still, I probably will do nothing more than occasionally check on them. If they are low on honey, I'd like to feed them some syrup that I made with cane sugar and water. There are a number of ways to feed bees syrup.

I also need to clean up the other two hives and see if they are still habitable for a new colony. I suspect that the hive that was overrun with hornets had been weakened by mites earlier and if that's the case, it's not wise to re-use that hive because it can infect the next colony to live there. I'm pretty sure that the third colony perished over the winter but I did see some bees around it - possibly bees from the active hive checking to see if there was any honey in it. If everything looks good in the empty hives, I'd like to invite new colonies into them this spring and also expand to two additional hives as well.

Lord willing, it will be a great year for bees, pollination and honey!

Get Your Garden Started

Even though it's been raining and cold, that doesn't stop cool season crops from thriving in the mini hoophouse!!