How Things Are Growing

Well I just thought that I would let everyone know exactly how things are going here at BA Farm. We had a great start to the year with our lettuce mixes, which made me excited for the rest of the season to come. I but quickly became disappointed, as the weather this year made things difficult, slowed down a lot of our vegetables. Even though our vegetables did not like the weather the weeds did (not good).

We ended up tilling under our first planting of zucchini and summer squash, since it never really grew very much. It killed me to see it go, as I had planted some unusual varieties that I was very excited about. Luckily we planted some common zucchini and yellow squash at a friends property, which is were the above, header photo was taken (I will tell more about the property in another post, and will post more pictures). I think the reason why the zucchini did so well was because it was planted around a month later than we normally plant our zucchini.

Our peppers had a rough start and are finally starting to produce, but still not anywhere close to like they should be by now. They were previously dropping blossoms like crazy, and are still loosing a bunch of blossoms, although I have been seeing more and more that are actually developing into peppers.

My tomato plants look beautiful, even thought they are way behind and a few plants are finally just now getting tomatoes that are starting to change color. The only problem is I seem to have misplaced the paper that I had written down what varieties were planted where, and I can not find it anywhere. So I can not tell you what exactly is going to be available when, very very frustrating. I hope I can find it soon, actually let me rephrase that, I BETTER find that soon.

On the positive note my herbs are doing really well, although they do not seem to be selling, for some reason. So that means everyone needs to come to the market and buy some herbs:)

The carrots are also doing very well, and I am hoping to finally pull some not this Saturday but next Saturday (and maybe some for Strongsville Farmers Market, more about that in another post also). The only problem is there is a rabbit that knows how and were to get over our fence and into our garden (have seen him do it) and he has been munching on our carrot tops, and that needs to stop.

Anyhow to sum things up we have been having a bit of a rough time this summer, but things seem to be finally getting a little better, and are finally coming along.

Colored Carrots!

Baby Colored Carrots

So today I decided I would weed the carrot beds. I really have not looked closely at them since the last time I weeded them, and I was very happy to see how much they have grown since then. They still have a way to go but are getting there. I should have orange bunches, white bunches, purple bunches, and mixed bunches of yellow, red, orange, purple, and white. I am hoping that we will have some available sometime around either early or mid August.


There are many interesting facts about colored carrots, here are some of them:

~ Just one full size carrot will fulfill your daily quotient of the essential vitamin A.

~ Each color of carrot has a different health benefit of its own:

*Orange carrots - contain beta carotene pigments - essential for well-being, healthy eyes
*Red carrots - contain lycopene pigments - believed to guard against heart disease and cancers
*Yellow carrots - contain xanthophylls pigments - support good eye health, fight aginst macular degeneration, may prevent lung and other cancers, and reduce the risk of hardening of the arteries
*White carrots - lack pigments - but contain substances called phytomchemicals - can protect against disease
*Purple carrots - contain anthocyanins pigments - act as powerful antioxidants, can prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting and are good anti inflammatory agents

~ Colored carrots may be new to some people but purple and yellow carrots were actually eaten more than 1,000 years ago.

~ In fact orange carrots are actually the "mutant" carrot, carrots were originally purple and yellow.

~ Carrots are a member of the parsley family, along with dill, caraway, cumin, chervil, coriander, fennel, anise, parsley, parsnip, and celery.

~ There are so many different carrot varieties that there is actually a variety for every letter of the alphabet.

~ Carrots could be used as a bio fuel, you would need approximately 6,000 carrots to drive one mile. (That is a lot of carrots, sounds to me like the idea needs some work).