Our Variety

Before the leaves emerge on Ohio trees, the forest floor comes to life.   Joining this early leap into the growing season are Wild Leeks, or Ramps.  They are tiny alliums with green leaves, maroon neck and white root.  They grow in clumps in spots where the forest canopy has opened up due to a fallen tree in the recent past.  We harvest them sparingly so as to not disturb their fragile foothold in the ecosystem.  Ramps conclude the growing segment of their life cycle just after the tree leaves shade them out from sun.  This gives us about 2 weeks to harvest them before they become dormant and their leaves and stems die.  Ramps when cooked have a mild flavor that some describe as a cross between onions and garlic.  I find they have their own unique flavor that should be enjoyed for what it is.  The entire plant is eaten.  We often hear of our customers making them into a pesto.

We buy our Turmeric rhizomes from a Hawaiian supplier and they are delivered in early March.  We sprout the rhizomes in trays of potting soil in the warmth of the house.  After the sprouts are established, the trays are moved to the germination greenhouse.  In early May, the plants are set out into the soil in our high-tunnels.  In September, we begin harvesting the Turmeric root as “fresh” Turmeric which is to say the roots are not mature and fibrous with a tough skin.  They are tender, juicy and packed with flavor.

We grow a relatively small amount of berries mainly as a benefit for our CSA members.  When our blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and gooseberries are in season, our member families are invited to pick some for themselves when they pick up their weekly share. Our Blueberries varieties are Duke and Blue Crop which are both early berries.  Our Black Raspberries varieties are Chester and Triple crown.  Red Raspberries are Encore, Heritage, Nova and Prelude.  Gooseberries are Black Velvet and Jahns Prairie.  We also have a couple Currant bushes, Jonkeer Van Tets and Red Lake.

I confess, even I sometimes feel that eating my vegetables is like taking my medicine.  But that is never true when it comes to melons.   It is tough to find a moment more singularly pleasurable than when I’m sitting in a melon patch, carving up and eating a damaged watermelon.  A split melon is usually perfectly ripe and wasn’t going to make it to the market anyway.

Small Watermelons do well for us.  They are sweet and taste great.  Generally they ripen much sooner than their rotund cousins.  So we can get them to you before the fungi get to their leaves and the insects get to them or their vines.  Blacktail Mountain, Sugar Baby and Crimson Sweet are our workhorses.  Crisp, red and sweet flesh, round and smallish, they have tough skins and ship well.  And yes they have seeds.  Each year we also take a stab at growing yellow, orange and white-fleshed watermelons.  They taste great as well.  But they are tricky to harvest when they are ripe enough to be sweet, yet not so ripe as to burst.

Cantaloupes, Musk Melons and Honeydew, like the unusual watermelons, are a challenge to harvest.  We want to leave them on the vine as long as possible so that they ripen to their optimal flavor and sweetness, but we don’t want them to burst.  So we grow time tested commercial varieties like Athena, Strike, Superstar and Dewlightful to make sure we get a crop.  Also each year we try old world varieties like Zatta and Charentais.  Hailing from Italy and France, these melons are most likely enjoyed by our helpers in the field as they are very delicate when ripe and delicious.  A good day to volunteer at the farm is melon harvest day!

Along with Sweet Italian Basil, we grow Thai, Lemon, Lime and Cinnamon Basil.

Common Cilantro.

Common Dill.

Growing Ginger for us is fun because it really pushes the limits of what can be grown in Ohio.  We buy our Ginger rhizomes from a Hawaiian supplier and they are delivered in early March.  We sprout the rhizomes in trays of potting soil in the warmth of the house.  After the sprouts are established, the trays are moved to the germination greenhouse.  In early May, the plants are set out into the soil in our high-tunnels.  In September, we begin harvesting the ginger root as “fresh” ginger which is to say the roots are not mature and fibrous with a tough skin.  They are tender, juicy and packed with flavor.

Common Lemon Grass.

We grow both Italian Flat Leaf Parsley as well as Curley Leaf.

Common Rosemary.

Common Sage.

French Tarragon.

Common Thyme.

Much has been said about eating locally recently.  if you are inclined to eat local, please consider these crops whose ancestors were far from local.  Many Asian Greens such as Bok Choi, Tatsoi, Komatsuna and Napa Cabbage flourish when most garden vegetables have gone south for the winter.  All of these crops are Brassicas.  Same as Broccoli and Kale.  Each has a unique flavor and texture.  Each loves the cold and is perfectly happy to freeze and thaw to grow another day.  For me the star in this group is Tatsoi.  pretty enough to be a Thanksgiving table centerpiece, Tatsoi is the most cold hardy Asian Green.  It’s unique flavor is somewhat like cabbage.  It also seems to work well in everything from a salad to a soup or stir fry.

Our Asparagus spears emerge in early April and are harvested for about 3 weeks.  A perennial, the Asparagus roots store starches throughout the summer as the plant’s 5’ tall ferns do their job and feed the plant.  The swollen roots send up about 6 spears for harvest.  After that, we need to allow any subsequent spears to develop into ferns.  This gives us about 3 weeks to harvest Asparagus spears.

Our varieties are Jersey Giant, Jersey Knight and Purple Passion.

We have the best results growing beets in the spring and fall when fungi are less active and the leaves can stay vigorous longer and the roots size up faster.   Whether we’re growing the latest hybrid or an ancient Cylindrical variety, they do well if their leaves are relatively free of fungi.  I personally favor a robust beet flavor with a minimum of “earthiness” and find this in Boro, Red Ace or Cylindra.  Some customers are big fans of Golden Beets.  For them, we grow them.  But each year the seed we buy becomes of progressively poorer quality.  Even if we use twice the seed, we only harvest about 20% per square foot compared to what we get from common red beets.

If you read research into the nutritional content of vegetables you will find a big winner is Beet Greens.  That’s right.  The part of the beet plant that most people throw away.  Simply prepared, quickly steamed or sautéed, or even raw they are delicious.  We harvest Baby Beet Greens as an ingredient for our Salad Mixes.  From us, the best beet greens are available late spring and late fall.  This is when the fungi, that enjoy leaves of this plant family, are least active yet the plants are growing vigorously.  During the summer months, the fungi feast on the leaves.  There are a few very nice varieties readily available from seed companies.  Bull’s Blood have deep dark red leaves and Early Wonder Tall Top have abundant green leaves.

To help ease yourself into eating beet greens, remember that beets are close relatives to spinach and Swiss chard.

Broccoli is one of those few vegetables that everyone in American knows of.  So if you are visiting a farmers market for the first time, and you don’t want to go home empty handed, you are going to look right past the parsnips and the dinosaur kale and buy some Broccoli.  And that’s why we’re here, to grow your Broccoli.  It is a cool weather crop so we plant it as early as we can, in the spring, then again 2 and 4 weeks later.  As with most crops, we usually plant 3 different varieties. This helps us absorb extremes in the weather.  Depending on temperature and rain, some varieties will thrive and some will struggle.  Late summer we do it all again for our late season crop.

Cabbage is a cool weather crop.  We plant them as soon as we can in the spring and then again in the late summer to mature in the fall.  We plant 3 basic varieties, Common, Red and Savoy.  Each year the seed companies try to convince us to buy a couple of each type from the hundreds that are available.  So we spends our money and takes our chances.  One specific variety will out perform the rest as it proves to be the most comfortable with whatever extreme weather we are experiencing that season.

People love fresh Carrots.  So we grow a lot of them.  Our heavy, fully mineralized soils produce delicious Carrots.  But frankly, it is a lot of work.  We must form raised beds, by hand or with a tractor, to give the carrots soil that is loose and deep to grow in.  This also keeps the carrot roots from rotting when we hit one of our inevitable rainy spells.  Carrots are slow to germinate, then, they are slow to grow the first 6 weeks of their lives.  Weeds germinate quickly and grow quickly.  Consequently, our fields, that used to be hay fields (weed fields), have plenty of weeds doing their best to overrun our carrots.  Much of the weeding is painstaking fingertip work.  Come harvest time, the carrots do not want to leave their heavy soil homes and can’t be lifted out of this type of soil with a machine.  So we dig each one by hand.

We grow orange, yellow, red, white and purple carrots.  And we can’t seem to grow enough of them to keep up with the demand.

Cauliflower offers us a matrix of options.  Spring and late summer plantings.  White, orange and purple.  60, 70, 80, 90, 110 days to maturity.  So we plant mostly white varieties and fill the field with some from each maturation date.  This gives us a very long harvest window.

We grow 3 kinds of Celery: Common, Cooking and Celery Root.  Our common, grocerystore-like Celery varieties are Tango and Calypso.  They look like grocery celery but have a much more robust flavor as they are grown in fully mineralized soil and not California sand.  Cooking Celery has a much thinner stock that often is hollow.  These are hearty plants that thrive until a couple hard frosts.  You can’t spread peanut butter on the stalks but in a soup or strew the flavor is outstanding.  Celery Root, or Celeriac, plants such as Prinz or Mars are scrawny little plants that form big beautiful roots.  Harvested in the fall, these roots are skinned, diced and added to soups and stews for their distinct flavor and crunch.

Napa Cabbage is one of the under utilized vegetables that we love growing.  It grows well most of the year except the dead of winter and the long hot days of mid summer.  It can be enjoyed raw a salad or it can be lightly cooked and added as an ingredient in more involved prepared foods.  It can also be used in fermented foods.  Napa has a mild flavor more like lettuce than cabbage.

I love a vegetable with a story.  Claytonia grows wild in the areas that were home to the California Gold Rush.  The minors ate it to add hard to come by nutrition to their diets in the cold months.  Hence it is now know as Minor’s lettuce.  We are happy to grow this vitamin rich and tasty green in the cold months.  It has become a key ingredient in our Winter Salad Mix.

Cucumbers are described as slicing and pickling.  But we have found for the most part, given the right size, they are interchangeable.  We grow about a dozen different kinds throughout the season.  Some are tiny 4 inch long pickling and others are 3 foot long beasts with a Mediterranean heritage.  You will have a tough time fitting a Tortartello Abruzzese or Armenian cucumber in a jar.  But if you skin and seed these jumbo cucumbers you will find a unique sweet flavor not found in the little cucumbers.

If you are looking to make pickles, be ready to can with the first fruit set early in the summer.  Cucumbers are very susceptible to fungus.  Fungi like humidity.  Ohio is very humid.  So once the mildews that prefer cucumber leaves emerge, organic growers have a tough time offering quantities of pickling cucumbers.  So get them while you can.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “eggplant” is flea beetles.  Flea beetles love eggplant leaves and will quickly reduce them stems and brown lace if left to their own pursuits.  We have learned to cover the crop with floating row cover after we set out the greenhouse grown plants into the field.  This gossamer thin fabric keeps the hungry insects off the plant long enough for it to build half of it’s frame and get ready for the first fruit set.  Once the plants become too large for the fabric, it is removed and the beetles dive in and the end of the eggplants begins.

We have the best results with Traviata,  a hybrid common eggplant.  Asian varieties Dariyu and Long Slim thrive in our fields as well.  We also grow a small amount of Rosa Bianca and Listada because some of our customers enjoy them and ask for them each year.

An old world bean with kind of a cult following, Fava beans are plated in the early spring at the same time as we plant peas.  People who like these beans must really like them considering the extra work that is necessary to prepare them.  We will keep them coming if you are ready to shuck them.

As a child, I assumed that anise flavor was an adult conspiracy to make children not eat candy or pastry.  Licorice candy and anise flavored pizzelles were disgusting.  But I’m a big boy now and I love fennel, which boasts a robust anise flavor.   Fennel thrives early summer and late summer.  So we plant 3 or 4 times a year to hit those sweet spots.  Heirloom varieties such as Florence and Finale as well as Hybrids like Orion all seem to do well for us.

We plant our garlic just before Halloween each year.  An easy date to remember.   When we keep the garlic roots damp, but not wet, and keep the biological activity high in the damp soil, we get to harvest nice big garlic bulbs in early July.  We used to grow a dozen varieties but lately we have pared that down to about 6.  Some varieties were not suited for our soil and climate.  Music and Georgian Fire are our most popular varieties with large cloves while Italian Red and Susanville are our most popular with more numerous cloves.  All have robust flavors.  A few years ago we staged a garlic tasting.  But after a few tastes, my taste buds were done for the evening.  So I called them all winners.

Early June, we harvest Garlic Scapes, the flower stem of the garlic plant.  Garlic scapes are a prize for those who eat locally and join a CSA or attend farmer’s markets.  They are only available for about 3 weeks.  Our customers enjoy Scapes as an ingredient in egg dishes and other simply prepared dishes as well as the main ingredient in a pesto.

Most people understand beans.  Simple, satisfying food.  That’s why we try to plant beans early, often and as long as we can.  Each year we choose 3 green bean varieties, 3 Yellow Wax bean varieties and a few specialty beans like Dragon Tongue and French Horticultural Beans.  This year, in our high-tunnels, we are going to grow a few varieties of pole beans.   Updates on that soon.

 Each year we dabble a bit with shell beans.  Lima and others for our CSA.

Arugula is a delicate plant with a delicate nutty and spicy flavor.  A cousin to the bulky cabbage and cauliflower, this takes quite a few plants, leaves and minutes to harvest a pound of these tasty little leaves.  Most times we grow the Astro variety.  Its easy and quick to grow.  We also discovered a variety that was back bred with wild arugula, called Katie.  Good flavor and a nice texture.

Endive and Escarole are cousins to lettuce.  They grow along side our lettuce.  As they have a limited appeal, we do not grow much.  But we would feel irresponsible if we did not add it a few times to our CSA bags and offer it to our farmers markets customers.  Last year we had good luck with Frisse and Rhodes Endive as well as Batavian and Eros Escarole.  And yes, the deer really love these crops!

Mustard Greens are brassicas, like broccoli, and grow around the world.  We grow large varieties like Giant Southern and Red Southern as well as numerous Asian varieties such as Komatsuna.  Each does well braised or as an ingredient in more complex dishes such as stir fry, frittata or soup.  Like most brassicas, they like cool weather and most can withstand a couple frosts.

Our Horseradish originated from a large west coast organic farm and I don’t remember the specific variety.  But it grows well here.  Spicy too!

Many of our customers are committed to eating local.  Kale really helps them out.  It grows most of the year and fills the void early and late in the season when not many nutritious greens are available.  We grow equal amounts of Red Russian, Blue Scotch, Siberian and Lacinato along with Winterbor in the winter.  The deer prefer Lacinato, just in case you were wondering.

Another big plus for us last year was Baby Kale.  We grew it primarily for the restaurants we supply.  In 2014 we plan on growing enough of it for all of our customers to enjoy.  Our Baby Kale Mix includes Lacinato, Siberian, Russian and Scotch varieties.

We try to have Leeks available as much of the year as is possible.  Our main crop is seeded in germination trays, along with our onions, in February.  The Leek transplants join the onion transplants in the field in April.  We choose different varieties of Leeks that mature at different times throughout the summer.  Varna first, then Bandit and Tadorna.  Mid Summer we plant Bandit again for Fall harvest.  Late Summer we seed Gigante d’Inverno which are planted in our high-tunnels in the fall for spring harvest.

More varieties of lettuce are available to us than with any other leafy green.  And that is a good thing because we grow lettuce most of the year for many different tastes.  In the spring and fall, head lettuce flourishes.   Butter Head, Romaine and Leaf are the basic types.  A dozens versions of each will usually emerge from our fields each year.  In the summer we focus on Summer Crisp.  It is kind of a cross between Romaine and Leaf.  The heads are not as big and sweet as the shoulder season crops but they are fresh and satisfying.  Otherwise baby lettuce is a big component of our Salad Mixes.  My favorite baby lettuce is Lolo Di Vino.  A frilly red leaf, this lettuce will grow in temperatures from 0 to 90 degrees and laugh off most pests and diseases.

Mizuna is a beautiful, frilly mustard green.  Either green or purple, we harvest Mizuna most of the year as delicate baby leaves for our salad mix.  Sometimes in the warmer months the plants will get away from us and reach their full 18” height.  So we will harvest and bundle it and offer it as mature mustard green.  It’s a great as the last ingredient you toss into your stir fry.

Onion seeds begin to go into germination trays in February.  When they are small Onion Plants, they are planted in the field from March through April, whenever the weather allows us and we have the manpower to do the work.  The Bulk of our Sweet and Storage Onions are harvested in July when they mature and their green tops tilt over.  The bulk of our onions are either Sweet, Storage Yellow or Storage Red.  We usually plant a half dozen varieties of each.  In addition we grow a good amount of Red, Yellow and White Cipollini Onions as well as Scallions.  I feel the Cipollini Onions make the best grilled Onions.   Scallions are planted and harvested practically throughout the entire year.

Parsnips look like large white carrots.  While being a close relative to carrots, they have their own unique flavor and texture.  Parsnips are a favorite of holiday dinner tables for a couple reasons.  They take a long time to mature, adding much of the mass of their roots after the weather cools in the very late summer and fall.  Parsnips also benefit from a few frosty nights.  The cold triggers changes in the plant converting it’s stored starches to sugars.  Another Parsnip fun fact is that Parsnip leaves are toxic to the skin.  Many people develop a severe rash on their skin when in contact with Parsnip leaves and direct sunlight.

In the late winter, when our germination greenhouse still has a lot of empty space we fill trays with our potting mix and germinate Peas for their Shoots.  While not very filling, Pea Shoots make a wonderful additional flavor to your early spring salads.

Peas are some of the first seeds to be planted each spring, about the time when the forsythia blooms.  We grow Snow Peas, Snap Peas and Shell Peas.  I find Snow peas to be the most robust and productive plants.  Everyone loves Snap Peas when we call them Sugar Snaps because everyone loves sweet.  Shell peas are kind of the step child of the garden pea family because they ask our customers to exercise their fingers to remove the tender little seeds from the pods.  But they are probably the best flavored.

While tomatoes are the sickly siblings of the Solanceae family, which require many cultural techniques to keep them alive, Peppers are pretty hearty.  We plant them, they grow and they bear fruit.   Done.  The bulk of our Pepper crop is bell peppers.  All Bell Peppers will become red, orange, brown, purple or yellow upon maturity.  In Ohio, that is not until well into September.  We have found the peppers that promise to ripen to red are the most prolific.  We choose varieties bred to flourish in the short, somewhat cool northern climate such as Yankee Bell and King of the North.  We also have good luck with commercial varieties such as Olympus and Orion.  Last year we had a very good crop of Flavorburst that ripened late in the season to a striking yellow color.  Few Orange Bell made it to their ripe orange promise.  But we had to try.  Our purple and chocolate colored peppers did well.  But the fruit is small with relatively thin walls.

But my favorite sweet peppers are the Italian Frying type such as Corno Di Toro (Horn of the Bull) and Belcanto.  Tasty and resistant to rot, these pepper plants have massive fruit sets and reliably ripen sweet and red.  Thinner, yet with the best flavor is Jimmy Nardello which is the fastest to sweetly ripen to red.

Hot Peppers can be though of as food or spice.  Food peppers that we grow are Anaheim Chili, Pablano, Hungarian Hot Wax and Jalapeno.  Each has relatively thick walls and when their seeds are removed, they are filling and relatively mild.  For spice, we grow small quantities of Cayenne, Fish Hot, Thai, Portugal, Check Black and Habanero.  Each fruit is small and sports pretty shapes and colors.  One of any of these is enough to spice up a meal.

Fingerling Potatoes, La Ratte, Red Thumb and Purple Majesty have performed well for us over the last few years.  Our favorite larger potatoes are yellow fleshed German Butterball and red skinned Sangre.

We grow Cooking Pumpkins, to eat.  We do not grow jack-o-lanterns.  Over the last few years we have grown about a dozen different heirloom varieties from around the world.  Musque De Provence, Tonda Padana, Crown and Winter’s Destiny are a few. This year we will try a few more to discover the flavors that have pleased our ancestors in years past.  We also grow productive commercial varieties such as Sugar Pie to make sure we have plenty of pumpkins for late season baking and cooking.

Radish is a cool weather crop, most comfortable growing in the fall.  We are however able to grow the common little red round radishes you find in grocery stores spring, summer and fall.  But our favorite radishes, Black Spanish, Watermelon and Shunkyo only grow in the cool weather.  They also take 3 times as long to grow as the common radish.  They are worth the wait.  Hard, spicy and crunchy they are a wonderful old-fashioned seasonal treat.

Also know as Broccoli Raab, Rapini is more leaves and stems than florettes as is Broccoli.  Rapini grows vigorously in the spring and fall.  The flavor or Rapini is much more similar to mustard greens than common broccoli.  In our kitchen we enjoy Rapini, with a more hearty flavor than offered by most greens, in pasta sauces where it balances well with other robust flavors.

Victoria, an old fashioned variety, fills our Rhubarb Patch. We grew ours from seed years ago.  Each years as a plant reaches the end of it’s life, we replace it with a Canadian Red variety which promises to give us more of the red stems that people enjoy.  Once the plants have fully filled out mid spring, we harvest the stems and remove the leaves.  Rhubarb fun fact: don’t eat the leaves, they are poisonous.

Spinach is probably one of the most requested greens that we grow.  Unfortunately, it only grows well in cold weather.  So most of our spinach is harvested in March, April, May, October and November.  Months that have warmer days cause the plants to stop making leaves and make seeds.  The plants become dormant in the colder months, even in our greenhouses.

We have tried about 20 different varieties over the last few years.  They all taste about the same.  Each does have a slight preference for spring or fall and will remain productive in varying conditions.  So we usually plant about 6 different varieties each season to account for the inconsistencies in the weather.

Sweet Potatoes are clones.  Each year they are grown from sprouts that form on last year’s tubers.  We buy our sprouts from south eastern growers and universities.  There are few varieties open to the organic grower which are commercially viable.  In our climate, Beauregard and Japanese varieties have proved to the best.  They grow quickly and size up nicely.  Beauregard are orange fleshed and cook up mushy.  Japanese are white fleshed and are firm when cooked.  We have tried many other varieties, commercial and heirloom, with little success.  They take too long to mature and their roots are long and thin.  Consequently we can’t harvest them from our heavy soils without snapping them into pieces.

When you can’t find locally grown Spinach please consider it’s close cousin, Swiss Chard.  Chard can be grown when the days get longer and warmer and Spinach wants to make seeds rather than leaves.   Yea Chard is a bit more bitter tasting, but just about every leaf is in the summer.  So I recommend you focus on the abundant leaves and crunchy stems when you enjoy this nutritious green.  We grow about a half a different varieties, each featuring red, yellow, orange, magenta or green stems and leaves.

Tomatoes are the star of the Ohio garden.  Enough said.  We try to cover the full spectrum of Tomatoes, Heirloom and Hybrid.  The Hybrid are round, red and reliable.  And since we let them ripen on the vine, they taste great.  Of course we grow all the favorite Heirloom tomatoes: Brandywine, Hillbilly, Black, Zebra, Beefsteak…  There are literally hundreds if not thousands of possibilities.  So we make a run at trying new varieties each year: French, Russian, Italian, Asian, and of course, varieties originating from all across the USA.

Many growers don’t have much nice to say about Cherry Tomatoes.  We love them because our customers love them.  Each year we select about a dozen varieties that range wildly in heritage, size, color, shape and flavor.  After harvest we mix them together and bring them to you.  And we can’t seem to grow enough of them.

Our most popular turnips is Hakurai, a small white Japanese salad turnip.  They grow relatively quickly and are productive through much of the year except for the deep freeze of winter and the long hot days of mid-summer.  Hakurai has a mild flavor and crunchy texture.  We also occasionally offer long pink versions of the Asian salad turnip.  Otherwise in the fall, we grow the common heirloom turnips your ancestors enjoyed.

We have found that the most popular Winter Squash is Butternut.  So we grow many different Butternut varieties.  Big, small, fat and skinny, domestic and old-world, heirloom and hybrid.  Properly cured, each has a sweet rich flavor.  In addition we grow most of the other popular Winter Squash: Acorn, Delicata, Kabocha, Spaghetti.  Each year we throw in a few exotic varieties like Georgia Candy Roasters or what ever else a seed supplier can entice us to plant.

On thing to note here is that there actually is an easily discernable difference in taste between each squash variety and well worth your time to try a few out.

Zucchini, while often the burnt of vegetable jokes, is a beloved staple of the Ohio garden.  Tender and versatile, it can be enjoyed raw or cooked in countless ways.  We usually have around 10 different varieties growing at any given time during the season.  Sometimes we harvest them as tender little baby fruits.  From classic green Italian to fascinating patty pan, they arrive in endless shapes and colors with subtle flavor differences.  Otherwise we let them stay on the vine for another couple days and they become the thigh-sized monsters that everyone loves to stuff and bake.

Another way to enjoy zucchini is to use the huge, sturdy flowers.  While harvesting flowers is an activity outside our job description, you are invited to visit the farm and gather some of these beauties for yourself.