Sunflower shoots at market and heirloom tomatoes!

Well we certainly made up for the missed rain in the early spring. what looked like a potentially very dry spring has become a constantly wet one...not that I'm complaining...unless you're getting into flood situations it is hard for a farmer to complain about rain.

All this rain has driven me in doors and thankful the field work is on track so it hasn't been an inconvenience. I did inter-plant the heirloom tomatoes into the lettuce beds this past week. As the tomatoes establish and grow I will harvest the head lettuce around them. If all goes well, the lettuce will be out and I'll be able to thickly mulch the beds before I trellis the tomatoes and they really leaf out. I actually have extra transplants which surprised me since I was underestimating the length of my beds, but I think I planned on an 18in spacing and decided to do a 24in spacing. The larger spacing will allow for both easier harvesting and less competition for the tomatoes, and since the soil is supporting both the tomatoes and the lettuce, it already has a lot on it's nutritional plate, so to speak.

I'm excited about our heirloom varieties...we are growing Copia, a large-sized orange/yellow tomato, and Rose de Berne, and medium sweet red. Our third variety is not an heirloom but a personal favorite of mine, Sun Gold, an orange cherry of intense flavor that is prone to splitting and therefore can't be found except at farmer's markets. I need to figure out where to put the extra Sun Golds and I'm thinking about inter-planting them with the spinach since that will be cleared out for the summer any way.

The most exciting happens around the farm is selling sunflower shoots at Eastern Market for the past couple weeks. Each week we've brought more and each week we totally sell out. Last year, we never sold more than 6 lbs at market (in 4oz bags) and last week we sold all 10lbs that we brought. Who knows if this will continue, but we had a few back orders this week so we ended up cutting 14.5lbs for market...I'm keeping my finger crossed. :) Of course our success is also due to the lack of variety at the Grown in Detroit table right now and thus our shoots are more tempting to folks, I'm sure as soon as we really get into the harvesting season they'll take more of a back seat...which is fine, we'll just take advantage of our early season markets as much as possible.

Speaking of markets, Northwest Market will be starting this Thursday (4p-7p...I think) and our sunflower shoots will be represented, so if that is more your neighborhood than Eastern Market come check out the Grown in Detroit table. The Wayne State Market (Wednesdays, 11a-4p)will be starting up the first week of June and we'll be there too, so check us out and support Detroit farmers!