Practicing Adaptability & Seeding Tomatoes

Village Farm Team,

Farming is always a practice in adaptability. Whether it’s changes in our climate or shifting vegetable demands from our community, we are always striving to adapt. After observing buying trends and requests at the farmers market, we decided to shift our crop plan for the remaining cooler months. For instance, we lowered the amount of mustard greens we were initially planning on seeding and increased the kale instead. Since we’ve had such a mild winter, we decided to lessen the amount of broccoli and cauliflower planted since they don’t perform as well in warmer conditions and can take longer to reach harvest maturity.

Though tomatoes might be the last thing on your mind in January, the time has come to start the seeds in the greenhouse! Since they were so popular last year with the community (and among our team), we seeded plenty of the Sun Gold variety. We also seeded Juliet and Granadero (both red plum varieties), Big Beef, BHN 871 (a golden-orange variety), and Indigo Cherry Drops. We’re excited to see how the Indigo Cherry Drops taste compared to our beloved Sun Golds.

If you were able to make it out to the market last weekend or the one before, you might have noticed our beautiful bunches of Rainbow Chard. The leaves themselves range from green to bronze with stems that are either white, pink, yellow, orange, or red. If you’ve ever wondered why beet greens look and taste strikingly similar to chard, it’s because they are the same genus and species (Beta vulgaris) but in different cultivar groups. When you’re cooking your chard, don’t throw out the stems! They’re delicious in their own right but can take longer than the greens to cook so make sure you add them to the pan first.