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Fun at the Market

Category: Market Gardening | Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:58 pm

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One thing about gardening is that you never know what strange things you will find in the garden. It might just be the neighbors cat , an unusual bird, or something like a porcupine. I'm not going to talk about animal type critters today, but about veggie type critters.

It's so fun coming across those gnarly and ugly (not really ugly if looked at in the right way) veggies & fruit. With a little imagination plus a few toothpicks and some careful pocketknife surgery I've ended up with really interesting critters keeping me company at the market.

Cylinder beets make good mice. The root is the tail, the stems (carefully trimmed) form the snout, four toothpicks for the legs, and cutting a couple of eye holes makes a neat little rodent to have for kids and adults to smile at while shopping.

Kohlrabi that have a horizontal growth split make wonderful monsters. A couple of stems poking up from below the split make tusks. The short stems with tiny leafs make great hair. A couple of eye holes, and voila! You have a monster's head. Then maybe putting it on a tomato or potato for a body you have a nearly complete creature.

Crookneck squash are simple to make into birds. Just position them with the stem end up for the neck and the big end down for the body, draw a couple of eyes with a marker and there is a duck, goose, or swan.

On occasion you find those veggies where you just don't need to do a thing. Like a potato that's a heart or the perfect heart beet. I just had to take a picture of the heart beet and make a shirt out of that.



Then there are the ones you only show to a few people. Carrots with two legs that are anatomically correct. Tomatoes with a butt crack. (Did I just say that ;) And a few where a couple of veggies have grown together. Oh my! There are some that make me grin thinking about them but don't dare describe. ;)

Oh we have fun at the market sometimes! Regular shoppers even ask where the funny veggies are. Alas... You don't always find the right shapes or have the inspiration to create a monster or animal.


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Reflecting upon the past season.

Category: Market Gardening | Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 2:57 pm

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Gosh... what a strange season, it started out wet then got dry. The onions & shallots did well. They were in early on raised rows and I had mulched them well so the dry didn't bother too much. The potatoes could have been better, couldn't get them in till late and they suffered from lack of moisture later on. Green beans, green beans, green beans! Boy did they produce, think the biggest picking was 70 lbs. Now the beets... they started out nice, lots of little plants coming up, then those pesky deer found them. By the time they were done I didn't pick a one for market. A small plum tree had lots of nice fruit and produced a couple of good pickings. I really should get more plums growing since they are good sellers at market. (They are so yummy.) There were enough wild blueberries for me to pick a couple of batches. You never know how the wild berries will do or how bad the mosquitos will be.

Gosh, there's more, I'd better cover some of the other stuff later.

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