SPOILER ALERT! I was not allowed to show this video on social media this week. After we give you these carrots for two weeks, Josh has promised them to a single chef. He was worried that posting it might make his other chefs upset. Now you’re in on the secret too. And would you look at those tops? Those are definitely going into a pesto recipe next week. 🙂

Since the tomatoes are putting on flowers and fruit, it’s time to start trellising them up. We train the plants to grow up on the trellis so that we have more room to put in more plants. In a single-stem system, which is what you see here)  we get rid of the majority of the plants’ stems. Without all those leaves, the plant can put all of its energy into producing the actual tomatoes.

When I was pulling up the spinach in the greenhouse this week, I noticed these wonderful little mushrooms hiding beneath the vegetation. Mushrooms are a great way to measure your soil’s fertility, so I was pretty happy to see them hanging around. They also help break down the nitrogen in our wood chips, so that our plants can use the nitrogen. I won’t bore you with the explanation. If you’re interested, however, please feel free to ask Josh about it. There’s a rather complex science behind it all. In a nutshell, however, plants are not able to use all types of nitrogen. They need help from things like mushrooms and Earthworms to help break nitrogen into the ammonium and nitrate forms.  If I had to guess what type of mushrooms these are, I would say these are the common ink cap variety.

I promised myself I would not complain about the weather this week. We needed the rain after all, right? I’m just really glad that we planted our crops in raised beds which allows the water to flow off the crops into the walkways as shown here. Otherwise, our summer crops would be floating down the street by now. Rest assured, the spinach, beets, kale, and kohlrabi are all safe. There is much to be grateful for! A grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.

I’d be lying if I told you the granola bars were newly on the market. Truth be told, they’ve been there for a very long time. We have trouble selling them because they are so expensive. But there’s a reason for that. They’re made from all organic ingredients (including the chocolate chips which weren’t organic until recently). They are a wonderful snack with loads of protein, including both peanut butter and chia seeds) for those kids that are constantly on the go. The ingredients include oats, dates, peanut butter, honey, coconut oil, vanilla extract, salt, chia seeds, goji berries, & chocolate chips. Right now, they need to be refrigerated, but I’m working out how we can change that. I’ll keep you in the loop. In the meantime, they’re still a healthy snack right out of the fridge.