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up and comings
- Current happenings
- 2023, newsletter
- May 20, 2023
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Woohoo! The cauliflower is finally big enough that you can kinda see that it’s going to be cauliflower, and not just leaves, so I can show you a picture.
I am a cauliflower lover. All cauliflower is good. But this cauliflower? This cauliflower is the best.
It’s called Song and is more forgiving about temperature fluctuations than other varieties and it doesn’t need its leaves tied. So it’s a good variety from a growing standpoint. But from an eating standpoint, it is amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
I share a lot of vegetables with my dog as I’m prepping a meal. And I will absolutely share other cauliflowers with her. But this variety is all mine (I’m not a total Grinch. She can have a leaf. But the florets are mine).
I’ve been taking pictures of the plants each week in my excitement, but without the little heads showing… it’s hard to get others to share in my glee.
(I know it’s tiny, but there IS an itty bitty cauliflower in the center and I just couldn’t contain my excitement any longer. I hope you express the appropriate oohs and aahs here).
Matt is stoked because the “new” (4-year-old) sweet cherry trees have set their first crop. He’s thinking we may start picking them around Memorial Day, but it’s a new-to-us variety and the very first time the trees have set fruit, so we shall see!
(the other cherry trees look good too. They haven’t colored up at all though, so aren’t of exceptional interest right now).
AND! AND!!!! There’s a decent crop on the plum trees!
The plum harvest has been… lackluster, to put it mildly… the last 5 years.
Plums tend to have a two-year rotation of a light year followed by a heavy year. But the plum crops the last few years don’t even get to qualify as light. They’ve been meh.
And that’s been across all varieties and other farms. And no one seemed to know why.
We still don’t know why. But we should – barring catastrophes – have a decent plum crop this year. Woot woot.
And for you tomato-loving people (a group I most definitely am NOT part of), tomatoes should start the first week of June. The plants are a couple feet high and have some nice green tomatoes on them.
There is also one very cool looking tomato plant with variegated (multi-colored) leaves. Whether it was a natural mutation or a mistake during seed packaging, who knows, but it’s very pretty.
New to us varieties this year are Gold Nugget, Orange Blossom, and Plum Regal tomatoes: a yellow cherry, orange slicing, and red plum tomato, respectively. (Fun fact: I have a cat named Nuggets. But as in Chicken Nuggets, not Gold Nuggets. She’s got a routine vet visit next week, so finger’s crossed I don’t have to shell out too many gold nuggets for my chicken nugget)
Some seasonal inspiration:
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Closed Sunday & Monday.
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About Highland Orchards
Completely surrounded by suburbia, our small farm has been growing beyond expectations since 1832, just north of Wilmington, Delaware.
Growing a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, Highland Orchards provides true “farm fresh” for the community all year. If you want to shake the hand of the farmer who grows for you, here is the farm! With plants in the ground or under cover in tunnels, we grow for every season. A family farm, we have three different generations involved in running the farm right now.
Come see us to eat fresh, eat local, and eat well!