Week 12

This is our final blog post - how exciting!

This week we did our usual maintenance of weeding and general plant care. We also harvested this week. That was lovely and everyone was happy and plants were happy and the sun was shining and things were well. We will cook delicious meals with our plants. The kale looked the best out of all the vegetables. However, the kale was overwhelmed with aphids. There were so many aphids. The arugula and collards also did exceptionally well. The chard was rather small, so that was disappointing. Our strawberry plants were vegetatively brilliant, but did not have any mature fruit.

In the future, we would likely lay down hay on top of the beds to control weeds. The pressure from weeds was bad this growing season, so more hay would have been helpful. Also, we would spread the arugula out to give it more room. They were very clumped together and began to shade each other out. Our plot had a lot of empty space, so in the future we would plant either other vegetables, intercopped species, or employed succession planting.

Overall this was an enjoyable and fruitful CSA. So now, "lettuce be healthy".

Alexis, Grace, and Jake harvesting the veggies

A cute little ladybug

Eek! Aphids!

Our group harvesting

An immature strawberry

Group 4 in the garden

The harvest

Here we are right behind our beautiful veggies

Week 11

Today’s maintenance was as you can guess, weeding.  Our kale, collards, arugula, and yellow chard are growing quite beautifully while our strawberries continue to hang in there. As our project is coming to an end soon, Lettuce Be Healthy would like to inform everybody of some of the health-promoting properties of the vegetables we decided to grow this semester. We grew almost strictly leafy greens, so we apologize if some of the nutritional facts seem a bit redundant!

Collards are very low in calories and contain no cholesterol. They are also excellent sources of folates (which play a major role in DNA synthesis), vitamin-A, vitamin-K, and vitamin-K.

Yellow Chard is yet another leafy green and is rich in all the vitamins previously mentioned. In addition to these vitamins, yellow chard is a rich source of minerals like copper, calcium, sodium, and phosphorus.

Kale is rich in vitamin-A (which promotes healthy skin and vision), vitamin K (which promotes bone and brain health), and vitamin-C (which helps the body develop resistance against infectious agents).

Arugula is also a great source of folates and contains vitamin-C, vitamin-K, and vitamin-A. Also, it’s is rich in many minerals like potassium, manganese, iron, and calcium – all of which are necessary and beneficial elements of one’s diet!

Last but most definitely not least, strawberries are also rich in vitamin-A, vitamin-K, and vitamin-C. They also are good sources of fiber, folate, manganese, potassium, and magnesium. The benefits of eating strawberries include improved eye care, proper brain function, and relief from high blood pressure.

If you want to keep your health on track, just make a simple salad of some mixed leafy greens from our garden – with a few strawberries of course!

Our lovely plot

Collards

Yellow chard

Kale

Strawberries! :)

Our collards are very healthy and showing new growth which is exciting

Week 10

This was, maintenance-wise, was the same as most weeks - we weeded. The weeding process seems to be getting easier because our crops are growing so big that the weeds are getting shaded out. However, they are not going away completely around our plants because most weeds are C-4 plants which have a higher photosynthetic rate than C-3 plants (most vegetable crops) in hot and sunny conditions (like most of the year in Florida). This is not all entirely bad though, many weeds are edible! Photographed below is sorrel, a tangy and delicious weed.

Sorrel, so much sorrel

Our bushy kale

Lots of weeds growing through the crops

Some new growth from where we thinned the week prior

Kale plants

Our strawberries!

Week 9

Yay we finally got to thin the plants! They desperately needed that and should now grow happier and healthier than before. The leafy greens are all growing well and evenly, with the exception of the yellow chard (the chard is growing slowly). We also weeded as usually which is always nice.

Our beautiful plot

Some collards all clumped together 

A side view of the clustered collards

A row of chard

A solitary yellow chard plant

A clump of yellow chard that needs to be thinned

Week 8

This week has been some more general plant care. We weeded some more and made sure everything was looking all healthy and strong. The blank areas of our plot are beginning to look weedy and the plants are not growing that fast. Hopefully we thin them down soon!

A view of our plot

Yellow chard

Kale

Collards

Arugula 

Two little strawberry plants 

Week 7

Weeds, weeds, weeds. This week, our team allocated days for individual group members to weed our plot. Our plot has a lot of blank space, so we also considered strategies to manage this. We thought to maybe direct seed some root vegetables or to plant the same crops in succession.

Our plot before weeding

A row of chard filled with weeds

A row before weeding

A row after weeding

Our plot after weeding

A collard plant showing leaf-miner damage

Week 6

Week six has been rather uneventful in terms of the garden plot. We went in and weeded when necessary. The plants are growing well, but need to be thinned. the chard is growing the slowest when compared to the other veggies.

Little chard seedlings

Our baby kale

The collards are already looking so big

Our section for arugula

One of our strawberry plants

Our whole plot