Since we saw you last:

Our trusty farm team took on the hustle and bustle of the spring season with great spirit and love! They started with tons of transplanting and direct seeding, planting a significant number of crops like beans, peas, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, basil, squash, and lettuce to name a few (yum!). With all of the spring showers, we had to do lots of weeding and clearing beds to ensure all the plants in the ground could thrive.

Meanwhile this past month, we started getting our harvest on! Our farm team has been busy with the abundance of our spring harvest, and the planting and preparation for our summer season. We’ve recently shared baby bok choi, beets, carrots, cilantro, dill, onions, spinach, and multiple types of squash with our partners, and can’t wait for what we have on the way! (Sneak peek – okra, tomatoes, and more, oh my!).

“Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

March means the start of spring, and a new season beginning in earnest. This March is all new growth and preparation for spring, with our team busy preparing beds for seeds, directly seeding, transplanting young growths, and laying out our watering systems for the season’s crops. They also ensured the fencing to keep our deer neighbors out was ready, and were excited to welcome a fresh shipment of locally made compost (we source from friends-of-the-farm Organics by Gosh!, who’s compost is powered by Austin food waste). We have carrots, beets, beans and broccoli in the ground along with squash and greens in the works, with our favorite farm-friendly flowers on the way, marigold and calendula.

Our farm team has been continuing their journey of curiosity, exploring different techniques and equipment to utilize to best maintain the farm. They recently installed a tarp to reduce pests and weeds near one of our fields that struggles with high weed presence. We hope that we can share our coming harvest with you soon!

This farm team has been focused on all things planting this past month, and ensuring the farm is prepared and ready for the hustle and bustle of the fall season ahead! Our farm team started off the month by preparing the plant beds on both farms, and then seeded and transplanted. We got tomatoes, root crops, leafy greens like kale, and herbs in the ground. With the help of our volunteers, we also planted summer and winter squash on the South Austin farm. We can’t wait to have food to share with you this autumn harvest season!

It’s Farm Fact Friday once again, everyone! This week we’re talking about something you may find often growing on the outskirts of the farm, the very fragrant garlic chive! It’s delicious, requires less preparation in meals than garlic, and easy to regrow. They’re great in stir fry, stews, and with meat, eggs, seafood, and even specialty butter. They’ve been a part of Chinese cuisine for over 3,000 years, and it’s easy to see why they’re so loved.

Garlic chives actually have a history of being used for herbal medical purposes as well as in Chinese cuisine, having once been used on bug bites and small cuts, as an antidote to some poisons, a remedy for internal parasites, and for helping with digestive problems. They’re also chock full of vitamin A and C, as well as fiber, iron, calcium, and potassium, so they can be a healthy addition to your diet (especially as a replacement for garlic for those who struggle with acid reflux).

Garlic chives can handle sun well, and can deter some pests which make them an easy-to-care-for and tasty addition to gardens. They do have a limited shelf life after being cut from the plant, but with proper storage or allowing them to regrow, they can last longer.

Additional sources here, here, and here.

Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Happy Farm Fact Friday, folks! This week we’re discussing the marigold flower, something you may see us plant on the farm sometimes. Marigolds are drought resistant and do well under the Texas sun, and can be a useful companion flower. Some varieties of the flower ward off tiny, parasitic worms just by certain compounds in their roots, and though many hybrids nowadays are scentless, some use scent to ward off beetles and bugs (smelling like wet hay).

Marigolds have a rich history as a flower used to decorate ofrendas for Dia de los Muertos, with the prominent scent and bright colors displayed to help spirits find their way home. Paper marigolds are also used to decorate sometimes.

People sometimes confuse marigolds are with calendula, which can be called pot marigold or common marigold and have somewhat similar appearances. However, calendula are edible flowers and have a different flower family they are a part of, whereas marigolds are generally not edible and some varieties are potentially toxic if eaten.

Additional sources on marigolds here, here, and here.

Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week’s topic is a tasty, green and small fruit (botanically) and vegetable (culinary-wise). Some find it slimy, but others find it perfect for thickening stir fries, stews and gumbos; we’re talking about okra! Okra is fibrous, has protein, and is full of antioxidants. They’re delicious and grassy raw, and delicious pickled with a more interesting texture to offer than the traditional pickled cucumber!

Okra does better in sunny, warmer climates across the world (though it’s known in many parts of the world as lady fingers or bhindi) and can grow up to six feet tall. Did you know that they also have beautiful flowers, since they’re a part of the hibiscus family? The more you pick (when the pods are ready for harvesting), the more flowers they produce, and okra can go from flower to fruit in just a few days!

It likely originated in north east Africa, along the White Nile River, near current day Ethiopia, with it showing up in records around the 12th century. The word okra itself is derived from the Ashanti word “nkruma.” One of our staff members enjoyed this recipe; do you make any okra recipes? Feel free to show them off and tag us on social media @urbanrootsatx if you’d like!

Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The sunflower is a hardy, drought resistant pop of color that help absorb harsh chemicals from the soil, as well as being a beautiful calling card to birds and bees (due to their seeds and nectar). However, they do need nutrient soil to grow. Otherwise, they thrive and manage in the harsh and dry Texas environment, and our roads and gardens would certainly look much drearier without them.

Did you know some Native tribes use sunflower seeds to make sunflower flour and their vibrant petals for dye? The stem was also used as a building material. Additionally, some traders managed to take seeds with them back to Europe and Russia in the 1500s, and by the 1800s over 2,000,000 acres of sunflowers had been planted in Russia! It seems it’s not just those in America who love the sunny flower.

The sunflower is quite versatile, from the edible petals to the seeds, and the stem… but did you know in a recent trend, you can also eat the head and buds? Sunflower flower buds can be cooked similarly to artichokes, can be eaten as part of a salad, or cooked in things like stir fry and taste both green and fresh. Meanwhile, the head is recommended to be harvested before the seeds harden, when the petals are still on the flower but beginning to go, and can be grilled up with just some oil in minutes, and utilized fairly similarly to corn (you can read here for further information).

If you try it out, let us know how it goes by tagging us on social media @Urbanrootsatx!

Additional Source:

 

Happy Farm Fact Friday, folks! This week we’re covering something that might be unexpected. It’s something smelly, messy, and “gross” but helps us improve soil health and nutrients, as well as reduces waste: the important farm practice of composting. 

In short, composting is the process of turning organic material (anything we grow that doesn’t make it into consumable produce, like food scraps, weeds, leaves, etc.) via decomposing organisms that break it down like worms into fertile soil. It keeps food waste out of landfills, where it can’t properly decompose without oxygen and creates methane and carbon dioxide.

There are two different types of composting. Hot compost requires materials high in nitrogen at a specific high temperature to kill potential disease and weeds over time. Technically it is a faster process, taking some months, though maintaining the temperatures required.

Cold composting, which we utilize on the farm, is a slower process that may take up to a year to provide nutrient rich dirt. However, it does require less maintenance as you can add whatever material you have that works for composting, and only requires mixing to ensure it breaks down together and takes time. Without the temperature, it’s more important to ensure that weeds are properly disposed of so you aren’t spreading them with your soil, and that you keep any crop waste with disease out of it, to ensure it isn’t spreading.

On the farm, we use cold composting. We also utilize fertilizer and mixtures of things like chicken manure that create the healthy, nutrient rich soil we work with and grow with. You can compost on a small scale, with products you can purchase to use inside your home, or you can compost in a corner of your garden.

You can learn to compost at home, learn more about the components of composting, learn about the do’s and don’ts of composting, and learn more about the differences of hot and cold composting here.

Watch our beekeeper, Brandon Fehrenkamp (you can check him out on Instagram), show you the Urban Roots bees! You can see here as the honey bees are rebuilding their nectar storages in spring, which they had eaten throughout the winter. This spring nectar will go into helping make drone and worker bees for the blooming season ahead. They will continue to rebuild their storages as they pollinate the farm and gather nectar to make into honey through the summer and fall for another winter, and will repeat the process once again. 

Design by  STAV Creative
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram