Collards and Tomatoes

Today it was raining, most of the day. Dribble dribble dribble. And, most of the day we stood under the shade house and transplanted tomatoes.

Transplanting the tomatoes from seeding beds is called "pricking." So, today I was a prick. Bee Heaven Farm sells heirloom variety tomato starts in just a few weeks at a garden festival.

We gently raised the seedlings from their seeding beds and put one plant in every one of the plastic cells in a 24 cell tray, gently packing starting soil around the sprouts. You know they are ready to "prick" when the true leaf, the leaf with the characteristic shape after the two plain straight first leaves, have grown. The names kept me quite entertained. Some of them I can imagine, like Speckled Roma and Jeune Flamme (June Flame, perhaps?), but what the heck does Cherokee Purple and Black Zebra look like? I am very excited and hope that we plant most of these varieties ourselves so I get to see them.

We also started some beds of Collard Greens, Chives, and Arugula. Someday soon I will be having collard greens for the first time. There is a meal I've heard is to die for: pot-stick and cornbread, and I have every intention of making it.

For supper Lauren made a Green Papaya salad, which was better than I was expecting, and I made guacamole and we had these with corn tortillas. You peel and grate the papaya like cabbage into coleslaw and make a dressing of fish sauce (we used soy sauce), peanuts (we used peanut butter), and hot peppers and anything else you want to add.

We are all about food here at the farm, so it seems. I am soon going to try bread. I hear the air pressure and humidity makes it almost impossible to rise, so that's a little scary. But, Margie is providing me with the necessities and I'll give it a go.