Rain or shine, chores have to be done each and every day.
Here at my farm, my gardeners, housekeepers, stable team and outdoor grounds crew are constantly working off a running list of important tasks. During the summer season, these include pruning and grooming the trees and shrubs, watering all the garden beds, maintaining equipment, tending the vegetable garden and harvesting what is ready, and of course caring for all the animals.
Here are some photos.
The boxwood shrubs around my farm are pruned and groomed regularly every year. This boxwood surrounds my herbaceous peony bed. Boxwood is slow growing compared to other shrubs. Typically, the growth rate for most varieties is three to six inches annually. It’s important to prune them regularly to maintain shape and encourage new growth.
Phurba Sherpa is my resident boxwood pruner – he does a great job trimming all the shrubs carefully by hand.
Here he sharpens his Japanese Okatsune shears. The shears are user friendly, and come in a range of sizes.
Ryan and I keep a very close eye on plant feeding schedules. Here he is feeding the roses and boxwood outside my main greenhouse. I just redesigned this garden bed which now includes my newly released Martha Stewart hybrid tea rose and a selection of young boxwood shrubs I nurtured from bare root cuttings.
Chhiring is also working in this garden – mulching the area with material made right here at my farm.
One side is completely done – it looks so beautiful and manicured.
In the vegetable garden, Cesar continues to maintain the growing tomatoes. He checks them every day to make sure the fruits and vines on which they grow are off the ground.
Here’s Elvira helping with the latest harvest. I’ve had such a productive artichoke season.
Outside the stable, Carlos “Dos” washes and grooms the dogs. My handsome Chow Chow Emperor Han seems to enjoy all the attention.
The donkeys are very happy in their new shaded enclosure under the pines. The fly masks keep the pesky summer bugs from biting.
Not far, Helen gets Geert ready for an afternoon in his pasture. Geert is one of my four striking Friesians. I think he’s pretty excited about the milder weather. This day was in the mid-80s.
Bond waits patiently in his stall for his turnout in the paddock.
Don’t forget to water, water, water. Here’s Phurba adjusting a Gilmour telescoping sprinkler to water the beds outside my flower cutting garden. All the watering around my farm is done by hand, so sprinklers are moved every hour.
I also use soaker hoses where applicable. Here’s Fernando positioning a soaker hose under the boxwood around my peonies.
Pete carefully positions soakers underneath the pergola boxwood. These Gilmour soaker hoses deliver low-pressure water directly to plant roots through tiny pores, reducing evaporation, runoff, and water waste.
During this time of year, one can often find Ryan in the vegetable garden checking on what is ready for picking.
Here’s just a portion of one day’s harvest – so many carrots and beets.
Cesar works in the flower room to wipe the newly harvested potatoes.
And who is this looking for love? It’s Mayo, also known affectionately as “May-May.” She is very friendly and curious.
And here’s Mayo’s sister, Cinco – also in line for a good scratch or rub. This week is expected to be another hot one here in the Northeast with temperatures soaring once again into the 90s. My farm crew works hard rain or shine to ensure everything functions at its best.
There’s always so much to harvest in the vegetable garden this time of year. What are you picking from the garden this weekend?
Yesterday, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, harvested another large bounty - artichokes, carrots, eggplants, radishes, beets, potatoes, leeks, and some of the season's first tomatoes. Once the vegetables are picked, they're brought up to my flower room where they are washed, bagged, and placed into the refrigerator until they're ready to use.
Here are some photos.
It’s so rewarding to pick such beautiful foods from the garden. These are just some of the radishes. Radishes are easy to pick – one can just pull the entire plant straight up from the soil.
Here’s Ryan with a bunch of beautiful carrots. Most are familiar with the orange color, but they also come in red, yellow, white and purple.
I always like to grow many carrot varieties and colors. Some carrots are more sweet, while others have a more earthy or peppery flavor.
And look at all the beets. Beets grow so well here at the farm. The beetroot is the taproot of the beet plant, and is often called the table beet, garden beet, red or golden beet or simply… beet.
Do you like leeks? Like onions and other members of the Allium family, leeks are a bulbous vegetable with white flesh and leafy green tops. In the kitchen, Leeks can be boiled, braised, fried, or roasted.
Some of the tomatoes are ready. Tomatoes are heat loving plants. We’ve had a lot of warm days this season, so the tomatoes are looking really good. Here’s Ryan picking the ripest straight off the vine.
Tomatoes are an excellent source of beta-carotene, vitamins C and K, calcium, potassium, folate, and of course – lycopene.
Bucket by bucket, the freshly picked vegetables are brought up to my flower room, where they get washed if needed, then bagged and stored in the refrigerator. Here, Enma cuts the green tops from the carrots. They will be saved for my chickens.
Enma uses a brush specifically made for removing dirt, debris and any bacteria left on the surface of the vegetable.
The carrots are so beautiful. Each color not only adds visual appeal to the plate, but also offers varying flavors and distinct nutritional benefits.
Enma also trims off the tops of the beets leaving one to two inches of stem.
The beets are then placed into the sink for a good washing.
Next, Enma cleans the radishes. Radishes come in many varieties – both long and round. The flavor can range from very mild to very spicy, depending on the kind.
Radishes are grown and consumed throughout the world, and mostly eaten raw as a crunchy salad vegetable. Have you ever tried radish and butter with pinch of flaky salt? It is a popular French low-carb snack, and it’s delicious.
The leek roots and dark green leaves are also trimmed. The vegetables are then brushed and rinsed thoroughly.
The edible portions of the leek are the white base of the leaves, the light green parts, and to a lesser extent, the dark green parts of the leaves. They have a mild onion-like taste and smell. In its raw state, they are also very crunchy and firm.
Ryan brings up a bucket of eggplants. I prefer to pick them when they are smaller – these are perfect.
After cleaning, the vegetables are blagged and placed into the refrigerator.
Ryan also picked some of our first potatoes. Potatoes are just wiped clean. As the world’s fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat, and rice, potatoes are grown from “seed potatoes”, which are certified disease-free and specially grown in nurseries for planting purposes. I’ll have a bigger potato harvest next week.
And the artichokes are still producing. Artichokes have good keeping qualities and can remain fresh for at least a week. Freshly picked vegetables are so much more flavorful and packed with nutrients. I’m excited to eat everything and share the bounty with my family.
In order to keep my farm and its gardens, allées, and groves as beautiful as possible, I pay lots of attention to the maintenance and care of all my trees and shrubs.
In 2019, I decided to plant an allée along the carriage road through the lower hayfields. I planted a selection of London plane trees and about 100 royal purple smoke bushes, Cotinus coggygria. Over the years these trees have thrived with the smoke bushes growing about 24 inches each year. This week they were pruned and groomed and they look excellent.
Enjoy these photos.
So much can happen in a year’s time. The smoke bushes all around the farm have grown so much because of careful and consistent care.
I planted this particular allée in the fall of 2019. I thought this area of the middle hayfield was a perfect stretch of landscape for a long allée of London planes and smoke bushes. Here it is that first year.
I wanted the allée to extend the entire portion of the road that cuts through the hayfields. By the summer of 2021, it looked like this. These smoke bushes can grow up to 15-feet tall and 10-feet wide. I love its upright, multi-stemmed habit.
Here is the allée in June 2022 – the smoke bushes are wider and more full. Cotinus or smoke bush, is a genus of seven species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs. It has an upright habit when young and spreads wider with age.
Here it is last year. Under optimal conditions, smoke bushes can add about 13 to 24 inches to its height each year. The colors of the smoke bushes and the London planes behind them look striking together.
The London plane tree, Platanus × acerifolia, is a deciduous tree. It is a cross between two sycamore species: Platanus occidentalis, the American sycamore, and Platanus orientalis, the Oriental plane. London planes grow best in full sun, but they also thrive in partial shade. These are also growing excellently.
The leaf of a London plane is similar to that of a maple leaf – simple with alternate arrangements that have three to five lobes. These leathery leaves are about six to seven inches wide with roughly toothed edges.
The bark is medium gray and smooth. The tree shows a distinctive camouflage pattern created as patches of green or brown outer bark that flake off to expose a more creamy inner bark.
Pasang Sherpa is my resident tree pruner. He does a wonderful job overseeing the maintenance of all the trees here at my farm. I like as much of the pruning and grooming to be done by hand, so Pasang trims every branch with his pruners – one by one.
Pasang shows where he pruned last year. All the branches surrounding it are new – grown over the last 12 months. When removing amounts of wood, cut back to just before a growth node to prevent dead ends.
Here is a pruned smoke bush. Smoke bushes are among my favorite small trees.
The name “smoke bush” comes from the billowy hairs attached to the flower clusters which remain in place through the summer, turning a smoky pink to purplish-pink and then light brown as the weeks progress.
These royal purple smoke bushes, Cotinus coggygria, have stunning dark red-purple foliage that turns scarlet red in fall.
The undersides are bright green. The leaves of smoke bushes are waxy purple and are one and a half to three inches long, and ovate in shape.
Cutting it back regularly can help the Cotinus retain its most colorful foliage.
Here, one can see what Pasang pruned and what he has to prune next. Pruning eliminates the dead, damaged, or overcrowded branches and allows in more light and air circulation.
As the branches are cut, Pasang gathers them in one place, so they are easy to collect later and take to the compost yard.
Lower to the ground at the base of the trees and bushes are pink hydrangeas. The blooms on these compact Endless Summer Crush® hydrangeas are intense, deep raspberry pink.
However, depending on the soil, the blooms can often change color – a more purple bloom is caused by a greater mix of lime and acid in the soil. When mature, these hydrangeas will reach 36-inches tall with a spread that’s 18 to 36-inches wide.
Hydrangea leaves are opposite, simple, stalked, pinnate, and four to eight inches long. They are also toothed, and sometimes lobed.
Pasang cuts all the Cotinus to the appropriate height, so one can see the London plane trees behind them. Here is one side done – they looks so much fuller compared to when they were first planted.
And here is the allée now with all the smoke bushes pruned beautifully. This allée will be such a lovely addition to future garden tours.
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