About Sarah Cassidy

Plant and Chicken Expert from Oxbow Farm

Recent posts

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  When should I harvest my potatoes?

  3 0 Oh yeah! git em NOW! --in fact, when your potato plant flowers, way back in June or July, it was telling you that it has little new potatoes that are ready for the taking! You can "rob" your potatoes of their little tubers all throughout their growth after flowering, and then let them cure, and harvest. Are the vines dead, or dying back? That means they are busy curing underground. If they are not yet dead, kill them! At Oxbow, we flame or mow the potato leaves to speed up the curing process, and then their skins are tougher than that new potato flakieness, and can store longer for YOU. Enjoy your apples of the earth. Sarah Cassidy answered in Edibles & Herbs 9 months ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

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  What can I plant right now that I can harvest in the late fall or winter?

  1 0 Hmmm, not much, alas, timing should be around mid-August for gettng starts in the ground for over-winter growing. HOWEVER, take heart, if you go to the Seattle Tilth Harvest Fair in mid-Sept some time, you may very well find lots of beefy starts like hardy strains of broccoli, romanesco, and kales that you could transplant into your garden for some extending of the harvest! Also, try some peas now, what the hey, they may over-winter alright, acting as a cover crop, and give you early spring peas! Fava beans are also good over-wintering options. And of course, get your garlic crop in in October or November, and you can start harvesting green garlic in spring! Bon Chance! Sarah Oxbow Farm Sarah Cassidy answered in Edibles & Herbs 9 months ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

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  Why is my cilantro growing back all feathery like dill?

  3 0 Yes, Misty told you well...alas, welcome to the verrry frustrating world of growing cilantro! But take heart: let it grow, seed, and dry, and VOILA, you have as well grown CORIANDER, yet another delicacy! Enjoy both ways! Sarah Cassidy answered in Edibles & Herbs 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 3 more answers »

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  I didn't use good soil and now my vegetables are sad. How can I improve my soil mid-season?

  3 0 Isn't that amazing, what a difference a little compost makes? It's like a biology experiment...but on your poor veggies. Alas. There is no harm in amending now, doing a little compost-mix-in on the surface of your soil. That could help. As well, foliar sprays get food directly to your ailing plants, when you spray it on their leaves (on an overcast day, or in early a.m., so the sun does not burn) the food goes straight to the plant, no soil nutrient exchange involved. So I would recommend either a maxicrop something from the store mixed with water, or some good old fashioned compost tea from yuor kitchen scraps (boil in water and extract) in a spray bottle. That oughta hold em over til the fall. Sarah Cassidy answered in Edibles & Herbs 10 months ago Answer and comment »

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  Best aphid-removal techniques for indoor plants?

  1 0 Think of your aphids as a recurring dream, or Freudian slips...gentle forces that encourage you to look further beneath the surface. What is your plant stressed about? A small pot? Not enough/too much water? Too little or too much light? Mine usually congregate on my plants that have outgrown their pots. Give them a new roomier pot, with some new compost mixed into their roots, and they will most likely reward you with aphid freedom. Sarah Cassidy answered in Pest Control/Weeds 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 5 more answers »

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  I get hold of a vegetable garden in a week. What can I plant mid-July?

  6 0 You could start, like TOMORROW, some hardy overwintering carrots, or beets, or lettuce, or radishes, or arugula, or some other green. OR you could go to the Seattle Tilth Harvest Fest in something like September and pick out some great over-wintering broccoli starts or cabbage varietals to plunk into your soil then, after weeding and amending it with compost. OR you could wait til October and start your KILLER garlic crop in very well-cover cropped soil (from now-Oct). Here is what I would do, though: I would hit the ground enhancing, Andrew, so that I could KILL in the veggie bounty next year. You can start some buckwheat cover crop now, a summer beauty that feeds your soil like manna; chop it in when in flower, then sow a hardy vetch/rye cover crop by Sept/Oct for over-winter nourishment. (OR grow favas in the fall: they will grow slowly over time and by spring they will feed YOU (pick their pods)and the SOIL (leave the rest in situ and then chop into the soil)with their crazy, huge, pink nitrogen nodules!) By spring, not only will your soil know that you love it, it will know how to grow INSANE vegetables. Because it was fed so well! You may then grow almost anything, because you did the nourishment footwork. Sarah Cassidy answered in Edibles & Herbs 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

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  What is wrong with my plum tree?

  2 0 Yours, Dear Misty, is most likely not a troubled plum. I would moreover rack it up to the CRAZED WEATHER we have been experiencing for the past 2 springs during bloomtime, and plum bloom time especially. The spring and summer of 2009, the last year your plum fruited well, was a memorable one on Oxbow Farm--it was The Year of the Killer Crops. EVERYthing bore fruit, and lots of it. even the wild cherries tasted good that year! And yet, since then, there has been not much in the way of good fruit set. Cold rain and blossoms do not make a grand pair--the bees do not come to call, the blossoms often rot and fall off the trees, there is, sadly, not much to look forward to, fruit-wise. And so that is where I think we are with the plums this year. In our orchard, we have apples, pears, cherries, and plums. All are fruiting but the plums: all our plum varieties, across the board, are not bearing this year. We are happy we have any fruit on the trees, what with that crappy spring. Give it a year, I bet you anything if we have a better spring next year, you shall have plums. Sarah Cassidy answered in Trees & Shrubs 10 months ago Answer and comment »

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  What cacti can grow in Seattle?

  0 0 Wow, I am glad Master Gardener Andrea knows her stuff, Nanc...you plum STUMPED me on this one. I will let you in on all brassicas that grow well in our state. Your Endless Friend, Sarah Sarah Cassidy answered in Other Gardening about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

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  Fun plants for kids

  1 0 OOOOOOH-HOO-HOO! You have touched upon my current obsession. Read on! Here at Oxbow Farm, we are cureently putting in a Children's Garden for visiting future farmers. We are going the yummy/crazy/peculiar route with our plant choices. Here are some: Purple veggies!--carrots ,broccoli, beans, cabbage, tomatoes...they all come in shades of purple. How ROYAL! And excellent. BIG FOLIAGE--plants that are either HUGE--elecampagne, tree collards--or that are towering--corn, scarlet runner beans, sorghum, sunflowers. Colorful things--rainbow chard! Sweet things--and and all berries, sorghum, stevia; good-smelling things--fennel,mint, lavendar Fuzzy things--lamb's ear Edible flowers--violets, nasturtiums, borage Tons of others, of course. Have a ball! Sarah Cassidy answered in Garden Design about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

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  Getting rid of horsetail?

  2 0 You have encountered that which has been 'round since dinosaur times...what can you expect? It is a TOUGHIE! Try using it as the Native Americans once did: wash your pots and bowls with it! Wash your hair with it! (it provides strengthening through its silica) Make bouquets with it! (as the kindergarteners on Oxbow Farm were doing today, much to our pleasure.) It is She Who Will Not Go Away, so lettuce find other wonderful uses for it. BUT: amend the soil in a drastic way, like go from 5pH to 6.5) and horsetail does not like to stick around. It is all in the pH. The acidity of your soil. Horsetail likes it sour, or low-pH, like our PNW parent soils offer. But cultivated soils--those which have been worked well with compost and lime, the acid-buster--are not ridden with horsetail. It does not need much work, just a season or so of cultivation and amending. Bon Chance! Sarah Cassidy answered in Pest Control/Weeds about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

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