A Day At The Green Festival

Last weekend we spent our Sunday at the Albany Arts and Green Festival.  Blessed with beautiful weather and a large crowd, we sold almost all our local organic honey, as well as many of the products from our Handcrafted Herbalim CSA. 

There was a diverse grouping of  booths at the festival; everything from solar/renewable energy to The Sierra club to The Alameda County Beekeepers Association.  We spent some time promoting our classes, discussing our farm with interesting people, and benefiting from all the giveaways (fruit trees, environmental books, compost and organic vegi starts).  

Fire Cider, Herbal Body Cream, Gardeners Salve,
Eucalyptus Lavender Salt scrub for sale

Both our honey and the model Warre hive we set up drew plenty of attention.  It was a blast talking about bees with other beekeepers and hearing about many of the local apiaries in the area. The best part of the festival was networking with so many interesting, like minded people. Of course taking home peach, apricot, and cherry trees, comfrey, globe artichokes, mugwort, and a few more starts for the garden was pretty great too.  Hurrah for the Green Festival!

 

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Quick update of the system and why are the green onion dying

This weeks update is not as joyfull as the previous ones, the green onions are dying....

Only one is surviving, the other ones are very (very) soft at the base. Yesterday I pulled the dying ones out, and besides the stem being very soft, some had surprisingly long roots. I am not sure what is going on. I am wondering if the now high nitrates could be responsible for it, or the high nitrite ( when diluted 1/100 it gives me a color so where in the 0.25 - 1 ppm range). The pepper seedling look good though and I can see 1 new leave on each plant at this point. Also, there are 3 new seedlings next to the parsley, I guess seeds that did not germinate before, so it seem that the "softening of the stem" is touching only the onions. The basil that died before was transplanted from dirt, and I suspect it didnt make it because I did not clean enought the dirt off the roots (the roots were black and rather hard). 

I keep checking the water every day, and so far, ammonia is at 0, nitrite at least 25ppm, and nitrate at least 100 ppm. More on this next week. Next post will be about a documentary I saw last week end.

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