Highland Orchards Farm Market

It seems very strange to say farewell to Schuylkill River Park. We have been there since the first farmers market started in 2005. We have seen vendors come and go, we have endured construction around the park, and in the park, and next to the park, and we have gotten to know many wonderful people in the community who come out and support our farm through their purchases at the market.

The park is beautiful now, with its renovated pathways, dog park, and plantings. The community garden is full with creative plots. Why would we want to leave?

A simple question with a complicated answer. We are fortunate that our business has grown dramatically over the past decade. We have more CSAs, more restaurants placing orders, more companies wanting to provide produce for their employees, and more business at our home market on the farm.

We have finite resources.

I have rolled this around in my head for quite a while now. My decision affects all of our employees, our customers, and our revenue. It is a major business decision which is overlaid with all the positive feelings I have developed for Schuylkill River Park and the community over the years. Change is inevitable in life, and change is required in business. This is a big change, but it was a big change to start doing off-site farmers markets. My grandparents had taken produce to the King Street Farmers Market in Wilmington, Delaware, for years (my grandfather’s spot was at the corner of 6^th and King).It was a change when the family stopped going to the Wilmington market after World War II and sold directly out of the barn, as more people built homes outside of the city limits and closer to the farm. When we started participating in farmers markets in various locations from 2000 to now, it was a new venture for me, and very different from the 1930s markets.

Now, we are embracing this change as an opportunity to strengthen the farm and our family. We wish our customers at Schuylkill River Park all the best, and we hope that you will continue to place orders with us at Honey’s or Metropolitan Bakery or other venues in the area and visit us at Fitler Square on Saturdays.

~ Ruth

Oh, July! Hot, productive, busy, overwhelming July! Hottest month of the year. Picking raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, peaches, plums, first of the summer apples, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, cantaloupes, watermelon, corn….all of the summer bounty rushes to ripen and is ready for harvest. The days are packed. July is the fruition of a lot of planning and planting.

Oh yes, and generally the weeds have gone totally crazy by July.

It’s always funny when people ask if we are closed for July 4 (unless it falls on a Sunday, the answer is no). The plants do not take a holiday in July. We have Sundays off (always), but we would be light years behind if we took another day off in July. This year, July 4 is hovering at a balmy 91 degrees after 5 straight days in the 90s—you can practically see the berries ripening in front of your eyes.We close a few hours early to give our employees a chance to spend some time with their families. For family members, it’s a chance to eat dinner before 8 and go to bed early (happy birthday, country, see you in the morning!).

There is a special excitement to July when we welcome each summer fruit or vegetable—heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn, peaches, Methley plums (aka “sugar plums”), etc. Bursting with flavor, juicy, nothing like eating fresh. The long daylight hours must imbue extra flavor in these crops, because nothing else seems to taste this good! We are always thrilled when we see crates of tomatoes and flats of berries coming in from the fields.

The end of July usually brings a sense of relief. The intense heat is almost over (night time temperatures start dropping in the next two weeks!). Some of the crops are lessening in their abundance. Picking berries (gooseberries, currants, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries) has been a very hot marathon, and the end of July brings picking down to a reasonable level. If we have done it right, we all have eaten an abundance of peaches, blackberries, beans, zucchini, blueberries, etc., and we know we still have some time to feast on these goodies. But we know the end of blueberries is nigh even though peaches will comfort us for another 6 weeks. Green beans are still going strong, but lima beans bring a harbinger of autumn. The first summer apples remind us that September is not far away at all.

It’s hot in July, but that’s ok. It’s summer, and it is supposed to be hot. No point complaining when the peaches, corn, and tomatoes all enjoy the heat. And we get to enjoy the produce!Kick back, eat that watermelon, grill those vegetables, slice those tomatoes, and enjoy your picnic. We only have one month to celebrate July.

~ Ruth

Meander down to visit the chickens and ducks and look past the pen. You’ll see our flower field filled to the brim and buzzing with beautiful life. 

At the Delaware Beekeeper Association, I asked the other beekeepers if they planted flowers every year where they keep bees. It turns out that Highland Orchards is pretty unique. On our farm we have so many fruit trees and shrubs, flowering vegetable plants, and we grow so many cut flowers that we have an overwhelming abundance of pollen and nectar to go around. 

So, here’s the beautiful diversity we encourage with our field-grown cut flowers. 

The best part? We cover all the stops. You can buy bunches for bouquets, or buy the plants yourself to grow your own! That way you can enjoy these pollinators visiting your garden!

Our mix of flowers brings in our incredible mix of pollinators: 

Small native bees: melittid, megachilid, and others including mason bees

Larger carpenter and bumble bees in the Bombidae family

Our classic European honey bee hives and native squash bees in the Apidae family

Butterflies: spring azure, red admiral, painted lady, monarch, viceroy, swallowtail

Flies: small native flies including bee mimics that camouflage to look like bees

Hummingbirds: male and female ruby-throated hummingbirds

Moths: hummingbird, bumblebee, and yes even sulfur and cabbage 

Skippers: small brown patterned and butterfly-like, they hold their wings upright, more will visit towards the end of summer.

Wasps: small native wasps like the green halictid sweat wasps that do not sting

Our plants in bold above are native that provide the best nutrition!

(The plants in this list are perennial unless stated otherwise.)

Our Top 5 Plants for Hummingbirds

1. Beardtongue- Penstemon: Sun to Shade! White flowers, red stripes inside. Drought tolerant!

2. Bee Balm- Monarda: Sun. Striking red flowers, mint relative, spreads well.

3. Lupine- Lupinus: Sun to Part Shade. Mix of pastel warm and cool colors with white.

4. Trumpet Vine- Campsis: Sun. Vibrant orange flower. Climbing vine! Drought tolerant. 

5. Wild Petunia- Ruellia: Sun to Part Shade. Beautiful purple flowers. Drought tolerant.

A plus! The first three are long-lasting cut flowers!

Top 6 Plants Adored By Butterflies, Moths, and Skippers (plus other pollinators)

1. Basket Flower- White flowers, native, beautiful large flower heads. Non-spiny non-weedy thistle!

2. False Sunflower-Heliopsis is related to Jerusalem artichoke. Yellow flowers.

3. Liatris- Tall purple spike, a lovely striking flower for many native butterflies! Aster family.

4. Salvia- Purple, tube-shaped flowers attract hummingbird moths and bumblebee moths!

5. Stoke’s Aster- A vibrant ethereal purple. Another aster family plant loved by Lepidoptera*

6. Zinnia- A rainbow of colors. Swallowtails, monarchs, painted ladies, and red admirals visit!

A plus! All long-lasting cut flowers!

*Lepidoptera is the scientific name for butterflies, moths, and skippers!

The wonderful thing about native plants and perennials, is that there is still time to plant them in your garden. So stop on by and grab a few to freshen up your garden today! 

~ Emma 

I think it was May yesterday, and now it is almost the middle of June. If I don’t finish this today, it will be the end of June when I return! Summer is like that: if you blink, it disappears! June is the beginning of the intense season, where every hour and every day is packed with harvest, planting, and planning.

Still picking strawberries, starting to pick tomatoes, raspberries and cherries, checking on the plums, peaches, blueberries, and blackberries; starting to pick cucumbers, beans, and squash—it definitely feels like the summer wave is here, even though it is only 71 degrees today. In about 3 weeks, nearly everything will be ready for continual harvesting.

Although there is a press to get everything planted, we are busy with harvests and with taking out as well as putting in plants. As soon as one crop is finished—lettuce, for example—another one goes in (say, cucumbers!). This “succession planting” helps us get in at least 3-4 crops over the year for most parts of the farm. Some areas even more! To do this takes strategic planning and preparation.

Seeds are started in the propagation greenhouse, where the seedlings are treated like the newborns they are: heated germination mats, careful watering, shade cloths or row covers as needed (depending on the weather!), and up-potting to larger containers as the plants grow roots and leaves. Then, if we have planned correctly, the plants are the right size to be planted either outside or in an unheated hoop house just as the prior crop in that space has finished. Sometimes both inside and outside: the inside crop will mature slightly ahead of the outside crop and give us a jump on the season for that crop. And so on, throughout the season. In addition to planning the planting time, we rotate the type of crops in each section of ground to achieve nutrient balance and pest management. Lettuce-cucumbers-beans-arugula might be one area’s rotation, for xample.

And if this wasn’t planned out in March, it isn’t happening in June.

As we harvest, we evaluate what can we do to have more or less of a crop? How can we have strawberries not affected by the rain? (That is a real discussion; we will know next year if we have fooled Mother Nature.) Was the fava bean tunnel a success and worth that space? We love our cherry tree that ripens 10 days before any other cherry tree we have encountered (it is one our grandfather, John Webster, planted). Perhaps it is time to take cuttings and graft them onto root stock to have more of these fabulous early cherries. It will be five years before those bear fruit, but that will be awesome!

And at the end of each day, we are grateful for our heritage, our farm, our community, our staff and customers, and our family. See you soon!

www.HighlandOrchardsFarmMarket.com

Chickens are funny birds in many ways. They share a common ancestry with Tyrannosaurus Rex. They have a gizzard (and you thought your grandparents made up that word!), which is a small part of the stomach that contains tiny stones and grinds up their food.They can fly only a few feet (enough to get over a fence!) and are officially classified as flightless birds. There are over 24 billion chickens in the world. A group of chickens is a flock, a female is a hen, and a male is a rooster or cockerel. Young females are called pullets until they start to lay eggs at 20 to 24 weeks of age. Usually first eggs are smaller sized. 

Roosters can crow any time of day, starting at o’dark thirty, about 60 minutes before sunrise, and then continue All. Day. Long. Roosters can become very aggressive, usually after one year of age (full maturity). This is one reason why we rarely have a rooster in our flock. They are protective of their hens and will often have a group of followers. If he spots some delicious food, such as insects, the rooster will call his ladies over. Roosters are not needed for hens to lay their eggs. Generally, a rooster will be significantly larger than the hens, have longer legs with a “spur” on each foot (wielded as a weapon very effectively), and a larger “comb” and “wattles” (the funny looking red bags on his chin) on his head.

Chickens are omnivores, eating seeds, herbs, leaves, fruits, vegetables, grubs, insects, and even small mammals such as mice (if they can catch them). Our chickens especially love fruit and leftover greens—lettuce and tomatoes are favorites. In the summer, watermelon and cantaloupe pieces are devoured quickly!

Chickens lay an egg approximately once every 25 hours, with variations between breeds (and individual hens). The hens often take a break when it is excessively hot or excessively cold. If a hen hides her eggs to nest them, she is called “broody,” rarely leaving her nest, and turning the eggs up to 50 times per day. It is not fun to collect eggs from a hen who has decided to brood! The incubation period is 21 days, and a clutch of eggs will generally hatch over a two-day period. The baby chicks follow their mother around for 4 to 6 weeks. Chickens have a great (if simple) memory and easily distinguish among different hens in the flock. They learn from older hens the tricks of where to find the best bits of food or where a hole is in the fence. If a rooster is present in a flock, he dictates what is going on. With no rooster present, the older hens will be in charge, eating first and showing the younger ones what to do. 

Chickens generally live 5 to 7 years, but 10 years is frequent, and the record is 22 years old!A chicken maintains a body temperature of 107 degrees F. and a freshly laid egg is pretty warm at 105 degrees Fahrenheit.The largest chicken egg on record is 12 ounces (ouch!).

Chickens will drop their old feathers and grow new feathers each year, over an 8 to 12 week period; this is called “molting,” and the chickens often look half-dressed. Some chickens molt just a few feathers at a time and some drop most of their feathers all at once. This generally occurs in late summer/early fall, with the declining sunlight hours. The newly grown feathers help the chickens maintain their body temperature during the winter months. Commercial egg laying companies will force molts to increase egg production. We let our girls molt if/when they want. However, chickens will peck at each other to communicate who is the boss and a chicken with skin showing, such as during molting, can be at risk for being pecked to death! So sometimes we will separate the molting girls until they are fully feathered again. The pecking order among chickens is not gentle or friendly! 

Chickens fare quite well during the cold weather months, as long as they have shelter to stay dry, can keep out of the wind, and have plenty of food and water. Our chickens huddle together on their roosts and don’t venture out on bad weather days. They have a heated water bowl so they always have water available. There is a large space inside their house which gives them somewhere to scratch dirt, even on snowy or rainy days. Happy chickens lay more eggs!

When trained from a young age, chickens are easily handled and can become great pets.  Chickens love their outdoor spaces, scratching for bugs, eating fresh greens, and exploring. They are just as curious inside the house too! 

We love having fresh eggs, and we enjoy watching our chickens go about the busy-ness of being chickens.

Everyone should have the opportunity to walk outside on a warm day and be surrounded by beautiful birds, bees, and butterflies. Providing an ecological-friendly habitat is the first step to achieving this goal.

5 of our Native Perennial Wildflowers
Members of our local modern native-type ecosystem. For each plant the varieties, colors, flowering time, sun/shade requirements, and main pollinators are listed.
-Coreopsis- Tickseed: we have 4 varieties, warm colors, blooms June-July, likes full sun, and attracts bees, beneficial wasps, and butterflies
-Echinacea- Coneflower: we have 3 varieties, warm colors and white, blooms July-September, likes full sun, and benefits bees and butterflies
-Heuchera- Coral Bells : 2 varieties of striking green and regal purple leaves all season, flowers in April-June, likes shade (!), great for bees
-Monarda- Bee Balm/ Bergamot  ‘Jacob Cline’ : blooms bright red in June, definitely a full sun plant, and a hummingbird beacon (and bees too)
-Tiarella- Fairy Wands:  We have 2 varieties with watermelon colored leaves all season, flowers April-June, likes the shade, and benefits bees

5 of our Perennial Wildflowers
Not native locally, but functional and non-invasive in the landscape and loved by pollinators.
-Achillea- Yarrow  ‘Colorado’ type: blooms warm colors in June-September, enjoys full sun, and is great for bees and butterflies
-Delphinium- Larkspur ‘Guardian’ type: dazzling blue flowers in June-July, wants full sun, and attracts bees and butterflies
-Leucanthemum- Shasta Daisy: we have 2 varieties, blooms beautiful white with yellow center flowers in June-August, needs full sun, and is friend to bees and butterflies
-Lupinus- Lupine ‘Tutti Frutti’, mix: blooms May-July, enjoys part shade, and will attract your honeybees and bumblebees (save the honeybees!)
-Perovskia- Russian Sage: we have 2 varieties, blooms July-October, needs full sun, and is great for bees and beneficial wasps

Wildlife
It can be so relaxing to sit back and watch wildlife do its thing. Whether you like to observe, photograph, paint, or close your eyes and listen, it’s simply rewarding to be able to have the experience of being in tune with nature.

The food web that you will be able to observe:
-Native pollinators that rely on nectar and pollen - butterflies, hummingbirds, native melittid bees, mason bees, bumble and carpenter bees, bee mimic flies, native pollinating wasps like green sweat wasps and blue-winged wasps
Bees and wasps often go for fully-open daisylike flowers
Butterflies pursue a variety of open and tubular flowers
Hummingbirds & hummingbird moths go for tubular-shaped flowers such as Delphinium & Lupine
Beetles and flies pollinate early trees. Most trees are wind-pollinated, but tulip poplar and pawpaw rely on them.
-Other insect wildlife like katydids, cicadas, grasshoppers, and crickets rely on leaves and stems for food and habitat
-Songbirds, mantids, damselflies, dragonflies, and garden spiders that will eat unwanted bugs like mosquitoes
-Hawks, falcons, and owls that rely on smaller prey for a complete food web

Here are 6 easy-to-grow veggies and tips for their care:

Beans

Growing green beans from seed is a great introduction for many new gardeners looking to gain a green thumb. In early spring, plant each seed so that it is covered by about ½ to ¼ inch of soil and keep it moist until it germinates – begins to grow. Beans will start in cool spring weather but enjoy growing on and producing their bean pod fruits as the season gets warmer. Make sure to plant it near a fence or trellis so that it has something to climb on! Beans and peas really enjoy a good climb. By supporting the plants they will not flop over on themselves and more leaves will be able to take in that nice fresh sunlight, giving the plant more energy to produce more beans. Pick the bean pods when they flesh out to contain beans inside. The beans and pods are edible raw and cooked.

Lettuce

Lettuce is, without fail, delicious. It’s a cool-season crop that can be started in early spring and again in early fall. Plant in rows, with holes about 10 to 14 inches apart, because a full-grown lettuce head is usually 8 to 14 inches across. In each hole, plant 3 to 5 seeds to increase the likelihood of sprouting. about ¼ to 1/8 inch under the soil and keep moist until germination. When they start to grow, carefully thin – remove all but one of the seedlings per hole. Each lettuce plant needs enough space to grow to full-size. Watering deeply really helps the plants get off to a good start. Lettuce leaves are edible at any stage of development. In 1 month they can be harvested for baby salad greens. In about 2 to 3 months your lettuce will be full-size. Cut at the base to harvest the whole plant. Cut two inches above the base to cut-and-come-again when the plant regrows its leaves.

Mustard
There are so many types of mustard. Mustard is used both for its leaves as a spicy salad and cooked green vegetable, and for its seeds in making the mustard condiment. To grow mustard for its remarkably healthy leaves, plant ¼ inch deep about 6 inches apart in early spring or early fall. Mustard likes similar conditions to lettuce and is very tough when it comes to unexpectedly cold outdoor temperatures. Mustard is often grown as a cut-and-come-again plant, picking off the biggest outside leaves of the plant and letting the center of the plant produce more leaves throughout the growing season.

Potato

Have you ever had a potato in your cupboard that decided to sprout one day? Planting it in late spring gives you the opportunity to multiply your potatoes! There are many colors of potatoes to try, including purple, which is just downright fun. Plant the whole potato under the soil with the eyes- the places where the potato is sprouting, facing upwards, or cut the potato into pieces so that each piece has an eye and plant individually. Every few weeks as the potato plant grows pile more soil around of the base of the plant. This encourages the plant to grow taller and stronger. Harvest the potatoes in fall by digging up the entire plant and in a circle all around. Sometimes small potatoes hide and are easy to miss!

Radish

We often use the very young leaves in our microgreen mixes here at Highland Orchards. Radishes grown in the classic way for their roots are simple, and fast. Really fast. Plant in a row outside in early spring with seeds about an inch apart, about ¼ inch deep. As they grow you will want to thin the radishes so that they have enough room to form a nice big root. There are many types and colors of radishes. Check to see how much space the radishes need between each plant. For small radishes, it is often about 3 inches apart. Classic round radishes should be at least the diameter of a quarter before picking, and up to the size of a ping pong ball. Brush away the top soil to check the size progress before harvesting. Watch carefully as the weather warms up: If the top of the plant begins to send up a flower stalk, that means the plant is bolting- and is redirecting its energy from making tasty roots towards making flowers and seeds instead. Pick your radishes before they bolt, because they have a tendency to crack down the sides and lose their good crunchy texture and flavor. They are still edible after that point but taste less delicious.

Tomato

These plants like it hot hot hot. There are so many types of tomatoes to choose from. In mid-spring, when the plants are going to get enough light and heat to sprout, plant seeds ½ to ¼ inch deep, about 10 inches apart. Tomatoes, like beans, will need support. Unlike beans, they do not climb as well by themselves. Staking tomatoes involves using a circular tomato trellis, or gently tying the tomato stalk to a bamboo stake or fence to keep it upright each time the tomato plant grows more. Tomatoes take anywhere from 70 days to 120 days from the time they are planted as seeds to when they will produce a ripe fruit. Planting a flower garden nearby attracts bumblebees, which tomatoes need to produce lots of fruit. Bumblebees have a special way of pollinating. They buzz to shake the tomato flowers, releasing pollen that gets stuck to the bees when they visit the next flower. Honeybees and butterflies cannot buzz-pollinate this way, so our native bumblebees are very important in making sure that your plants give you nice fresh tomatoes in the summer.

These plants are perfect projects for the first-time gardener of any age! All of these plants can be grown in containers. For example, in a 10-inch pot you can grow 1 bean plant, 1 large lettuce plant or 5 baby lettuce plants, 3-5 mustard plants, 1 potato plant, 6-8 radish plants, or 1 tomato plant.

“There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The large flowers we know today are a result of the gardening passion of the British landowners in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Lady Mary Elizabeth Bennett of Surrey, England, was the first to introduce the large pansy flower to the world in 1812. Other gardeners quickly followed in her path, and within 20 years there were 400 named varieties of pansies.

Whether known as heartsease, Johnny jump up, love-in-idleness, violets, or pansy, the pansy has a history in folk medicine as an aid for respiratory problems of pain reliever. Modern studies have shown that all parts of the pansy are edible; pansy tea has a mild sedative effect; and pansies contain salicylic acid (the main ingredient in aspirin. As a garnish, the pansy makes an elegant and dramatic addition to a dinner plate.

The pansy is one of the first flowers we in Delaware can plant. The flowers come through snow and freezing temperatures and give us confidence that spring is coming. And after four snowy nor’easters this month, we want that reassurance!

Here is a listing of the different native plants we'll have for sale this year, along with their ideal gardens and possible uses.