Turnip season is here! This picture is clearly from last year, as I’m wearing two jackets and the trees have no leaves 😉 But the turnips are looking just as good and nearly as abundant as shown here!.

Hello farm friends!

We’ve enjoyed a month or so of *relative* slowness at the farm, but that ends now! I have a marathon of a dozen or so weddings to provide flowers for between now and early November, plus the Renfrow collard season began at Moe’s Original BBQ this morning! The Outstanding in the Field farm dinner is on October 5th and so we are in the midst of our final wave of farm clean-up and preparations. And we are about to flip a lot of crops in the fields and prepare the ground for over-wintered flowers and lots of cover crops.

We are ready for the temperatures to drop a bit and for some rain to come, but are thankful for the well that we are utilizing in abundance for the first time since it was drilled this past winter. We’re moving an overhead sprinkler around the fields daily.

Our farm stand will be open this Tuesday (9/26) from 10am until 2pm at 409 W Charles Street in downtown Matthews.

This week, expect to see:
Radishes, turnips, green onions, eggplant, okra, collards, henpeck mustard, tatsoi, broccoli, garlic, winter squash, peppers, honey, flower bouquets, and more – all grown at our farm. This will also most likely be our last week with tomatoes.

Wednesday & Saturday pre-ordered produce boxes will have radishes, broccoli, choice of greens bunch, green onions, sweet bell peppers, and the last tomatoes.

Order Produce Boxes Here!

Nearly Time for Fall Bulbs!!

Fall-planted anemone, ranunculus, iris, and some daffodil bulbs are slated to arrive around October 10th and I will have an “online store” for pre-purchasing up and ready next week. Tulips and more daffodils will arrive in November from a different supplier. All the fall-planted flower bulb and seed details & link to the online store will be sent out in a bonus email on Saturday evening, October 7th!

Successful Gardener Series Class

taught by Jeff Rieves

I tried taking a picture in the middle of my asparagus patch Sunday night for size reference, probably should’ve found someone to take the pic for me…basically they’re 5′ tall and beautiful, doing lots of photosynthesis for abundant spears in the springtime. An asparagus patch can often live for 40-50 years.

Perennial Food Plants

Not every food plant is an annual. Some food plants last for years. With proper management, some of them can last for decades! We’ll look at several of them, and learn how to make them a part of a successful garden. We will meet on Wednesday, September 27th at 10am at Renfrow Hardware and walk up to the farm, weather-permitting.

Get all the class details here

We will discuss a wide array of crops – fruit plants of all sorts, asparagus, perennial onions, herbs, and self re-seeding annual crops that you won’t have to replant if provided with their ideal habitat!

Let Jeff know you’re coming

Can’t make it to this class but still want to learn about fruit plants? David & Pressly will be teaching a fruit class with SkillPop in late October – date and time will be announced soon.

SkillPop Turns 2!

Speaking of SkillPop, last weekend this cool Charlotte startup celebrated two years in business! Matt and I invited the crew to the farm to celebrate this birthday, and we had a fun crowd of SkillPop team members and the teachers of various classes with their families.

SkillPop has been an awesome way for us to meet a new circle of people in the Charlotte area, and many of the subscribers to this newsletter were folks we enjoyed meeting at one of our Renfrow gardening classes! SkillPop orchestrates classes on so many different topics from calligraphy and flower crowns to basic car maintenance and one our favorites to teach, backyard chickens!

Produce Boxes

Wednesday & Saturday pre-ordered produce boxes will have radishes, broccoli, green onions, sweet bell peppers, the last week of slicing tomatoes & choice between collards, tatsoi & mustard greens.

Order Produce Boxes Here

How it works:

Pre-ordered $20 produce boxes are available on Wednesdays and Saturdays each week, with ingredients and the order form link updated in each week’s newsletter.
Please place Wednesday orders before 2pm on Tuesday, and Saturday orders before 2pm on Thursday! The order form will be shut down after 2pm on Thursday.
Pickup of produce is always at Renfrow Hardware during business hours (Wednesday 8am-5pm and Saturday 8am-2pm). Day of choice is specified on order form.
Payment is accepted upon pickup like any other hardware store purchase. Ask for your order at the counter and we will get it for you.
We cannot reserve quantities of produce that are less than these $20 boxes, but if you are looking to place a specific flower order or have a different type of request, please email me directly – Pressly@RenfrowFarms.com.