River Love Farm

The Trushee have finally found the fruits!!! 😡
We took quite a bit of damage the other day and only noticed as we went to pick sweet bell peppers and Tomatoes, so we immediately put this lanky fellow on overtime as a watchman. They will figure it out soon enough, but it's been working for the last few days!

This little white crab spider is the first garden protector I've seen with a taste for stink bugs. Now if we could just get them to hang out by the tomatoes and peppers... 🤔

Take a guess. What's going on here?

Good Night Kings! These guys are spending the night inside, and we'll see you tomorrow at pickup!

So peaceful after the storm...where the blessings from Estate River flows into Upper Love. It didn't take long for yesterday's downpour to fill the pond from empty to overflowing. The ground was primed from earlier storms, and the gut was running with some serious flood action by sunset. We're glad to have a dry day today to recover a bit... And yes! We harvested watermelon early on Saturday just in time to avoid having a bunch of ripe melons split in the field!

Happy birthday Farmer Bob!! 💚
He's an incredible farmer because it's his true passion, his dream job! He has the skills, attention to detail, he's a hard worker and overcomes challenges. He truly enjoys every step from seed to harvest.
Bob, we all LOVE the veggies and fruits you grow for us!
Love you Babe!! .... he's also an amazing dad and husband!! 😉

The recent rains have been nice for the gardens, and we get bonus fruit to forage around the farm too! We have a handful of guava trees that usually fruit heavily in December. When we get a rainy week, they seem to flower and fruit again a few other times throughout the year.

We are really blessed to have some nice mature and bearing common guava that are still found in pockets of pastureland on island. I've heard the hill behind the old St Dunstan's campus (now St Croix Montessori) where we have our Wednesday mid island pickup used to be covered in guava trees. Finding a ripe guava on the tree is one of the unique joys of island life! Does anyone remember the old days of fruit covered slopes before the tan tan took over??!?🤔😞

King of fruits looking nice! We should be enjoying sweet sweet pineapples sometime in May, but my mouth is watering now!

Why grow just 1 variety of cherry tomato when you can eat a 🌈 rainbow of little bites of heaven!

We've been on a taste test mission for tomato varieties for years. Our current mix of 5 types was selected on flavor alone, and the taste testing continues every time we harvest!

Available in abundance this week along with lots of red slicers and heirlooms too!

https://riverlove.farm/

Harvest morning! I started growing this variety of bok choy because it was supposed to grow smaller than the last one I tried. No baby choy here, just big boy choy

Time to reset the rain gauge! We're so thankful for the showers the last couple days, and so very grateful to all of you who ventured out in that afternoon break from the rain yesterday to pick up your orders. We appreciate you all!

Tomato haircut day! We try to get around to heavily pruning our young tomato plants at least once to maximize fruiting and increase air flow around the plants. We've also found it gives the pests less places to hide.

Sweet surprises ahead... I found the first few pineapple blooms pushing up on the plants we planted 10 months ago. These were among the first crops we planted back in March 2023, and the sweet fruits will be worth the wait!

Our current mix of 3 cherry tomato varieties are ripening in abundance! It includes sweet Reds, super sweet Sungolds and Black cherries with a delicious heirloom quality flavor. Many customers admit to getting an extra bag just to snack on while driving home from pickup. If you missed us this week or just want an extra pint or 2, you can buy at Annaly Farms Inc. while supplies last.

Happy New Year from our farmily to yours! We ended the final days of 2023 sowing the seeds of hope for a fruitful 2024, and we had some help transplanting out the next set of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and sunflowers! It feels great every time a new garden plot gets filled up with seedlings we've been nurturing in the nursery. There's so much hope and expectation as their roots find the soil where they'll grow to full maturity. I imagine it's much like the feeling a parent gets releasing a grown child from the home. Well, 2 days into the new year, and nearly 500 of our newly released babies seem to be thriving! (I hope they call home!)

Dew on the dill, but no snow on the hill this chilly winter morning!
We took time to rest for Christmas but the veggies, flowers and fruits of the field just kept on growing. The flower rows are looking like works of art, and we'll be designing some Joyful Seasons bouquets this week! We're ready for another great harvest! We'll be on a 1 day delay this week and next, so you can preorder Tues and Weds for Thurs pickups and deliveries!

Harvest preview for this week! We ❤️ variety! This is the last big haul from this set of melons, and it's really tough to pick favorites. They are all good!

Looking forward to another sweet week on the farm!

Help us settle the age old flavor debate. Are you team yellow or red? For a limited harvest window, we'll have both!

The watermelon seedlings we mudded in after the heavy storms of early October have yielded a tasty crop of all shapes, sizes and colors. Give your taste buds a treat, and try them both. There's still time to preorder for this week's harvest and lots of other veggies too. Check it out at riverlove.farm

Give thanks! The time for turkey leftovers has passed, fresh harvest is ready in the field!

In case you haven't heard, we moved our farm and family to a new permanent location this year. River Love Farm (previously My Neighbors Garden) is nestled in the heart of St. Croix where Estate River meets Estate Upper Love. Its beautiful and fertile location to grow into, and the first harvests are starting to come in!

We're kicking off the growing season with this week's offering of lettuces, greens & veggies. As we ramp up, we'll be expanding our menu as crops ripen, and we'll also be connecting with other local farms to bring you a wider selection of the island's freshest produce and farm goods! We also have gift cards available in multiple denominations that make a great present for family, friends and coworkers who appreciate great food!

Shop our online store now through Tues night, and we'll have orders ready for pickup and limited delivery Wed afternoon (11/29).

Thanks for shopping local!
Farmer Bob & Family

We're mixing it up today with harvest of some Spring Greens Mix! This combo of tender leafy greens goes great with just about any fruit, veggie, or herbs. There's still some great options available for online preorder today for Wednesday pickup!

Sweet Spring! April forecast calls for a good chance of sweet juicy pineapple and sweet corn!

What's your favorite flavor of the rainbow?
We've got a pretty tasty mix of colorful cherry tomatoes in our gardens right now, and they all have their own unique flavor signature!

My favorite are the Black Cherries (the dark reddish-purple ones!) They are like super sweet bite-sized heirlooms. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's picking... These intermittent rains usually cause the ripest ones to split on the vine because the skins can't contain all the juicy sweetness inside. 100% of the splits get donated straight to my belly! 😉🤪

My favorite type of jewels... the sweet juicy kind!

It's only been 5 months since planting out this Hugel bed and surrounding area. The fruits of the labor are starting to show!

This planting method has been super productive for our pineapples in other areas of the farm, but stacking multiple crops in the space is working out really well too Watermelon, Pineapples, Papaya and Mango tree all pictured getting along here as they thrive and await their moments to shine. Watermelon and Papaya fruit first and are later cleared out to allow pineapples to flourish for a few years as Mango and other fruit trees will fill in as long term residents. All benefit from the Hugel bed structure of decaying logs and limbs under soil surface which provides long term nutrients, water retention, beneficial fungal networks and more. Long live the Hugel!

TLDR: That's fennel guarding your kale!
--> Gardens make great spaces to experiment and see the interactions and effects of all the living creatures that call it home. One of the biggest garden pests to our crops is the teeny tiny aphid. What they lack in size, they make up for in numbers... And when they attack a crop it becomes nearly impossible to eradicate by organic growing methods. Prevention is key, and this season we've been experimenting with some co-planting (companion planting) to deter aphids from taking up residence in the mature kale and collard greens. It's working very well! Aphids hate the scent of the fennel, and most of the rows where we tried this method have done much better than previous seasons. As an added bonus, fennel is delicious and all parts of the plant are useful in the kitchen!

It's a very green week in the gardens! Give thanks for the showers last week! We still have a lot of great cooking greens, lettuces, cukes, tomatoes, final sorrel for the season, herbs and more ready for your kitchen. Order by 9pm Tues for fresh harvest pickup on Wednesday afternoon. myneighborsgardenstx.com

Sweet times ahead!