Everything here at my farm is looking so gorgeous this year - from the Cotinus and all its plumes of billowy hairs to the incredibly beautiful and fragrant roses to the lush green foliage of all the trees and boxwood. Many of you have commented on how much you enjoy seeing photos of my farm this time of year. Earlier this week, my dear friend and EVP Director of Design at Marquee Brands, Kevin Sharkey, came to the farm and took a series of interesting and artistic images of my new half-acre vegetable garden just bursting with spectacular growth. It’s always fun to view the familiar through someone else’s lens - enjoy his pictures.
And be sure to visit Kevin’s Instagram page @seenbysharkey to see more of his photographs.
Kevin entered the garden from the southeast corner. You may recall, this enclosed space was my donkey paddock for many years. We created this gated entrance when we transformed it into a vegetable garden, so I could enter from both sides – on foot or by Polaris.
Kevin captured this image from the top of the garden looking down its length. This garden has more than 40 beds. My head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and I planned everything out on a map and made sure we accounted for every crop we wanted to grow.
This year, the vegetables look utterly amazing. These are just three of the broccoli heads – each one more perfect than its neighbor. I picked one not long ago and it weighed two and a half pounds!
Usually, everyone looks for the beautiful head in the center, but its leaves are also quite pretty. Kevin took a side photo of our cabbages.
And here is a view from the top. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green.
From this angle, this red cabbage looks like a rose just beginning to unfurl.
Kevin took this photo to show the giant leaves growing out of the garden box. We attribute so much of the growth to the excellent soil I have here at the farm. Not only is the base soil well fertilized by the donkeys, but we also used a mix of new soil and my own composted soil made here at the farm.
Here is another view – we’re all just so pleased with how well everything is growing.
This is a Napa cabbage – the best-known variety of the Chinese cabbages with large, full-size heads. These heads are oblong with green, crinkly leaves on the outside and creamy yellow in the center.
The cauliflower is just so pretty and so very large. Most are not ready just yet, but this one does look pretty close.
And look at our bed of kale! It has such lush green color.
Kevin walked to the center of the garden to one of our longest beds. This one is planted with asparagus. We won’t be harvesting these for at least three years as asparagus needs all that time to develop, but after that they will produce an abundant crop of spears spring after spring.
We planted leeks, shallots and onions back in late April – this is another interesting vantage point showing growth.
And these are the leaves of our artichokes. Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which will emerge from the center of the plants. At the ends of every bed, we planted all kinds of herbs.
Here is a bed of spinach. We planted the spinach close to the end, so it is easy to access for my morning green juice.
Some of the beds are smaller. This one is filled with basil – both green and purple.
In another center bed, along this trellis we put up, are lots of peas – one section for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and another for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from pests and diseases.
At the north end, loads of cilantro and parsley. Everyone always asks me why I grow so much and what I do I use it for. I always love growing an abundance of vegetables for my daughter, Alexis, and her beautiful and vegetable-loving children. I use the produce for cooking shoots and various photography shoots here at the farm. I love sharing it with my friends and those who work so hard here at Cantitoe Corners. And don’t forget my chickens, geese, and peafowl – they all love delicious, fresh, and organic greens too.
Kevin took many photos showing how large this garden is, but also how well it was divided and built. These beds in the foreground may look empty, but they are just freshly seeded. We always plant in succession here at the farm, meaning we plant seeds every few weeks during the season, so there is always something ready to harvest.
I love visiting this garden whenever I can. This is the north gate. It is the closest entrance to my stable. Thank you for taking these beautiful pictures, Kevin. I’ll be sharing some of the bounty with you very soon.
Smoke bushes, Cotinus, are among my favorite of small trees. They have superlative color, appealing form, and look excellent in the gardens, especially with their fluffy, hazy, smoke-like puffs that appear this time of year.
I always try to incorporate unique and interesting plantings into all my gardens. I have many smoke bushes around my Bedford, New York farm - in the sunken garden behind my Summer House, around my pool, in the beds outside my Tenant House where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit, outside my main greenhouse, and lining both sides of the long carriage road that runs through one of my hayfields - a gorgeous allée of dark burgundy Cotinus.
All the smoke bushes are looking so gorgeous and lush - here are some photos, enjoy.
Cotinus, also known as smoke bush and smoke tree, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to sumacs. This one is a royal purple smoke bush with its stunning dark red-purple foliage.
The leaves of the smoke bush are about one-and-a-half to three inches long and ovate, or oval like, in shape with parallel veins.
The name “smoke bush” comes from these billowy hairs attached to the flower clusters which remain in place through the summer.
These smoke bushes are in the garden outside my gym building, where I can admire them before and after exercising.
Nearby are these green smoke bushes, with their light pinkish puffs.
This time of year, the oval leaves are green or deep purple, but then light up in yellows, oranges, and reds in autumn offering great color through the seasons.
Here is a group outside my main greenhouse – they are so lush. The spectacular foliage stands out so beautifully above the hosta plants.
I mix some of the varieties in this area to show off the differing colors.
When planting, be sure to keep it from drying out, especially during its first growing season. Once the smoke bush is properly established it is quite drought-tolerant.
The Cotinus has an upright habit when young and spreads wider with age. This one rises above the shorter hornbeam hedge with its beautiful “smoke.”
The only mandatory pruning is to remove dead or damaged wood, but the shrubs will also tolerate hard pruning to shape them or rejuvenate them if needed.
These smoke bushes are on one side of my Summer House garden terrace. We did not prune these in the past year, so it looks very full and widespread.
This one in the back of the Summer House garden is showing off brilliant light colored plumes under the shade of the great ginkgo tree. One can also see some alliums in front of it.
This smoke bush is planted in the garden outside my Tenant House. This garden is actually called the Stewartia garden, where I also have many Stewartia trees – not surprising, of course, since my name is “Stewart.”
I also have Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ growing along the outside of my pool fence. These are mixed in with a collection of Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo.’ Physocarpus, commonly called ninebark, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rosaceae, native to North America and northeastern Asia.
I planted this hedge in 2018 when these were just about knee-high. Now, these smoke bushes are about six-feet tall and disguise the pool fence almost completely.
These are also covered with the airy puffs. The puffs consist of many filaments which make up a cloud of color on the current season’s growth.
And, if one crushes a smoke bush’s leaves, they have a smell similar to a radish.
Smoke bushes should be planted in full sun or light shade, but they do well in almost any soil type and most any pH level. The ideal circumstance is slightly sandy loam, but they can thrive in rocky soils. The important thing is to plant them where the soil drains well. This Cotinus is just one of about 100 that flank the carriage road through my hayfield.
We planted this allée in 2019 and it has thrived ever since with such beautiful growth. Smoke bushes look great in the landscape and are a pretty choice for massing or for hedges.
Behind the smoke bushes are taller London plane trees – the color is so amazing right now. I hope this inspires you to plant a smoke bush in your garden – it is easy to care for and provides so much natural beauty in return. Happy summer!
I am always so happy to have fresh, organic produce growing at the farm - everything I grow is shared with family and friends, used for video and print shoots, and saved for making my delicious daily green juice.
This year, we're all especially excited about the new vegetable garden. Everything is growing so beautifully. While we have many vegetables already mature and ready for picking, planting is always done in succession - meaning we drop new seeds every 7 to 21 days in order to maintain a consistent supply of harvestable produce throughout the season. Last week, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, planted new crops of carrots and beets, as well as an entire bed of okra. Seeds came from two of our favorite sources, Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
Enjoy these photos.
My gardeners are constantly checking the progress in the vegetable garden and seeding every couple of weeks, so we always have something to pick. On this day, Ryan planted more carrots, beets, and a new bed of okra.
Meanwhile, look at the growing cabbages! These are the most beautiful we’ve ever had – each one more perfect than its neighbor. And they’re so big!
Here’s one of our cauliflower heads. Cauliflower is slow-growing, needing 100 days, or three months, to reach maturity. Unlike broccoli, which has a domed head of tightly packed edible flower buds, a cauliflower head has dense, curd-like plant tissues with a soft texture and mildly sweet, nutty flavor.
And here’s just one of the heads of broccoli growing. Recently, I picked a head of broccoli that was more than two and a half pounds.
And this is is a Napa cabbage – another big beauty.
In this bed, we have our growing carrots. The tops are already quite tall. It will be a few more weeks before we harvest any carrots, but it’s a good time to seed the back half of the bed, so there is another fresh crop following this one.
Ryan uses this bed preparation rake from Johnny’s Selected Seeds to create furrows in the soil. Hard plastic red tubes slide onto selected teeth of the rake to mark the rows. The furrows don’t have to be deep. In general, seeds should be planted at a depth of two times the width, or diameter, of the actual seed. A seed that’s about 1/16-of-an-inch thick should be planted an eighth-of-an-inch deep.
These seeds will be planted about an inch deep. Among the carrot varieties, these are Yellowstone pelleted carrot seed. These carrots will have six to eight inch long roots and a deeper color than most other yellow carrot varieties.
Ryan plants the seeds in rows that are about a foot apart. All the beds are raised slightly and all surrounded by wood frames – more than 40 beds in this half-acre garden. Raised bed gardening allows good drainage, prevents soil compaction, and provides protection for those plants that may otherwise get trampled.
Here are the seeds dropped along the length of the furrow. We always plant a variety of carrots in all the different colors – red, yellow, white, purple, black, and orange.
Then Ryan carefully back fills all the furrows in the bed until all the seeds are covered with soil.
In this bed, Ryan creates more rows for beets. Look at the growing beets at the end – so lush and green. I grow beets through the year. Beets are sweet and tender – and one of the healthiest foods. Beets contain a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support.
Here, Ryan writes out small markers, so we can keep track of what varieties are growing and which ones we want to grow again.
Many of our seeds come from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in central Maine – a company I’ve been using for quite some time. Johnny’s Selected Seeds is a privately held, employee-owned organic seed producer. Johnny’s offers hundreds of varieties of organic vegetable, herb, flower, fruit and farm seeds that are known to be strong, dependable growers.
Here are the beet seeds in the palm of Ryan’s hand. It’s hard to believe these tiny seeds produce such beautiful vegetables within weeks. We grow both red and gold beets.
Here he is dropping the seeds into the bed. The beetroot is the taproot of the beet plant, and is often called the table beet, garden beet, red or golden beet or simply… beet. Beets are highly nutritious and very good for maintaining strong cardiovascular health. It’s low in calories, contains zero cholesterol, and is rich in folates, vitamin-A, B-complex, and antioxidants.
Once all the seeds are dropped, Ryan uses a soft rake to back fill again until all the seeds are covered. We should see sprouts within the next week.
And then in this bed, Ryan makes two big trenches for our okra seeds. When planting okra, Space okra plants at least 10 inches apart in a very sunny area that has fertile, well-drained soil.
We have a variety of okra seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. Started in 1998 as a hobby, it has since grown into North America’s largest heirloom seed company. I love okra, but for some, okra is too slimy when cooked. Okra is very healthy, however – it’s high in fiber, vitamin-C and full of antioxidants.
Ryan plants the okra seeds about 1/2 to 1 inch deep and at least several inches apart in a row. These plants need room to grow.
Once they germinate, Ryan will check the young sprouts and pull any that seem to be too weak or not growing properly.
Ryan covers the rows with soil and then gives everything a good drink. Here, okra can be seeded into the garden as late as July and still produce a good late-summer crop.
This garden looks prettier every day. I am so happy with its progress. How are your vegetables doing this season?
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