What We Grow

WHAT WE GROW

At the KC Community Farm we grow vegetables that appeal to all of your senses- taste, sight, smell, and feel! And even sound, too, sometimes- there is nothing quite like the sound of a good sharp knife slicing through a crisp melon! We don't grow food because it "ships well" or because it is always perfectly uniform. We grow food because it TASTES GOOD and it feeds our senses and our souls. Eating should be an adventure, a sensual experience, and a profound source of nutrition and good health.

As we've grown and eaten vegetables over the years, we've gotten to appreciate the full range of flavors that can be found. We love greens for their sharp bitterness and the way they make you hungry just from the scent of them. We love tomatoes that are sweet and those that are tart and some that are rich and others that are mild. We add herbs to our cooking because they add depth and complexity that is sometimes subtle and sometimes wonderfully bold. We consider garlic as important to food as salt and pepper. We don't expect our customers to like everything we grow, but we do hope they develop a broader palate and a sense of curiosity in their cooking!

Following is a list of vegetables we usually grow. The list changes slightly every year based on our interests and the changeable Kansas weather.

Beans: Beans are a mainstay of garden-eating, and we grow a wide variety of them, including Favas, Filet, Snap, Purple, Yellow, Edible Soy (also known as Edamame), and Chinese Yard Long.

Beets: Have you ever tried roasting beets? Such Sweetness! Chioggia, Red Ace,Golden are the varieties we work with.

Broccoli: When we can get it to grow in spite of spring weather that may go from freezing to HOT in a few days, we produce beautiful green heads! Other years, we may instead have nice, tiny stir-fry heads!

Cabbage: We tend to like the tinier cabbage, sweet and nicely suited for single meal servings.

Carrots: We are endlessly in pursuit of these sweet and crisp carrots that are so hard to grow in Kansas clay! Look for new and unusual colors- purple, dark red, yellow and white!

Cauliflower: We try this finicky crop every year, and have grown beautiful cauliflower successfully about 1 year out of 3! We do love them when they produce!

Celery & Celeriac: There is nothing like Kansas-grown celery for adding depth and flavor to soups, stews, and stir-fries. Celeriac is a vegetable that is not so widely appreciated in the US, but we love it for its texture, its rich celery flavor, and for the body it adds to soups and stews.

Collards & Kale: Chop and sauté with garlic, then dress with balsamic vinegar, fabulous and healthy.

Cucumbers: Tender skinned Mid-Eastern cukes, plus white and yellow heirlooms, green slicing and pickling cukes.

Edible Flowers: In the spring, we'll have violets, pansies, nasturtium, borage, chives, and others, beautiful in a salad, as a garnish, or decorating a special cake. Eggplant: White, Lavender, Striped, Black, and Green that are visual and culinary works of art.

Eggplant: White, Lavender, Striped, Black, and Green that are visual and culinary works of art.

Fava Beans: An Italian delight that many people are intimidated by, but shouldn't be! They are easy to cook in the shell (eat pod and all) or you can shell them the traditional way and just cook with the elegant seed.

Fennel: a lovely licorice flavor that goes in sauces, roasted, sliced thin for salads.

Filet Beans: We've almost stopped growing regular snap beans because filet beans taste so much better. They are long and slender, with a refined texture and rich bean taste.

Fingerling Potatoes: In spite of the cost, we can't get enough of the fingerlings!

Garlic: We grow many varieties, some quite spicy, some mild and buttery.

Herbs, Herbs, Herbs: So many, we'll just name a few: basil, rosemary, thyme, savory, lemon balm, mint, parsley, cilantro, marjoram, oregano, sage, sorrel, and chives!

Hot Peppers: We can't resist growing nearly a dozen types of hot peppers, beautiful, spicy and fascinating!

Kohlrabi: These cute little aliens-from-outer-space veggies are crisp like the heart of a broccoli stem and are a great addition to salads and stir-fries and soups.

Leeks: Milder than onions, elegant and long, we love them!

Lettuce: More than a dozen varieties of lettuces, full size and cut for a baby salad mix.

Melons: We are limited for space, but plan to put in at least 100 melon plants. Our favorite is Charentais melons, a type of French melon that is smaller and sweeter than the American varieties.

Mesclun Greens: A seasonally changing selection of greens cut small for a mixed salad, the best in town!

Okra: Don't give us any grief about "that slimy vegetable"! Okra, whether pickled, fried, or cooked up in a gumbo, is a gift from the vegetable gods!

Onions: Sweet, storage, baby, bunching, a staple of cooking.

Oriental Greens: Most of these we cut baby-sized for a salad mix, the flowers are wonderful cooked or raw, the full grown leaves are lovely in a stir fry or sautéed.

Potatoes: Lovely deep yellow and creamy, spring red, an incredibly sweet purple-skinned variety, all wonderful.

Pumpkins: Sweet and tiny, perfect for a pie!

Radishes: Do you want the truth? This is the only vegetable we grow that Katherine truly doesn't like, and the only reason she plants them is that they help carrots germinate in the hard Kansas clay soil. But we know that other people like them, too!

Raspberries: We have beautiful and tasty red raspberries and a sweetly flavored gold raspberry.

Shallots: These are such a nice addition to any dish; a subtle flavor midway between onions and garlic.

Snap Peas: Nothing says spring better than a fat snap pea!

Snow Peas: The Oregon Giant Snow Pea is just what it sounds like, a huge and sweet snap pea made for dips or stir-frys!

Spinach: Every year we pray for a long and gentle spring so we can harvest spinach and snow peas week after week after week. We tend to cut ours at the baby and "teenager" stages because we like the smaller leaves.

Summer Squash: Baby, full size, a beautiful array of colors, textures and tastes.

Sweet Bell Peppers: Green, Purple, Ivory, Red, Golden, we love our peppers.

Swiss Chard: This green is a gift from the heavens! Easy and wonderful.

Tomatillos: Salsa Verde! Tomatillo soups! Addictive…

Tomatoes: We are growing cherry tomatoes, currant tomatoes, salad, beefsteak and just about every flavor and color you can imagine! Pure summer you can hold in your hand.

Turnips: We grow two varieties of turnips that could help you recover from your childhood turnip traumas, Hakurei and Scarlet Queen. Both of these "salad turnips" are crisp, sweet, and mild.

Winter Squash: Delectable Delicatas, butternut, a few new and beautiful varieties. Roasting brings out their fullest flavor.