The weather has been a trial lately....we made a bit of a desperation move and covered our tomato trellises with painter's plastic to keep the rain off of them....it seems to have worked, I removed the plastic earlier today and the plants looked great. We are trying to ward off Late Blight, a fungal disease which will kill the plants and thrives in cool, damp weather. Unlike many Puget Sound farms, we don't grow any of our crops in greenhouses or hoophouses. This is not entirely by choice; more just that I didn't have any greenhouses lying around, and have been able to grow crops pretty successfully without them and so I haven't been in a hurry to spend thousands of dollars on something I didn't really need. But last year when it began raining in late August our tomato plants went down fast....and it's made me much more nervous this year. Last year, though, it was so hot that the plants began fruiting much earlier, and were already pretty spent by this time. This year the plants seem to be very strong and healthy still, and just getting going, so I'm hopeful that we will have many more weeks of tomatoes. Also, the weather report, which initially looked like it would rain all this week, seems to be improving every time I look, so that doesn't hurt either.
In this week's share:
Heirloom tomatoes- Speaking of tomatoes, we should have some nice ones for this week's share. Being under the plastic helped keep the rain off the plants, but also I think stimulated them to ripen a bit, so it looks like there should be plenty of nice tomatoes this week.
Gypsy peppers- The gypsy peppers are so great...the plants are loaded with fruit, and the flavor is so good. Here is a webpage that doesn't have a ton of info, but has some links to some other good articles about how to use gypsy peppers....apparently they're especially popular in Northern California, which I didn't realize...http://www.thekitchn.com/what-can-i-do-with-gypsy-peppe-119538
Kale (Lacinato)- We are in the midst of clearing the fields and plowing in a lot of our Summer plantings to make room for Fall cover crop....that means we will be planting larger stands of grains and legumes to grow through the winter months and add fertility to the soil. But before we tilled in the Summer kale we thought we'd put it in the share one more time, so here you go!
Carrots- I'm very happy with the look of the Fall carrot beds...the roots seem to be densely planted, but not too dense to where they aren't able to size up. Looks like we will have lots of carrots over the next few months. http://www.marthastewart.com/274839/carrot-recipes
Ailsa Crag onions- These are the same yellow onions that have been in your share before, but now they have been brought in and dried down in the greenhouse for the last few weeks. They should store at room temperature for several weeks the way they are now. They are a sweet onion, though, so the flavor is nice and mild, but they won't keep for as long as storage varieties.
Radish- We have a new planting of radishes coming on. This time of year I love to have a cold dinner with some cheese and crackers and mixed vegetables like radish, carrot, cucumber, sliced peppers and tomatoes...in fact that's pretty much what Bobbie and I had for dinner tonight.
Lemon cucumber- I am hoping we will still be harvesting enough lemon cukes to give everyone at least one or two in their shares this week. The Summer squash and cucumbers are already beginning to slow down their fruiting quite a bit with the shorter days now.
Large Shares Only:
Melon- Large shares will get another of our Galia melons this week...while we are past the main burst of ripe melons, there are still some more coming ripe every day. We also planted a cantaloupe variety that hasn't even begun to ripen yet....I am hoping they do before it's too late!
Corn- Didn't have quite enough corn for all shares this week, either, as we are getting into a new planting of a larger bicolor variety and they are just getting started. Hope to have a few ears for each of the large shares, though. This variety has nice long ears. I sprained my finger and it makes it difficult to pick corn, so I've been making Jack do it.
Summer squash- As mentioned above, the summer squash has really slowed down, but I'm hoping we will have enough...if not, we'll find something else to sub in its place!
Summer squash?-
No comments:
Post a Comment