This week marks the twelfth farm share, which means we are about halfway through the season! Still a lot of produce to come, with new crops just coming on, and others we haven't even begun picking yet. This warm weather should really help to get our late Summer crops like tomatoes and corn into full production. We will plant the last few trays of lettuce for Fall harvest this coming week, and seed the last round of our fast greens. After that we will be done with all our plantings and until we begin planting our garlic for 2017 in the Fall!
In this week's share:
Sweet Corn! As promised, we are now picking our first planting of sweet corn and will have at least two ears for each share! This is a bicolor variety named Vitality that I always plant for our first succession...it grows well even in cooler Northwest weather and always produces nice early ears. They are a bit smaller than the ears from our midseason varieties, but very tasty! Throw some on the grill and serve with butter and salt, or with chili and lime.
Eggplant- Oh boy, am I excited for eggplant season. Eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables to eat, and it is fun to grow and harvest too. Eggplant is in the same Solanaceae family as tomatoes and peppers but loves the heat even more. This variety is new to me, we got the seeds from our friends at Deep Harvest Farm in Freeland who produce their own seeds to sell at local nurseries like Bayview Farm and Garden. Look for them next Spring if you're a home gardener! Bobbi may be making us some Ratatouille later tonight, with corn, tomatoes, pepper, squash, eggplant, and basil... http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ratatouille-12164
Cherry Tomatoes- Our multi colored cherry tomatoes are back in the share...they started ripening early, but were really slowed down by the cool week we had at the beginning of the month. The farm share, the Orchard Kitchen, and the farm stand customers are all calling for more tomatoes.... I am hoping this warm sunny weather means we will have loads of tomatoes very soon.
Arugula- It has been a while since arugula appeared in the shares, I thought some nice peppery arugula sounded like a good compliment with cucumbers and tomatoes and corn. Some great recipes to check out in this blog post! http://www.thekitchn.com/crazy-for-arugula-9-recipes-to-118826
Cucumbers- I am very glad to be putting cucumbers in the share this week, because we are still picking so many of them we can't get rid of them fast enough! They are coming on strong. Hope you're enjoying our mix of varieties, the small blond Boothby's, the smooth green thin skinned Adam, and the more familiar Marketmore. In a few weeks we have a later planting of Lemon cukes that should get going for late August and early September cukes.
Fingerling Potatoes- We have begun doing our big potato dig, bringing in the storage tubers to hold and use through the Fall and Winter. On Thursday we picked a 100' row of our yellow potatoes and brought in well over 500 lbs of spuds! These fingerlings should still be pretty thin skinned like new potatoes, as we just mowed the greens and we will be digging the potatoes fresh for your bags....but in the coming months the potatoes will cure, becoming a bit drier and starchier with thicker skins as they do so. Fingerling potatoes are great for roasting, boiling, frying, or sautéing!
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In the LARGE shares:
Lettuce- Not sure which variety we'll be cutting this week, but this will add a bit more greenstuff to your large shares for salad making!
Hakurei Turnip- The Japanese turnips continue to be great throughout the Summer, and we should have some nice ones this week. The tops are still tender and nice for stir frying or braising too!
Ailsa Crag Onions- We are also beginning to work on preparing our onions for storage, too.... Last week we crimped the necks so that they begin to dry down....this week I am hoping we have time to pull them out of the ground and "windrow" them in the field; putting them into an organized strip to dry out on the surface of the soil. After that we will clean them, cutting off the tops and roots and taking off any dirt, and bring them in to finish drying. These Ailsas should be able to cure well enough to hold until at least mid October or so, while true storage onion ("Copra") should hopefully store much longer than that, until January or beyond.
next- kale lettuce
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