2009 Season, Week Fourteen

August 22, 2009

This week's harvest:

Tomatoes &/or tomatillos

Sweet peppers

Hot peppers

Potatoes

Okra

Patty pan squash

Basil

Onions

Garlic

Watermelon

Zucchini, eggplant, or green chilis

Zinnia flowers

This week's farm news:

Our fall garden is coming right along. Early this week we set out a bunch more fall transplants. We set bok choi, Chinese cabbage, beets, lettuce, cilantro, & Tuscan kale. We direct seeded salad turnips & more (!) carrots. Eric mowed, turned under, & then broadcast cover crop seeds on big areas of the garden where summer crops have finished. The potato & corn patches are sown to buckwheat & crimson clover with a little bit of kale & daikon radish seed mixed in. Our butternut squash vines are beginning to die back & reveal a gorgeous crop of squash -- and there's a bunch! Because our fall garden seems fairly established now, we would like to go ahead & announce this year's fall share. It will be seven weeks (Sat. Oct. 10-Sat. Nov. 21) & cost $150 for small shares & $250 for medium shares. We'll have sign-up forms available for anyone who is interested. The fall share will include a wide variety of greens & lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter squashes, etc. As well as a continuation of the summer crops up until we get a frost. Just let us know if you're interested!

2009 Season, Week Thirteen

August 15, 2009

This week's harvest:
Watermelons
Tomatoes
Basil
Sweet peppers
Hot peppers
Green chiles &/or eggplant
Garlic
Onions
Patty pan squash
Cucumbers
Yellow beans
Tomatillos
Okra -- free choice

This week's farm news:

This week's big item in the basket is watermelon. It's an old heirloom variety called "Strawberry"...and as you will see, very delicious! We've been saving our own seed for this variety for a number of years. If you get a really good melon, we'd like to ask you to help our seed saving efforts by selecting 10-20 seeds from it for us. Just rinse them a bit & fold them up in a paper towel. Thanks!

Our big project of the week was digging our potato crop out of the ground. We had lots of great help so the task wasn't too overwhelming. This year's yield was not as great as we had hoped, but we did get potatoes! You'll be receiving the season's first potatoes in your baskets in the coming weeks.

We had some rain early in the week so when the garden was too wet for working in, we started a new construction project. We're putting an addition onto our little cabin to better accomodate our growing family! The goal is to increase the size of our kitchen & add another bedroom. We don't anticipate having everything completed by the time the baby arrives, but we're working on it! Later in the week, once the garden soil dried up a bit, the crew was back in the garden cultivating all the young fall crops to keep them happy & growing. Next week we've got a bunch more fall transplants to set out into the garden!

2009 Season, Week Twelve

August 8, 2009

This week's harvest:
"Halona" muskmelons
"Red sails" lettuce
Sweet corn
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
"Patty Pan" summer squash
Sweet red peppers
Hot peppers
Basil
Onions
Garlic
Eggplant
Yellow beans
Tomatillos

This week's farm news:

We had a few more rains this week, but nothing too severe or intense, thank goodness! Just nice gentle rains which were absolutely perfect for germinating carrots! Otherwise the weather this week felt much more like summer -- fairly hot & sunny. The garden is really ripening & bountiful now. It's been a good challenge keeping everything picked. The muskmelons really ripened this week and we've harvested lots of them! They are incredibly delicious so we hope you enjoy this special summertime treat! Looks like next week we'll have a load of watermelons!

We did a bit more fall garden work this week. Eric direct seeded 2 types of daikon radish, arugula, mizuna, & red mustard (which are remarkably all up & growing already). The interns started some beets in soil blocks for later transplanting into the garden. All of the transplants that were set just over a week ago are settled into the garden & looking good. The fall peas are poking their little heads out of the soil. And so it goes... The seasonal shift of crops is happening. Even though there's a lot of summer produce yet to come, we are transitioning the garden back to cool-season crops. It seems amazing that fall is just around the corner!

2009 Season, Week Eleven

August 1, 2009

This week's harvest:
Cucumbers
Sweet corn
"Patty Pan" summer squash
Tomatoes & cherry tomatoes
Yellow beans
Lettuce
Basil
Eggplant
Hot peppers
Onions & garlic
Tomatillos
Muskmelons -- We have to harvest these as they ripen so if you don't get one this week, you will next week

This week's farm news:

Happy August! Well folks, even though our main crop of tomatoes are still craving some good sunshine, lots of other summer crops are finally starting to come in. This week's basket is really starting to have the diversity of summer goodies we've all been waiting for! Yeah!

We've got a great jump on this year's fall garden. We had a big push to get a bunch of transplants set before (yet another!) rain. We set over 1000 various baby plants -- brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, & kohlrabi. Eric direct-seeded another bed of carrots so now we've got nearly 2000 row feet of them in the ground! That's potentially 24,000 carrots! He also seeded some fall shelling peas. Once it rained & we had to stop garden work, our intern Laura taught the two new interns, Jessie & Jaykub, & our short-term volunteer, Andrea, all about starting seeds in soil blocks. They started lots more fall crops -- bok choi, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, and Tuscan kale. On Wednesday we had the big project for the entire crew of digging potatoes. Even Ira & Opal were in on the action, searching around in the soil for all of those buried starchy treasures! What fun!