Farm News- September 9, 2010

Hi Folks,

I hope you had a pleasant Labor Day weekend. There’s no 3 day weekend here at the farm of course, we’ve got to harvest your food! Besides harvesting, the major project for Monday was to finish erecting a temporary fence around 4 acres of field to keep the deer from destroying the pumpkin and winter squash crop. The vines are starting to die back and there are only a few more weeks before the harvest, but the deer have already done a lot of damage. We need to protect it until it matures and we can bring it in out of the field.

We are back in the greens business again: this week we have arugula or other mustard greens, next week there will be tatsoi. A second planting of chard is coming on and the first planting has been renovated and is growing nicely again. We should have spinach and kale in 2 or 3 weeks. Lettuce is still a few weeks away, but once it begins, we should have a steady supply until the end of the season. I haven’t griped about the weather yet, a mandatory part of these updates, but I’ll keep it brief. It’s been beautiful of course, but very dry; we really need some rain and there’s none in sight.

Beans are scarce at the moment as we wait for the next planting to start producing, which should be next week as they are flowering heavily. The Rattlesnake beans are almost completely defoliated by the bean beetle, despite the release of thousand of parasitic wasps. The guys from the state insect lab have been making frequent visits to scout and release the wasps to try to at least reduce the population that will overwinter. In the mean time I have to tolerate the devastation. Zucchini and summer squash will be making their reprise soon, possibly by next week. I’m sorry to say that the melons are done, but we had a good run. Eggplant production is still slow, so it’s a maybe for this week, if you got it last week, a probably not.

The share for this week will be:
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant (maybe), red potatoes, yellow onions, carrots, string beans or edamames, ground cherries or cherry tomatoes, arugula or mustard greens and choice of an herb. The fruit share will be nectarines and Gala apples.

Enjoy!
Farmer John