Farm News- August 13, 2009

Hi Everyone,

This past week we finished harvesting the onion crop, which is a great relief. With these wet and humid conditions everyday that they remained in the field they were in danger of rotting. Now we can turn our attention to other pressing matters such as getting the weeds under control in the winter squash and elsewhere, and beginning to transplant the fall broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.

The beets have finally sized up so we will be shipping them this week. There will be some regular purple types and some Chioggia beets, an Italian heirloom, also known as Candy cane which is white with red rings inside.he eggplant and tomatoes have begun to produce so they will be in the share for this week as well. The tomatoes are rather small and there aren’t that many ripe just yet, but it’s a start. The truth is that my tomato crop looks terrible and I don’t expect a very good season for toma- toes this year.

You have probably heard about the problem of late blight on tomatoes in NJ. This disease, also known as phytoptera is what caused the Irish potato famine, and is quite devastating. I heard that one local farm lost their entire crop of tomatoes and potatoes. Fortunately we have not seen any sign of it yet here at the farm. But there is a plethora of other diseases affecting the tomatoes; even the tomatoes in the greenhouse have been affected.

We still have an abundance of the sweet onion, so we will be sending these again this week, as they aren’t great keepers.

While I normally only send one member of the Allium family each week, I know that many of you are waiting for more garlic, so we will be sending it as well.

The share for this week will be:
Red Boston lettuce, beets, garlic, sweet onions, all Blue potatoes, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, fennel, string beans, and choice of an herb.

Enjoy!
Farmer John