Farm News- August 26, 2010
Hi Folks,
It’s been a dry summer and we’ve been waiting and hoping for some rain. Many of the scattered storms that have been about have missed us and we finally had to hand water most of the recently transplanted lettuces last week or risk losing many of them. Now it seems we’re headed into a rainy stretch for the first half of this week. Rain is, of course, critical for the crops but it can be a mixed blessing. Long periods of damp and overcast conditions accelerate the spread of diseases in the tomatoes and in other crops as well. These conditions also make the harvesting more of a challenge. The flood of tomatoes we’ve seen over the past 2 weeks is beginning to ebb, as most of the early varieties have produced their crop and succumbed to disease. We are bringing in a lot more plum tomatoes now, there are still heirlooms that will continue to produce and we are still picking lots of the cherries. The melon bonanza is also starting to slow, but we will still have them in the shares for the next couple of weeks. Eggplant production continues to be slow, so we will probably be in the every other week rotation for a while. The first planting of edamame soybeans is ready, so we will be harvesting the 60 or 70% that the groundhogs have not destroyed as weather permits this week. We will likely offer them as a choice with the string beans.
We have been busy transplanting lots of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower over the past couple of weeks. I have also seeded many other fall crops, such as spinach, turnips, broccoli raab, arugula, and other mustard greens. I will be continuing to make successive plantings of these crops over the next month, until about the third week in September, in order to provide you with ample quantities of greens during the second half of the season.
The share for this week will be:
Potatoes, white onions, tomatoes, string beans or edamames, peppers, Savoy cabbage, carrots, melons or watermelons, choice of ground cherries or cherry tomatoes, and choice of an herb. The fruit share will be nectarines and ginger gold apples.
Enjoy!
Farmer John
