So far this season has been perfect. We get the rain when we need it. There is not too much heat nor too cold. It is probably the most perfect growing season we have …
*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* We interrupt this program to bring you this special announcement. *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*
So as we all know this season had been going along swimmingly, which is what the plants were doing Sunday night — swimming. Anyone want to guess how much rain we received from Sunday night’s storm? Well, I can’t tell you since our 8 inch rain gauge overflowed. This non-total doesn’t include the rain we got last night. This might be a good time to remind you about the shared risk of joining a CSA farm.
So what wrath has this rain wrought? Where do I start? Lets start with lettuce. We have a couple week’s worth of lettuce growing outside in the great outdoors. Most of the indoor lettuce has been harvested. When we took a look at the outdoor lettuce on Monday it had dark spots on many of the leaves. We have never seen this before so we took a picture and sent it off to the University of Minnesota vegetable expert. We had a bit of hail Sunday night but not a lot. And typically hail would tear the leaves not just bruise them. These spots were only on the outdoor lettuce and not on the few heads we have still growing in the hoop house. After asking a few questions and looking at a few more pictures our expert’s best guess is bruising due to last night’s heavy rain. She recommended harvesting it and giving it out but with a warning to customers that it may not store very well. So let this be your warning, the lettuce may not store very long but…
*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* we interrupt this special announcement with this other special announcement. *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*
I took a look at the spotty lettuce once the sun was out and the spots are disappearing! What? One other idea the expert had was that the lettuce could be waterlogged and could recover once it had a chance to transpire some of the water away. I’m hoping this is what happened. Anyway, we will give it out and you can let us know if it lasted long. We now return you to our previous special announcement.
… should still be good.
Here are some other effects of all the rain we received. Most of our farm is outside so when it rains everything gets wet. And it also gets dirty. The rain splashes mud onto the plants. You’d think it would wash them off but of course it doesn’t because farming needs to be more difficult so only a few of us are dumb enough to attempt it. All our summer squash/zucchini are covered in mud and when we pick them some of that dirt gets ground into the skin of the veggie. We try to wash it off but if it is too ground in it would require us to scratch/tear the skin of the zucchini which would reduce its storage-ability. So we leave it as an exercise for our members. If you find bits of dirt on your zucchini just plan to scrub it immediately prior to using it.
What other problems occurred last night? Well some of the corn plants are no longer pointing toward the sky. At first I thought it might be due to water rushing past the plants and not the wind but I found some plants that were pointing uphill and that would be difficult for water to run that way. Corn falling over happen almost every year. Sometimes it affects the ears of the corn and other times it doesn’t. Since it isn’t silking yet it should recover without any problems. I did notice the tassels are just about to pop out of the top of the earliest planted plants.
Another issue that isn’t related to the storm (at least we don’t think it is related) is the broccoli seems a bit shaggy for lack of a better term. We believe it is due to the hot weather as of late. We’ve noticed in the past if there is hot weather when the heads are forming the different branches of the head grow at different rates and result in less that perfect looking broccoli. It still tastes good so we’ll send it out to you for your amusement and enjoyment.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled newsletter.
…and then the horse farted. It was the funniest thing I’ve even seen! We all laughed and laughed and laughed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my very own eyes. It still cracks me up when I think of it.
What will we have this week?
Lots of squash/zucchini, lots of lettuce with or without spots, bok choi, more squash, green onions, snow peas, zucchini, snap peas, chard, kale, summer squash/zucchini, greenish garlic (it is more mature but still insolent), a few eggplants, a bit of salad mix, some shaggy broccoli, some basil, a few escarole (our experiment isn’t panning out) and even more zucchini. Speaking of zucchini, you might notice it is larger than last week. We noticed this as well. Sometimes it grows faster than we can pick it and nobody volunteered to hang out in the squash patch constantly harvesting it to prevent the squash from growing too big. So we’ll have more squash in two ways: quantity and size. There may also be a few other things this week that I’ve forgotten.
This week we have JamShare. No other shares this week. Hopefully FlowerShare starts next week.
Recipe of the Week
This might be a good week to get introduced to zucchini noodles. What are zucchini noodles? That is a question for Google. I highly recommend if you are going to make zucchini noodles that you get a spiralizer. We have the OXO brand and it works fast and easy. You can quickly turn your allotment of zucchini into piles and piles of noodles. Of course you can also save some zucchini for other recipes.
When I first tried spiralizing zucchini I didn’t know how to cook the resulting noodles. Are you supposed to boil them like regular pasta? Heat them in a pan? Who knows? I’ve read that zucchini noodles can be watery. But I haven’t had this problem. Why? Because I don’t cook them. I put the hot sauce directly on the noodles which cooks them slightly but leaves them fairly firm — like al dente pasta. Make sure you pour it on right from the pan so it is as hot as possible. I suppose if you’d like it cooked a bit more you could add the zucchini noodles to the sauce while it is still on the stove and cook them slightly this way. There are other ways to make them but none are as lazy, er, easy as my way.
Another use for lot of zucchini is this recipe from one of our members who so graciously shared it on our Facebook Forum. It is a recipe for healthy zucchini corn fritters. I made these last season (or was it the season before) and they were quite tasty. I used corn that we froze from the previous summer. Give it a try. You might just like it!
Here is another recipe recommendation from our Facebook group. It is so simple I will have to try it! It is a two ingredient zucchini stir fry. Frankly I’m not sure you can call it a recipe if it only has two ingredients. There are a few other zucchini recommendations on our Facebook group! Check it out!
I think that is plenty long enough. As always, do not hesitate sending in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.