First some announcements then on to our multi-week virtual farm tour.
During the week of August 28 we will be short half our staff. If you have any free time that week and could lend a hand we would really appreciate it! Mark it on your calendar now so that something less important doesn’t take up that space.
Speaking of needing help, we could still use a part time person. Let me know when you want to start!
We handed out some cantaloupes this past week. Since they don’t all come at once we spread them around to everyone over the course of a few weeks so if you didn’t get one last week you will get one sometime in the near future. Anyway, as I discussed in a past newsletter, cantaloupes are climacteric, which means they ripen off the vine. When we pick them they might not be fully ripe so I suggest you leave them out on the counter until they turn a bit soft. The softer they are the riper they are but also have the higher risk of turning to mush. So find the Goldilocks level of softness and you will have the perfect melon.
For on-farm pick-up: It would be helpful if when you get your eggs, coffee, and mushrooms that you check off your name on the egg, coffee and mushroom checklist. We have two mushroom shares left behind from last week and one egg share from two weeks ago. We have no idea whose they are since few people check off their names. So, if you would like us to inform you when you forget your add-on shares you have to do your part to let us know when you remember.
Farm News
To continue our farm tour lets move on to the northwest field. This year we planted the alliums and the brassicas in this field. Alliums are the onion like plants, e.g. onions, shallots, leeks, and garlic. Speaking of garlic, here is a big “THANK YOU” to all those who helped dig the garlic last Friday! We had a superb turnout with somewhere around 15 people (I lost count as they kept coming!) We got all the garlic harvested and put into our greenhouse to cure. It took about 2.5 hours so far better than having me and the crew do it ourselves. The bulbs look great. Some are quite large! So thanks again for the help and maybe I’ll plan a few more activities for Fridays. They seem more popular than weekends.
Now back to the field tour. The brassicas are those plants related to broccoli – e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts and bok choy. These are all cool season crops and as we all know there is no longer a cool season here in Minnesota. We had a few nice days last week but for the most part this spring went from too cold to too hot too quickly — especially for brassicas. We lost some of our early broccoli to the heat. The current broccoli is doing ok but with this week’s heat I suspect they will start turning funky. The cauliflower looks surprisingly good but a bit small. I’m still hopeful it will grow bigger but if not it still is cauliflower. The kohlrabi did quite well and will continue for another week or two. The cabbages are looking good and the bs is as well.
As far as pests are concerned, these crops are some of the few that the deer don’t eat. We get an occasional top chomped off but once they taste the sulfurous compounds they seem to leave the plants alone. I suppose I could grind up a bunch of brassicas and spray them all over the rest of the crops. Maybe that would be enough of a deterrent. Now, look here. I got started on the deer again. I need professional help I think.
The two main pests of brassicas are flea beetles and cabbage worms (actually caterpillars). Flea beetles are small beetles that eat holes in the leaves. As long as they don’t multiply too much the plants can typically outgrow the damage. But unfortunately they always multiply too much. So we spray them (an organic pesticide) about two or three times in the spring hoping the plants get big enough to survive. Since they go after the leaves, and we eat bok choy leaves, we have to protect the bok choy from the beetles lest we have holey bok choy. So for those plants we place a floating row cover over them to try and exclude the beetles from the plants. It is typically effective, though since the row cover is pretty thin it can develop holes which allow the beetles in to feast away on the plants. Plus the covers make it a bit warmer than no cover which isn’t exactly what the bok choy desires.
The other pest is white cabbage butterfly caterpillars. They tend to be more damaging to the heads of the crops where we eat the heads — e.g. broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. They eat big sections out of the leaves and head and leave behind their droppings. Their droppings can create additional problems by providing a nice moist space for other pathogens to grow. Fortunately these pests can be controlled with a naturally occurring bacteria. When they consume the bacteria they get a stomach ache that eventually kills them. We’ve seen a few of these caterpillars on our crops and do our best to control them but some always escape our best efforts so be aware that you may get a few on your produce. Better a few caterpillars than poison on your food.
So overall the brassicas are a mixed bag. Broccoli not so good. The rest not so bad.
The alliums seem to be doing quite well. As I mentioned the garlic looked great when we harvested it. The green onions are doing well and are getting perhaps too large. The first of our bulbing onions, which we started giving out last week, is a red variety that matures quickly but isn’t all that big. Other than a couple of very crafty gophers we haven’t seen any pests on the onions. The leeks are looking nice and will be ready in September or October. I guess if I were to pick my favorite crop to grow it would be in the allium family. They seem to have the fewest pests.
Well that is it for the Northwest field. We’ll move onto another field next week.
Questions of the week
Hey Farmer Chris. We get all these cucumbers. Why no dill?
Great question! (I wouldn’t put any of the dumb questions I get in the newsletter so of course it is a great question. [Of course I am joking about getting dumb questions. All the questions I get are great!]) We used to grow dill but never seemed to have it available around the same time as the cucumbers so few people wanted it. Then when we started to get really good at growing cucumbers we realized we needed to get equally good at growing dill. So this year we planned to grow dill to coincide with the vast amount of cucumbers we figured we’d grow (actually we didn’t plan on having this many cucumbers but here we are). We planted dill at what we figured was the right time. We used seeds from the same package of seeds we used to grow dill plants for some of our members so we figured they were viable. Then as we always do, we waited for the tiny plants to emerge. Then we waited some more. And some more. And some more. But no dill plants came up. So when it came time to plant another round of something else we planted more dill to see if we could get it to germinate and grow. This time it was successful! But of course since it was planted later than we wanted it to be planted the dill is not ready when we want it to be ready. Plus, with the warm start to the season, the cucumbers came much earlier than we typically see so even if the first planting succeeded we most likely wouldn’t have dill ready when we wanted it.
So, next season we will try again. Maybe plant it a few weeks earlier so if it fails again we can try a second time with still enough time to have it ready by cucumber season. Of course we already know what will happen. The dill will grow fast and be ready and die before we get our first cucumber. Mother Nature just has that kind of sense of humor.
What will we have this week?
Maybe the question should be, “What won’t we have this week?” because we have a lot of things. Maybe not enough of everything for everyone but certain some of most things. We still have a lot of cucumbers, a lot of zucchini, onions, green onions, sweet corn, some lettuce, some kale, a few cauliflower, a few cabbages, some broccoli, some kohlrabi, snow peas, some snap peas, green beans, eggplant, some beets, a few tomatoes, a few cherry tomatoes, a few cantaloupes, pickling cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, and the usual everything else I have forgotten.
It is also an EggShare and a FlowerShare week.
Recipes of the week
One of our members suggested the this cucumber soup recipe to use up a few of the ubiquitous cucumbers. We’ll try to get the herbs harvested for this recipe. We don’t have the chives due to the lack of rain but green onion tops are a good substitute.
Here is a recipe for all those eggplants we seem to be harvesting. I made this recipe over the weekend with eggplant instead of butternut squash. I also skipped the red pepper and carrots since they aren’t ready yet. I suspect you could use zucchini too. Or green beans. We’ll have jalapenos for those who want a little heat (the Thai peppers aren’t ready yet). We’ll also harvest some Thai basil as well.
Thai Butternut Squash Red Curry
Ingredients
- 1 butternut squash peeled and cubed
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 3-5 medium carrots cut into bite-size pieces
- 3 Tbs Thai red curry paste
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 red bell pepper sliced into strips
- 2 Tbs coconut or other cooking oil
- 15 oz can coconut milk
- ¼ tsp turmeric
- ¾ c chicken broth or water
- 2-3 leaves kale roughly chopped
- 1 small handful of Thai basil optional
- cooked rice for serving
Instructions
- In a large pot or wok, heat oil, onions, carrots and squash until onion is translucent, about 8 minutes.
- Add curry paste, garlic and red pepper. Stir and heat for another minute or two until fragrant.
- Add coconut milk, turmeric and broth. Stir.
- Heat to boiling then reduce heat. Simmer for 10-15 minutes stirring occasionally until squash is tender.
- Add kale and basil. Stir.
- Heat for another minute or two until kale turns bright green.
- Serve over rice.
Notes
Joke of the Week
Customer at a the farmers’ market: Are those genetically modified eggplants?
Farmer: Why do you ask?
Eggplant: Yeah, why do you ask?
As always, please send in your questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.