Last week we covered how the heat affected the humans here at the farm. This week we focus on the plant life. But first this announcement.
Sometime around the first week of August our street will be repaved. As part of the repaving they are installing new culverts one of which flows into our property south of our driveway. I expect that when they are installing the culvert you won’t be able to get to our farm from 70th street. If that is the case the best option is to continue east on 70th then take the first left onto Odell Ave. Follow Odell until you can turn left onto 65th. Take 65th until you reach the stop sign at Oakgreen. Turn left on Oakgreen. We’ll be the first driveway on the left.
Farm News
Last week I talked about how the hot, muggy weather affects the crew and promised to discuss how this weather affects the crops. Well it is both positive and negative.
For example, the heat is positive for those plants that like heat — corn being a primary example. But it is negative for those plants that like it cool, such as lettuce. However, with all the rain we’ve had lately the effect of the heat has been reduced on those plants that don’t like the heat. The lettuce lasted (past tense implies we are mostly done with lettuce for the summer though we do have a few trials underway) far later into the summer than usual despite the recent heat. Same with the peas. Typically by now with the heat the peas would be toasted. But not this season. We are still picking peas from plants that look surprisingly good! So though we would expect the heat to be detrimental to the cool season crops it hasn’t been as bad as expected.
Now with the heat and rain the warm season plants are doing great — especially the warm season weeds. It seems like they double in size daily. Plus with the wet soil we have a hard time managing the weeds mechanically. But many of the crops are big enough to compete with the weeds so the effect isn’t as great as it would be with new plantings.
Another area where the heat and rain have impacted is in the summer squash production. I noticed there are many unpollinated fruit stumps on the summer squash. The stumps are the plant end of the female flower. If the flower isn’t pollinated the fruit won’t form and the stump will eventually fall off. I suspect the bees are busy trying to keep their hives cool or avoiding the raindrops. I’m hoping they will be back this week pollinating to the zucchini’s heart’s content.
Another trouble spot is any pest that we’d typically control with an organic pesticide. Case in point: Colorado potato beetle larva. We use an organic pesticide called spinosad that is quite effective at managing potato beetle larva. When the larva consume the spinosad they get a tummy ache and eventually perish. Spinosad persists on the plant until washed off by rain. It isn’t cheap so we want to use it when it can be most effective — when it won’t rain soon. So we’ve not been using it much this month and we’ve seen the results in an increase in potato beetle larva and their damage.
We have the same issue with cabbage worms (which aren’t worms but caterpillars). We haven’t seen many cabbage butterflies, maybe two, but two is enough to create a bunch more. We haven’t seen a lot of damage on the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, etc.) but there may be a few caterpillars on your produce. We try our best to wash them off prior to you receiving them but sometimes they are in places we can’t reach.
Finally one more issue with hot, muggy weather is an increase in many of the plant diseases that affect our produce. It seems like most plant diseases like moist weather and last week’s air was pretty juicy. So we’re seeing more plant diseases than we’d like but we’ll manage.
What will we have this week?
It might be easier to list the things we won’t have. We are straddling the early cool season crops and the later warm season crops so we have a lot of different things this week. We have lots of cucumbers, lots of squash, lots of onions, some fennel, some eggplants, some kohlrabi, some lettuce, some peas, some beans, a few tomatoes, kale, a few broccoli, a few cauliflower, some beets, some cabbage, lots of carrots, and I’m sure some other things I’m not recalling right now. We also have oregano as this week’s herb.
FlowerShare, FruitShare and CheeseShare this week.
Produce Usage Ideas
One of my favorite salads is Voula’s Greek Salad. If is a recipe from an old Greek family friend. You can find the recipe on our web site by clicking on this link. You’ll get the vegetable ingredients either this week or most likely next. Of course it includes feta cheese.
Another favorite recipe this time of year is Eggplant with Kalamata Olive. (Again on our web site). Of course it includes feta cheese. We had both of these recipes this past weekend.
If you are looking to use up some cabbage you can find an easy cole slaw recipe on this newsletter. It uses cabbage, carrots and onions.
Also on this same newsletter is Eggplant in Hoisin Sauce.
Well, that is all for now. Since I wasn’t feeling too humorous writing this newsletter I figured I’d include this selfie from last week when the weather was miserable. As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.
