First and most important message: We will start the season on Wednesday June 16th. Hooray! Some are wondering “Why Wednesday and not Monday?” The main reason is it just works better that way. It gives us a day (Tuesday) to assess what is in the field for harvest during the next harvest cycle. It also gives us a day to relay this information to our members. Starting the week on Monday puts too much extra stuff on a day that is already very busy. So Wednesday it is! Please mark your calendars.
Now I am going out on a limb here but this is what I think we can expect in the first week (which by the way starts on Wednesday June 16th if you haven’t heard): Lettuce, Bok Choi, Green Onions (which are actually red this year), Green Garlic, and Snap Peas. There may be some other things depending on how quickly they mature.
Time for some expectation setting: First the disappointments. It seems our first planting of broccoli isn’t doing very well. It could be it took too many frosts. It could be something else (if only I could think of something else). In any case, we will probably only get small heads out of it. Cabbage maggots hit the second planting; first time ever we had cabbage maggots. We lost a few plants but overall the remaining plants look healthier than the first planting’s plants. The third broccoli planting looks the best. Let’s hope for a coolish June to keep it looking good. The second disappointment is the Swiss Chard. We planted it twice and both times had very poor germination. Must be bad seeds. Anyway, we may try a third time, or may not.
Now for the good news: Everything else looks pretty good. Some of the tomatoes already have flowers. Some of the pepper plants already have peppers. Our sweet corn is about as tall as the local field corn, quite an accomplishment actually since field corn grows faster and taller and it was planted back in April. The snap peas are looking very flowery and we have a few small pods forming. The beans came up already with good germination. The carrots are a bit weedy but there seems to be a reasonably number of them. The garlic still looks good. Since we planted it in the fall we never put drip tape on it so it never received any irrigation. The last two rainfalls helped it a bunch! The onions are looking more weed-free than ever. The potato plants are quite large already. We hilled them yesterday. Lettuce is looking lovely. Beets have strong tops and are looking healthy. We have a couple hot peppers in the greenhouse already producing. The ones in the field are looking good but are of course slower growing. The summer squash looks good. As does the cucumbers, winter squash, melons and watermelons. However we are starting to see a large number of cucumber beetles. We will spray with an organic spray as soon as it stops raining. We also have potato beetles on the potatoes and eggplants. We have organic spray on order but it hasn’t arrived yet. Hopefully we will see it soon!
Kale, cauliflower and kohlrabi are all looking reasonably good. Of course just because they look good as baby plants doesn’t mean they will grow up looking good. There are way too many examples of that out in the world. The bok choi looks fabulous. I hope it lasts until we start harvesting. I’m sure there are a few plants I’ve missed in this summary. Oh, the edamame just went in yesterday, as did the rutabagas. Basil is looking good. Napa cabbage was just planted in the greenhouse this past week.
That pretty much sums it up. I will post more information and instructions early next week.