Want to learn something new? That’s what we’re here for, that and veggies. But first an announcement.
Half of our staff will be leaving for school this month. This opens an opportunity or two for people to live their lifelong dream of working on a vegetable farm! We’re looking for one to many people to help us out. It can be part time, full time, we are flexible. If you are interested or know someone who is, get in touch with me!
Farm News
Just when you think you know it all, something new to you emerges. In my case it was a new to me word. I don’t think it is new to everyone but I would surmise it is new to most people. The word of the day is climacteric. Raise your hand if you know what it means? I see a few of you out there. I encountered this word when I was looking for information regarding the harvest criteria for a new melon we are growing this season called Goddess. Over the years we have tried to grow melons with little success (except for watermelons, which aren’t technically melons so my original statement holds true). But that never stopped us from trying again and again. This season we may have succeeded, then again maybe not. We will have to evaluate our success at the end of the season. In the mean time as I said I was looking for information regarding signs that we should harvest the melons. The interesting thing about melons in my opinion is how much misinformation there is about them on the internet — especially about ripening them. The overwhelming internet opineratti (I think this should be a word meaning “well opinionated people”) is that melons do not ripen after picking and therefore you should wait until they are fully ripe before harvesting them. Huh. That is very interesting. But then I came across research from Washington State University that looked at harvest criteria for specific named varieties and they mention that cantaloupe melons are climacteric. Thankfully, so I didn’t have to look it up, they define climacteric as “fruit will ripen after it is picked, altering fruit firmness, color, flavor, aroma and texture”. Interesting.
But being the skeptic I believe I am but am never quite sure, I looked up climacteric on Google. Google seems to have a business relationship with Oxford Languages for searches of word definitions and their definition for climacteric in Botany is “the ripening period of certain fruits such as apples, involving increased metabolism and only possible while still on the tree.” What? How can there be two polar opposite definitions for the same word? What is this, English? I can only surmise that the definition was changed when it immigrated through Ellis Island.
Anyway, even if we eliminate the language confusion from our discussion we are still conflicted as to whether melons ripen off the vine. Do we believe the millions of food blogs or university scientists? Bloggers or scientists? Hmm. Tough call. So we decided to believe neither and did the experiment ourselves. We harvested a melon that was not ripe. How do we know? We looked for the telltale signs of melon ripeness: how easy is it to remove from its stem — a attribute known as slip. Why the word slip? Seems like this melon growing nomenclature is unnecessarily complicated.
Different melons (and again we are not talking about watermelons because they are in fact berries and not melons) are harvested at different levels of slip. Some melons are harvested at “full slip”, or when they come off the vine easily. Some melons you harvest at “1/2 slip” or “forced slip”, where it requires a bit of a tug to get it to detach. And yet other melons are overripe by the time they can be tugged from the plant so they need to be harvested before they slip by cutting them off the plant. Can it be any more complicated? Sure can! Washington State adds 3/4 slip plus they seem to use other criteria like color to define when to harvest the melons.
Unfortunately we are growing both Goddess and Athena melons so we have to figure out when to harvest each, and to know which are which in the field. With Goddess we are suppose to harvest them at 3/4 slip when the fruit is tan-beige color on half the fruit. Orange skin color indicates over-ripeness. Athena is harvested at full slip.
So back to our experiment. We harvested the melon a bit earlier than they recommended. We’ve let it sit on the kitchen counter for the last two days. Over this time its skin has turned completely tan/orangish. The smell emanating from the stem scar has been sweet and floral with a strong cantaloupe scent. It seemed like the ideal time to cut into it and see if it tastes as great as it smells, so we did, and we were disappointed. The blossom end of the fruit tasted great. The stem end tasted like a store bought melon. And unfortunately we can’t put the melon back together and wait a few more days to try it again. Maybe we were just a little bit antsy in our experiment. Perhaps we were better off when we weren’t very good at growing melons.
On the other hand, watermelons — which again are still not melons — do not ripen off the vine. You could say they are anticlimacteric. They should not be stored in the fridge unless you have cut them open. If you get a good, sweet watermelon we picked it at the right time. If not, let me know so we can figure out if we can improve out selection process. For the cantaloupes, leave them out on the counter for a few days. My sense is if they start to get soft it would be a good time to either eat them or put them in the fridge, but eating them would be better. Any earlier and you run the risk of an unsweet melon. But don’t wait too long or it might start to rot. This is all so complicated.
I’m not sure how many melons we will get. We will send them out as we harvest them spreading them out so everyone hopefully gets at least one. This process will take many weeks so if you don’t get one this week you may get one next week or you may have had one this past week.
What else will we have this week?
Another of our climacteric fruits is coming on strong — tomatoes (and the subgroup cherry tomatoes)! The non-climacteric fruit eggplant has slowed to a crawl. Good news or bad news? You be the judge. The plants are still alive and growing they just don’t have many flowers. This seems typical over the years we’ve grown them. Another non-climacteric fruit cucumbers are doing well and we should have a reasonable amount this week. The non-climacteric summer squash/zucchini are losing their battle with disease. We still have a few but their lifespan this summer is rapidly coming to an end. We are just starting to see some non-climacteric ripe peppers so there will be a few of those. We also pick some unripe as green peppers but just not as many as the more tasty (in my opinion) ripe peppers. We have lots of kohlrabi, the non-climacteric kind. We have sweet corn, which apparently is also non-climacteric. The ears are smallish and may have missing kernels and poor tip fill due to lack of water, but it tastes pretty good! We have climacteric tomatillos! And we have the first of the garlic (non-climacteric for those of you keeping score at home). It might be a little dirty so rinse it off prior to using it. We are experimenting with washing garlic right after harvest but we don’t have the results yet. I’m sure there are other things available as well — both climacteric and non-climacteric.
Flowers this week, otherwise no other add-on shares.
If you’ve never tried it before, try grilling cabbage. It is fast, delicious and easy! Cut a cabbage into 1/8 pie-shped pieces leaving the leaves attached to the core so they stay in a wedge shape. Poor olive oil gently through the leaf folds on the cut end. Put it on the grill for 5-10 minutes per side. Take off and eat! Hmm-mm. If we can figure out how to put it on a stick we’d have the next big food item at the state fair!
That is more than enough for now. As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, and other climacteric or non-climacteric ideas.