Farm News
First a quick explanation about the state of the broccoli. Broccoli is a cool season crop. It likes to grow when the temps are below say 70 degrees. It especially likes to mature when temps are below 70 degrees. What I mean by mature is the forming of the broccoli head, the part we typically eat. When we grow broccoli when it is cool — a time we used to call Spring — and the heads form when it is cool the broccoli forms beautiful, large, domed heads. The size of the head is determined by the size of the plant when it starts to form a head. When broccoli is grown in cool weather it grows larger before it starts forming a head. So the longer the cool season, the bigger the plant and the larger the broccoli head.
When we grow broccoli when it is hot — a time we now call Spring — it struggles. The plant doesn’t grow as well and as big. It starts forming the head at a smaller size than it would if it was cooler. The resulting head is smaller. And more importantly, when it is maturing in hot weather the florets — the individual smaller parts of the broccoli flower — grow at different rates. The result is a broccoli head that is not at all attractive. It is like a gangling teenager with arms and legs akimbo. The head becomes lumpy. Also in the hot weather the taste may not be as sweet as you would prefer. Most of our heads so far have fallen into this lumpy, less tasty (though that is in the taste buds of the beholder) category. Looking at the forecast I’m only seeing hot temps so we may be in for more lumpy broccoli.
We are starting to get a few cauliflower. It is not coming very fast but who knows, that may change. Cauliflower, in my opinion, doesn’t store very well. So if you get a cauliflower plan to eat it in a few days. If there are spots on the head it could be a few different things such as physical damage during post harvest handling, bug bites, or a disease. These can be cut off the cauliflower if they bother you and the rest can be consumed. So far the few heads we have harvested have had minimal problems.
Both cauliflower and broccoli have caterpillar pests, the most common one being the white cabbage butterfly larva. We spray our cauliflower and broccoli with a naturally occurring bacteria that kills the larva that eat it. Sometimes a few forget to eat the bacteria so they survive our first line of defense. Our second line is we soak the broccoli in cold water for an hour or more once it is harvest (we don’t do this to cauliflower since it hastens its deterioration). This typically rids the broccoli of the larva that were hiding inside the head. But even then one or two may escape and unfortunately go out to our customers. If you find one in your broccoli or cauliflower please accept my apology. We try our best to keep them here on the farm but occasionally they outwit us.
I hope you enjoyed the first week of corn. The first variety we sent out is called Trinity. It is a bi-color corn with great taste — especially for an early variety — and great earliness. This week we harvested a different variety called Sugar Buns. I’m not as happy about Sugar Buns as Trinity. Sugar buns frequently does not pollinate evenly and has poor tip fill. So it has more mature kernels on one side of the cob than the other. It still has great sweet taste though. Why do we continue to plant it when it doesn’t do as well as Trinity you ask? Because we still have seeds and corn seeds aren’t cheap like we are. So until we use up all the seeds we will continue to plant it.
Speaking of corn, we have had two pests damaging our corn so far this year (I expect a few more later this summer). The first are our ever present nemesis the deer. Along one side of the Trinity corn field every fourth or fifth ear of corn had a bite taken out of the top. I don’t know if the deer were trying to find the best tasting corn or were simply being a–holes. I think the later. But why can’t they just finish what they started? The other corn pest are birds. I don’t know if it is a specific species of bird or many species but bird damage looks like shredding at the top of the ear with some or many of the kernels eaten. Some people assume it is raccoons causing the damage since it looks like it could be caused by sharp claws or teeth. From my experience, raccoon damage looks more like the aftermath of a corn kegger with the husks tossed around like red solo cups and the corn stalks flattened like red solo cups. I guess I couldn’t come up with a better analogy for the corn stalks. Anyway, the destruction is far more concentrated. But at least the raccoons don’t take a bite out of every ear like the birds and deer seem to do.
News Flash: As we harvested the Sugar Buns yesterday we discovered the birds did far more damage than we anticipated. They damaged more than 80% of our crop. Since the trinity didn’t have much bird damage — and we haven’t had dramatic bird damage in the past — we didn’t feel we needed to do anything to protect the sugar buns. We were wrong. The end result is there isn’t much sugar buns to give out. We still have two more varieties growing. We have a trick or two that we hope will solve the bird problem. It takes time, which is unfortunate, but we have to do something or we could lose the other two corn crops to these birds.
On a completely unrelated topic, we are still being inundated with eggplants. Some of you may like eggplants and some of you may not. But I think we can all agree on one thing about eggplants: they have — by far — the best sense of humor of all the vegetables. Here are this week’s examples:
We also harvested and hung all the garlic for the season. The bulbs are a little smaller than I had hoped but for the amount of water they got this season, which wasn’t much since we only irrigated them once, they look surprisingly good. We’ll be giving these out after they cure for a few weeks.
What will we have this week?
Besides a lot of eggplants and a few sweet corn, we’ll have onions, some lumpy broccoli, some kohlrabi, possibly kale, some chard, lettuce (we are near the end), some peas (though these are also near the end), some beans (which are just starting), some cucumbers, some summer squash/zucchini, some tomatoes, a few cherry tomatoes, some okra (it is surprisingly slow this year), some tomatillos and very few cauliflower. Oh, and lets do another round of fennel!
We also have JamShare and FlowerShare.
If anyone has eggplant recipes to share please send them my way or post them on the farm Facebook forum.