First an apology for all the summer squash. We planted 2/3rds as many plants and seem to be harvesting twice as many squash! Sometimes the weather has more of an effect on production than we farmers do. Hopefully you are enjoying it. If you don’t know about spiralizers you might want to invest in one. It is a cool way to make noodles and ribbons out of veggies. Pasta sauce on zucchini noodles is delicious! In addition our web site has a number of recipes on it plus our Pinterest page has links to even more. Though I have never made them I’ve heard good things about zucchini pickles. Anyone care to share their recipe?
Other than an overload of squash the season seems to be going better than expected. The rain we received last week was very timely and came without any nasty side-effects (like hail, strong winds, etc.) The fields were starting to get a bit on the dry side and we recently transplanted the fall vegies. Of course with the good growing weather and timely rain we are struggling to keep up with the weeds. I was about to write “we are struggling to stay ahead of the weeds” but realistically we are not ahead of them. They seem to have the upper hand. Not to fear though. We are making steady progress and hope to be caught up by the end of the week (which is what I will write every week until the end of August).
As the season progresses we wind down on some veggies and ramp up on others. The lettuce, peas, radishes and bok choi are history. These all grow best in cooler weather, something we’ve seen very little of this season. On the other hand we are ramping up on cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and most importantly tomatoes and potatoes — two of the most favorite summer veggies! Though cabbage. broccoli and cauliflower are cool season plants we manage to grow them during this time. The first planting of broccoli was marginal in my opinion. The second planting, which is what we are just starting to harvest (overlapping with the end of the first crop), looks much better and bigger. Both though seem to be tasty.
What will we have this week? Tomatoes! Potatoes! Cabbage, kale, kohlrabi (this is the last week), summer squash, zucchini, green onions, red onions, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, eggplants, the last of the peas, and some odds and ends of other things.
The potatoes we are giving out this week are dark red norlands. We harvested these as “new potatoes” which are potatoes that are harvested before they are fully mature. The skins of true new potatoes are quite thin and easily damaged so don’t be alarmed if the skins look a bit frayed.
We have a bunch of different varieties of tomatoes most of which are heirlooms. Many are not red when ripe. Some are green, some are yellow, some are striped, some are purple, some have green shoulders. The point is that waiting for the tomato to turn red may not work. To tell if a tomato is ripe squeeze it slightly. The more it gives the riper the tomato. Please don’t squeeze the tomatoes in the tent when you pick up your produce. If everyone squeezed the tomatoes they left behind we’d be giving out tomato sauce. So handle them gently like you’d want your tomatoes handled. And for delivery please let us know if the tomatoes do not arrive in a usable fashion. We try to pack the boxes carefully but sometimes during delivery we take a turn too sharply or slam on the brakes (no we don’t but you get the picture) and the tomatoes may be jostled. We’d like to know if there are any problems so we can figure out a better solution.
There is CoffeeShare and FlowerShare this week. No other add-on shares.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints or recipes for squash.