Week 10 7-20-2011

Week 10

In your box this week you will find:

Sweet Peppers- ‘Tis the season of the sweet pepper! Soon we will have ripe (red and orange) peppers.

Green Onions

Leeks- Mmmmm. A nice sweet, buttery treat. See recipe below.

Squash/zucchini

Cucumbers- Mix it up! Try cukes in a potato salad- see recipe below.

Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

Potatoes- This week’s potatoes are a red skinned white potato, Reddale. This variety is a moist waxy potato- that means it has firm flesh and is good boiled, in stews, and potato salads. Check out the tangy and cool potato salad recipe below.

Season of Harvest

Lately it feels like all we’ve been doing is harvesting. All year leading up to this point we’ve prepared beds, weeded, started transplants, set transplants out, weeded some more, watered, trellised, and many other vegetable projects I can’t even remember. Of course we were harvesting, but now we are really harvesting. All the summer crops need to be harvested every other day at least because the fruit just keep on coming. They’re not like greens or root crops that can wait until a planed harvest day. Instead, it’s just harvest, harvest, harvest. It is wonderful to be able to see the fruits of all our hard spring labor coming to harvest.

Thinking about fall

The downside of all that harvesting is that it is hard for us to keep up with other farm tasks, especially planning for fall. Believe it or not we are still trying to do some transplanting. Cucumbers and squash really only produce well for about a month, then they get tired and slowly waste away. About a month ago we started a late round of cucumbers and squash on the greenhouse. Just last week we transplanted them out. We should be enjoying their fruit in September and October right up until frost.

The major baby plant project is for fall greens. Even in this hot weather we have to try to start some greens. Because before we know it the days are getting shorter (if not cooler) this slows down the growth of the greens. If they don’t reach a certain size by the time the days are shortening in September, they won’t be harvestable this fall. In addition to getting the seeds started in the heat we have to get the garden beds ready right in the middle of busy harvest season. It is a challenge, but if all goes well we should be enjoying nice greens all fall and early winter.