Hi everyone!
This past week has been a great one for harvesting an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.
Hopefully you've ventured to try out some of the uglier varieties that happen to be heirlooms like purple cherokee, brandywine, and striped german. Hope you've also been enjoying the sweet onions. This "ailsa craig" variety is the first to be harvested, (as a non-storage variety), and continues to grow well through August. We'll start in to the other varieties later in season (shallots, copra storage onions, etc).
Remember last year's onions? Our crop failed and we wound up buying in from another organic farm. Not this year! I think we'll have plenty from our own harvest.
The carrots in your share have been hard won, as in most years. On our farm, carrots require several hand weedings and lots of careful attention throughout their long season. We've seeded a total of 4530' (row feet) to assure an abundance throughout the season.
At best, this means one pound of carrots per foot at harvest. At worst, 1/2 pound per foot. In the end, with a 150 member CSA, this means anywhere from 15 to 30 pounds per share. These are the calculations we live by to assure decent harvests. In general, I shoot for planting 25% to 50% more than what we need in case of a partial crop failure. What can happen, however, is a total crop failure (last year's onions) despite your best intentions, plan, and hard work.
Another case in point, and in your share this week:
sweet corn. We planted three rounds of 2500 corn plants. Among 150 members, this should mean 16 ears per share per planting. This is before deer and racoons etc. So my ideal of four dozen ears per share by season's end gets slowly whittled down...We'll see what nature decides to give us. Hopefully we can all get a couple dozen by fall. Anyway, we've had lots of feedback from our locals that it's been the best tasting corn they ever had. I personally love the taste, I only wish the ears were a bit bigger! It's a new crop for me so there's a learning curve. I think you'll see an improvement in size and taste over time....
"New" potatoes are in your share this week. I say fooey to y'all Atkins folks out there. Tough to beat potatoes if you had to pick one crop to survive on.
Plus I'm 1/2 Irish. The red spuds in your share are terrific roasted ( forty five minutes @ 375 cut up in small chunks).
Here's an approximation of your share this week: