The farm is a bustle with life. Many of the plants are nearing full size, leafed out, and flowering to their fullest potential. It’s like watching your children grow into teenagers and young adults. They’re so young, fresh, and full of potential. I feel so excited for them! What fruits and colors they will share with the world when their times comes! Like a doting mother, I’m anxious and excited for them all! The pepper and tomato plants are making flowers and fruits. Everything is so lush and large and looking so promising. Even the world around the garden is also very lavish with the grass growing like it’s spring time again. The birds are singing their songs of high summer and the bees and butterflies are enjoying the flowers everywhere! What a happy summer!
We’re really feeling the transition into Summer this week with the crops as well. We are now done with the kohlrabi and about done with lettuce for awhile. Cucumbers are hitting strong as well as the zucchini and summer squash plants. Sweet corn in just a couple weeks away, tomatoes are fruiting, and the melon plants are looking really good this year! Our yellow watermelons are looking really good this summer. Some years the watermelons get a ‘wilt’ that inhibits their growth and fruiting, but this year they seem to be free of that issue which should result in a great melon season. The eggplants already have sizable fruits hanging off of them as well.
We’re enjoying a brief dry period on the farm this week with more rain in the forecast this Thursday. This Thursday we will begin harvesting garlic on the farm. Garlic is a crop that all needs to come out of the ground at one time. We harvest everything, trim the stems and roots off and store them in a dry storage room with a commercial dehumidifier pulling out the moisture from the air to get them to dry down quickly without getting moldy in their curing process. On a small scale you could hang them in your garage or basement, but we have too much to hang up so we stack them in crates and cure them in a dry storage room where we control the humidity.
Summer is busy and full. We’re still weeding every week the crops that need to be caught up on. Were also very busy keeping up with harvesting. And we are still planting every week. This week we will also plant more successions of our fall broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. We’re delighted to see that the emergence of our fall carrot and beet successions looks good too that were just planted a couple weeks ago.
On a widely diversified CSA farm there is always so much to every week to keep up with the planting, weeding and harvesting. And with so much rain this year everything looks very full and lush and healthy. It’s a relief to not have to irrigate anything this year so far!
We had a CSA member who is a home gardener ask how we control the deer on our farm. The best answer to this questions is that we put up a deer fence around a few of the fields. The deer fence is a 5 foot plastic mesh fence that we put up every Spring and take down every fall. We enclose the crops that the deer favor like lettuce, beets, Swiss chard, carrots, spinach and more. The deer can jump this fence if they really want to, but it does a pretty good job of keeping out the majority of them for most of the season. Deer and ground squirrels are our biggest pests. They’re imni-present and capable of doing a lot of damage in a very short amount of time.
The great news is that it’s shaping up to be a very fruitful and productive season. We’re taking it one week at a time and doing our best with our amazing crew of helpers to keep up with it all! Congratulations to you for eating your way through the midwestern Springtime crops with so many radishes and greens and crunchy kohlrabis. Now let’s bring on the summertime crops!
What’s in the Box?
Lettuce– Green Leaf or New Red Fire lettuce. One head per member this week. Lettuce is tricky to grow in the heat of the summer. We’re hoping to have it next week, but that may be our last week for awhile with lettuce. Stores best in the fridge inside a plastic bag.
Beet- One green-top beet for everyone this week. We tried to give everyone one really large beet because there were a bunch of really big ones out there. Did you know that the leaves of beets can be eaten too? They’re very similar in flavor and texture to Swiss Chard.
Red Curly Kale– We’re keeping you stocked in cooking greens for the week again!. Add to pizza, egg bakes, soups, make kale chips, kale salads with beans and olives and cheeses. This week I added kale to a pan of enchiladas. Get creative and sneak it in everything!
Green Onions- This is the final giving of green onions this week. Next week we’ll be on to sharing the white onions. Actually, we came up a little short on the bunching onions and abourt 15 people did get a white onion instead.
Garlic- These curly green ‘scapes’ are actually the garlic plants effort at making a seed head. Each plant produces one scape. When they have grown where there is enough edible quality on the scape, we snap them off and bunch them and give them to you. Scapes can be used much like regular garlic but they have a milder flavor. I usually cook with from the blunt end to the nodule on the scape, but the whole thing is edible!
Summer Squash or Zucchini– 5-6 squash per member. We try very hard to pick squash the size of our little harvest knives so they’re young and tender for you, but they grow SO FAST in this heat and humidity. We pick them every other day and some of them get bigger than we like to see. We toss a lot out and keep some that are sort of borderline. Use the bigger ones for zuicchini pancakes and the little ones for kebobs or stir-fry. Prefer 50 degree storage temp.
Broccoli x 2- and Cauliflower- Broccoli and Cauliflower prefer to be kept very cold. We recommend putting your broccoli and/or cauliflower in a plastic bag and get it into the fridge as quickly as possible. Broccoli and Cauliflower are both cool season crops. It’s difficult to get perfectly rounded and colored heads in 80-90 degree heat, but there will be many more successions coming on. Not everyone got a cauliflower this week.
Cucumber– 3-5 cucumbers per member this week. I don’t love harvesting cucumbers (because a bin of them is so dang heavy and they vines are everywhere and there isn’t anywhere to set your bin during harvest), but I sure do love eating them! Cuckes prefer 50 degree storage temp. The counter is usually a little too warm and the fridge is usually a little too cold, so it’s up to you where to store them.
Green Top Glow Stix Sunrise Carrots– That’s the fancy name of these rainbow carrots. Adam and I agree we don’t love this variety of carrots. There was a high percentage of orange ones and a low percentage of the red ones. They flavor is good, but the yields were pretty low as well.
Next Week’s Best Guess: Broccoli, cauliflower, summer squash and zucchini, cucumbers, collards, white onion, garlic, celery, lettuce
Recipes-
I am not at all a TikTok person. I don’t have the app. I’ve never really been on it. I don’t have the time. But when searching for recipes I sort of went down a rabbit hole with this Cucumber guy that apparently went viral. I kinda see why. I’m a little ashamed, I think you should check this guy out. https://youtu.be/4KC_ZMU68fc. He makes a lot of different really delicious looking recipes made out of cucumbers if you’re looking for inspiration.
Peanut Chili Crisp Cucumber Salad
Greek Tortellini Zucchini Skillet
Garlicy Cheesy Broccoli Cauliflower Bake
Balsamic Honey Glazed Rainbow Carrots
40 Different Stir Fry Sauce Recipes
What makes a stir fry delicious (other than the high-quality veggies you’re using) is the Sauce. It’s all about the Sauce.
Have fun in your kitchen this week!
