This week we picked tomatoes. Lots of em! You've probably seen a couple emails from us regarding bulk orders of tomatoes. Peak tomato season is upon us and while we have been picking hundreds of pounds of tomatoes the past few weeks, it's looking like we will only keep that pace for about two more weeks.
There are a couple reasons we have a large flush of tomatoes this time of year. First, in addition to our tomatoes grown inside one of our tunnels we have our "field tomatoes." We call them field tomatoes because they're grown out in our field instead of inside the tunnel and because they are a different type of tomato that grows a little differently. These tomatoes ripen within 2-3 week window and then are done as opposed to our tunnel tomatoes which will continue to produce fruit until disease or frost kills them. So our field tomatoes are ripe and consequently we have been picking a ton of tomatoes!
The second reason is that we have extra tomato plants on our farm because we are participating in a study that's being done by a University of Minnesota researcher, Charlie. Charlie is testing whether or not applying a liquid fertilizer treatment of phosphorus (an essential plant nutrient) will cause the tomato plant to uptake more phosphorus from the soil. This study is important because phosphorus can run off of farms into waterways and can cause major pollution in our waters. We don't have results yet but we'd be happy to share them when all the analysis is done. We think it's pretty cool to be participating in the study and the results will be interesting. Stay tuned!
