Yay! It's finally tomato time - we're putting a lot more tomatoes into our estimate for next week. We also do some harvesting over the weekend, so sometimes we're able to increase our estimated quantity of certain items. So it's a good idea to check back if what you're looking for was gone initially.
A significant amount of our time these days is spent harvesting, but we're still fitting in a regular dose of planting as well. Many succession crops have been planted for the last time already so our seeding plan is looking simpler (as there is no longer time left in the season for them to fully mature). But while seeding is simpler, we're also getting to our Fall pulse of other crops (like lettuces). This pulse is a time when we seed double or even triple amounts of lettuce for the next several weeks. The idea here is that we grow enough lettuce seedlings to plant out into our covered spaces in the Fall. While right now, lettuce is a very regimented crop - i.e. it must be picked when it's ready or else it will rapidly degrade and not be sellable anymore. In the Fall, with the cooler temperatures, more humidity and moisture, it's a much different story. We can plan ahead to have many weeks worth of lettuce in the field at a more or less mature state and it will hold wonderfully to be harvested over a longer period of time. So to take advantage of this, we try to fill up our hoop houses with lettuce (and spinach and arugula) to extend the greens as far into the fall/winter as we possibly can. It's tough to do, because it requires forethought to be seeding these extra crops now while summer is still very much in full swing.
It's that time again - get into your profiles to customize your box for next week! We've got tasty cherries from Flathead Fresh Orchards again this week (Lapin), bread and bagels from The Gracious Table, honey from McLaury Apiaries, and farm fresh eggs from the Miller Farm. We're having a break in Dragon's Breath Farm bouquets as farmer Meg will be away, but we can offer some of our own gladiolus bunches to fill the flower void.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Rudy & Bonnie
