Despite cool May temperatures, we're going full speed ahead with summer crop planting this weekend and into the coming week. The field tomatoes spent their first night outside last night. I was definitely a bit uneasy, as tomatoes aren't too keen to go below 45 degrees for very long. But the forecast is showing a steady stream of 50 degree + temperatures for next week, so we *should* be in the clear. Along with the tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini will go out to the field. All of these summer crops will be mulched with straw to keep the weeds down. Cucumbers, husk cherries, tomatillos, peppers and winter squash are next up after tomatoes.
NEW this Week!
This week you'll find find a couple new items on the harvest list - green garlic and carrots! Green garlic is just young, fresh garlic. It's the garlic plant before it makes the bulb. If you haven't used green garlic before, you can use it just like you would regular garlic - chop it up and saute, put it on pizza, add to salad dressing....it's milder than cloves of garlic, so we like it raw or added to a dish just before it's finished cooking. It will store for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator.
Speaking of vegetable storage, here are a few storing tips to remember!
- always separate fresh roots - radish, turnip, carrot - from the tops when storing. Both store well in the crisper inside of a plastic bag.
- our greens have been washed and spun once to dry but still have some moisture on them. Some folks put a paper towel or cloth inside the bag to soak up excess moisture to prolong storage life. Salad greens will store best if you transfer them to a reusable container with a lid.
- heads of lettuce and bunches of greens (really, almost any vegetable!) also do best in a plastic bag in the fridge. While we cannot take plastic bags back to reuse, we hope that you can find uses for them at home.
Featured Product
We've got our first batch of pastured, organically-fed chicken back from the butcher! You'll see whole chickens as well as boneless breasts, leg quarters, wings and soup packs on the extras list. Soup packs are approximately 5 lb bags of chicken backs, perfect for making delicious chicken stock.
