Thanks for a great first week, everyone! It was so awesome to meet everyone last week, and we're looking forward to meeting anyone who we haven't yet this week!
Every Monday morning, we go for a field walk to see how things are doing and to estimate what and how much we will have to harvest for the farm shares. This time of observation helps us to set our priorities for the week, to reflect on how certain crops have grown, and to make plans.
On this morning's walk, we took note of the impact the difficult spring has had on on some of our veggies. Although we planted a lot early, the cold, wet, clay soil has not been friendly to everything. Some spring crops like arugula, spinach, and radish have barely grown, and some have flowered or 'bolted'. All plants eventually make a flower that contains seed. Usually, they grow for a long time and are harvested before this happens. But when faced with adverse conditions, the plant will flower early. We call that 'bolting'. It's basically the plant saying - oh man, things are not looking good, I better quit while I'm ahead and reproduce now! Our broccoli is one of those crops. Although the plant hasn't had much time to grow, it's now putting out little broccoli heads that will soon flower. So, we are going to stay one step ahead and harvest them as tiny heads before they flower! They actually taste amazing - sweeter than any broccoli I've eaten in a store. If we're lucky, after being harvested early the plants will shoot out more little broccoli florets, that we will be able to harvest as well. Our second planting of broccoli is looking a lot happier, so we will put our hopes there.
We also noticed something very exciting on our field walk - pea pods are forming! That should mean we'll have peas ready starting next week.
Other than harvesting this week, we will be planting more brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and cabbage), carrots, beans, spinach, greens, and lettuce. Forecast is looking pretty dry (fingers crossed!) so it is a planting-focused week. We'll also be working to get the rest of our tomatoes trellised in our hoophouses.
See ya soon!
- Farmer Kim
