This week, if you decide to order a box of canning tomatoes (seconds that need to be processed almost immediately because they are ripe and imperfect), please write to Hana@potomacvegetablefarms.com. You may order your box to be picked up at the Vienna farm on any day but Monday and at Purcellville Thursday through Sunday from 10 - 4. The price is $25 for a little more than 20 lbs. Please write CANNING TOMATOES in the subject line!
During the week of extreme heat and humidity, we started the workday as the sun came up and we ended it around lunchtime. It was too hot and dry to do any work with tractors--when the soil gets this dusty, it is bad to torment it with tillage equipment. It's bad for the soil, bad for the microbes and it lets residual moisture up into the air. So we limited our activities to the benign tasks of collecting up tomatoes and beans and hooking up the irrigation.
Many of our fields are set up with drip irrigation: long lightweight plastic tubes underneath the mulch, with pinholes every foot or so that let the water drip out. We have to attach these drip lines to a header (a black plastic pipe) and then connect that to a piece of flexible plastic tubing that is attached to a hydrant that is linked to an underground system of pipes that gets water from a well.
Other fields can be watered with a traveling water gun. We set that one up in the new brassica patch. The carrots and beets in Loudoun have a fixed set of "wobblers" that create a spray that gets the soil wet so the seeds will germinate all at once.
But nothing compares to a good rain. All that watering is like getting your fluids through an IV line when you really just want a giant bucket of water dumped on your head.
We are so glad we are not farming in the West. Those temperatures and that drought, not sustainable. This is a great region for growing vegetables, even when it gets hot and dry.
Questions about your vegetables? Take a look at ID That Veggie! For more recipe ideas you can find us on Pinterest!
