The new school year has begun, the air is palpably crisper, and the intensity of summertime energy is mellowing. For those torn between lamenting summer’s end and celebrating autumn’s approach, might we suggest eating a lot of peppers, tomatoes, and watermelon? These are the crops of this moment.
As the season is shifting, we're flipping our hoop house beds, retiring cucumber plants to make space for hearty kale and spinach that will endure the fall and winter. We've just packed up the last of our curing onions and finished our last seeding of winter spinach, lettuce, and scallions. We're in that sweet in-between time when the tomatoes and peppers are still ripe and abundant, but our winter storage spaces are filling up and we're starting to harvest the first varieties of winter squash and pumpkins. Fall is just around the corner.
The afternoons have been warm and dry, the perfect weather to harvest squash and pie pumpkins. It's a fun activity with the whole crew working together to clip the stems, windrow into long piles, buff the dirt off each squash, and toss them into big bins. We stack these bins in storage so we can distribute them throughout the fall and winter. We grow six different varieties of winter squash: delicata and spaghetti squash are great for eating in the early fall since they don't store very long. Honeynut, kabocha, and butternut are excellent for longer term storage.
Enjoy!
