Farm News and Crop Updates
What a week it has been of weather extremes! Last Sunday night through Monday, we received our biggest ever rainfall since we've been farming here. Over a ~12 hour period, we received six inches of rain. Since then, it has been around 90 degrees every day, and looks as though we'll see these steamy temperatures for at least the next 7-10 days.
Different crops respond differently to these stressful conditions. We woke up on Monday to damage to the salad mix lettuce we put in last week's farm shares. There were dark patches of seemingly waterlogged tissue. We feared we had lost the crop and were prepared to email members to report a last-minute crop failure. However, after talking with a farmer friend who has grown lots of this type of lettuce, he reported the plants typically heal themselves, sometimes within a day or so. I was blown away to wake up Tuesday to probably 80% or more recovery, and by the time we harvested later on Tuesday, probably 90% recovery. We still had a tedious sorting process during wash and pack, since there were still more damaged leaves than we typically see, but we were please to be able to salvage the crop for last box's salad greens.
Spinach was not so lucky, I'm sad to report. After underwhelming spinach plantings earlier in the spring, we were hoping this would be the box we could give every member a nice bag of spinach. But the plants went through temporary flooding on Monday and prolonged saturated conditions, damaging the crowns that sit at ground level. Then the heat that followed caused these damaged crowns to simply decay. We went from a planned 100-lb harvest down to a less than 10-lb harvest. So only a select few will get a bag of spinach in their box this week. Spinach will be back in the fall, and we'll do all we can to make sure it's abundant.
The sorry state of spinach on Friday:
While we do less planting this time of year, there is an important one coming up this week: storage carrots. These are one of the staples for our fall and winter shares, but establishment can be tricky. Carrots need to be seeded shallow (where the soil dries out quickly in the high summer sun) and take a long time to germinate (5-6 days at least), so they need to be continuously irrigated to create conditions for germination. With the forecast heat, we'll have our work cut out for us. We had a successful experiment covering the carrot seeding with row cover, which kept the soil surface crumbly and loose even in the face of heavy rainfall. It also seemed to retain some moisture compared with uncovered beds. We just bought a big sheet of row cover that can cover about a 1/2 acre. We're hoping that that, combined with increased irrigation capacity coming online this week, will allow us to get a nice crop of carrots germinated during this heat wave.
Besides the spinach loss and some aborted fruits on cucumbers (common on cucumbers and tomatoes when temperatures reach the upper 90s in high tunnels), it seems most crops are faring ok. Our soil dried out enough to start handweeding Wednesday afternoon and shallow cultivation on Thursday. Peppers have really jumped over the last week, so they're appreciating this heat. We did what is likely our final hilling of potatoes on Thursday, and the crop is looking good. We'll take a shovel out there in a week or two to evaluate tuber development. We don't have enough acreage to affording harvesting baby new potatoes, but I do hope to get some into boxes in late July.
I spied the first ripening heirloom tomato and some baseball sized green peppers developing, so those should be showing up in 2-3 weeks. We picked our first few pints of cherry tomatoes, so there will be some available for adding as extras to this week's shares. Expect more widespread availability in two weeks. We will have a very modest amount of cucumbers for the upcoming shares (maybe 60 fruits or so) but they should be more abundant the following week and throughout the summer. We are also seeing some nice bulbing of our sweet onions and are planning to put fresh onions into next week's shares.
Here are a few more photos from the field:
Delicata winter squash planting, with garlic off to the left:
Softball-sized cantaloupes developing:
Field of bell pepper plants destined for ripe (red, yellow, orange) harvest:
Heirloom and slicer tomato tunnel looking lush:
Notes on items for this week's box:
- A featured item this week is fennel bulbs. I would classify this licorice-scented veggie as one of the oddballs that some of you may not have had. We try to not make them staple items in shares, but do like offering them a few times per season. I have personally really taken a liking to this vegetable in the last few years, both as a crop to grow and vegetable to eat. I often just put it in stir-fries or saute with ground meat if I am improvising a recipe. The only part you don't want to eat is the "core," where the plant was separated from its roots. But the bulb, stems, and leaves are all edible. Here are a few recipes compiled by member Sarah Hyde:
- Fennel al Forno - this one features fennel along with parsley, also an item in this week's shares
- Roasted Fennel - a classic, simple way to prepare fennel
- Rhubarb Fennel Gin Cocktail - here's a unique set of flavors for a summer cocktail
- This is also a big week for basil, with many members getting two bunches. Could be a week to make a little pesto?
- This No Noodle Zucchini Lasagna uses zucchini, parsley, and basil - all showing up in boxes this week.
- You may find salad mix and head lettuce this week have a slight amount of bitterness that was absent during the cool growing conditions in the spring. This is an often unavoidable side effect of trying to mature lettuce in the heat of summer here in Minnesota when many farmers decide to just stop growing lettuce. If you find it unpleasant, a bit of salad dressing should mask it nicely.
- Zucchini, like cucumbers, keeps producing continuously (we are actually harvesting 6-7 days per week in this hot weather). So they're going to continue going into shares. Just remember: if they're showing up in your box but you'd prefer a week off from them, just swap them out for another item, or two of something else you're already getting.
- We have lots of parsley for shares this week. We love adding it to smoothies when it's in abundance. It also freezes nicely for later use, if you have more than you think you'll eat in 1-2 weeks.
- Here's a recipe that uses beets and parsley: Beet & Walnut Lentil Salad
Have a great week, all!
Dana
