This has been a strange growing season. We had more moisture at the farm in last half of June and first half of July than I had ever had in a one month period in my 9 years of farming. It has also been, on average, the coldest and most overcast. I'm learning that many plants with large leaves (solar collectors) do really well in a year like this because they can photosynthesize well without a lot of sunshine. Our broccoli and collards are growing better than ever and they have huge leaves. Plants with smaller solar collectors like garlic and carrots are far behind where they would typically be at this time of year. Last year I believe that we were able to give carrots out at the beginning of August and we are just finally starting to get into these.
I mentioned in an email I sent out that we were going to harvest garlic this weekend. The samples that I had pulled looked good to go but once I pulled out about 100 plants I realized that about 30-40% of them could still use some more time in the ground. So don't expect garlic this week. Hopefully we just have one more week of garlic scapes and then we can get into the main garlic crop.
