Have you ever seen a plant that looks like swiss cheese? If so, chances are flea beetle is the culprit. The image above is two arugula leaves, one at the end of the row left uncovered, and one that was safely tucked under a blanket. If you pick up on the farm, you may have noticed giant white sheets covering portions of the field, or maybe you've wondered how we control all of those garden pests. For crops that are often decimated (especially this time of year) by flea beetle and root maggot, very common and prolific pests, our go-to is to use 'row cover'- a very thin spun poly cloth to keep the bugs from getting to our crops. We put this cloth down right after sowing seeds and only remove it to weed or harvest. It's very important that we put the cloth down before our crop germinates because those insects are fast and once they're in there, they're not going away! We cover all of our brassica salad greens, radishes and turnips this way in order to improve our quality and yield-- without using and pesticides! Hole-y food happens, and it's totally still good to eat! However sometimes it does change the flavor and texture slightly, as the plant tries to recover and defend itself from it's attacker, so we always try our best to minimize these impacts while also understanding that insects are a natural part of the environment and they need to eat too! We don't intend to control all pest pressure, but rather to maintain the balance between the 'good' and 'bad'. We also don't want to cover our whole field in synthetic material, which we use several times but eventually does degrade and has to be thrown away. So, we cover the most susceptible, and accept the occasional hole.
We've got a great farm share for you this week. Members will get the first taste of our long awaited strawberries, with more to come soon. We've also got more great new potatoes, shishito peppers (our favorite snack- try them on the grill topped with some flakey sea salt), colorful carrots and more-- the summer bounty continues!
Now, though, I've got to get back into the field, we hope you have a great week!
Ashley and Caleb
