Hopefully everyone made it threw yesterday's storms with minimal damage. Over the course of a couple hours the Farm received 2 inches of rain and heavy winds! Here we didn't experience any damage besides some newly seeded beds getting washed out and some tomato cages that got blown over.
For those of you who were Share members last season you'll hopefully remember that this is quite an improvement from what a 2 inch rain event would have caused last year! To recap briefly what was going on last season, the Farm was beginning to become developed to the East and the North. The developers were not following Engineers recommendations and the Farm was being severly impacted because of all the rain being directed onto our Farm ground! We got the NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) and Polk County Soil and Water Conservation involved and even went in front of the Granger, Iowa City Council to present our problems and offer some solutions! It took a lot of time/energy to try and resolve these development issues, but I'm happy to report that some of the issues have been resolved!
Your Summer Squash plantings are ramping up into full production! As you can see from the photo we are growing 5 different types of Summer Squash this season. Starting from the bottom left and going clockwise the varieties are: G-Star Patty Pan, Sunburst Patty Pan, Dunja Zucchini, Costata Romanesco Italian Heirloom Zucchini and Zephyr Summer Squash. This is only my second year using this new Harvie software and there isn't a "simple" way to list all the squash varieties separately if you have a preference on varieties. This week's Share is going to include a nice amount of summer squash so if you have a preference on the type you get please email me directly (farmerben@wabisabi-farm.com) and I'll do my best to accommodate your preference!
It looks like it's going to be a very cool temperature week this week! All the heat last week caused your green bean plants to abort their blossoms to try and survive even though we were overhead watering them with cool well water to try and prevent this from happening! I walked them today and while there weren't many opened flowers or immature beans, I saw many unopened flower buds so am hoping we'll still get some harvests off this planting in a few weeks! We're also happy for the cooler temps coming up to actually be able to work full days every day! With the unbearable temps last week, the crew got sent home as soon as the "feels like" temperature hit 100 degrees. Heat illnesses are no joke (as I've experience them all) and don't want anyone working with me to experience these!!!
While your summer crops are maturing later than planned, they are coming! The first cherry tomatoes seem to be a week or two away from maturity and we are going to start digging the first round of potatoes (New Potatoes) this week so they should start showing up in Shares next week! Sweet and Hot peppers are starting to form on the plants and eggplants are close behind them! We're trialing some new heat tolerant greens (Koji, lettuce, etc) that look pretty good and we're hoping for the first Basil harvests in just a few short weeks! The bulb onion planting looks amazing and we're reseeding dill, cilantro, beets, edamame, etc in a new field to hopefully avoid them getting washed out in potential future rain events!
Have a great week,
Farmer Ben and the Crew
