If you haven't already, please go here and give us your feedback on the CSA as well as help us choose potential CSA sites AND even learn how to save a substantial amount of money on the next season CSA.
Oh, aren't these cool temps refreshing after last week's burning weather? We were glad our spring-fed pond was fully charged because we were irrigating like crazy to cool down the cool season crops, help transplants survive and get seeds to germinate. Glad for a respite of cool weather and RAIN! We find irrigating crops is much easier when God does it for us!
The fields are really looking good right now, if we do say so ourselves! We are keeping every bed planted because the days are shortening and soon the growth of the crops will slow. The trick to fall gardening is getting the timing right--plant too early and you've got more greens than you can handle. Plant too late and nothing reaches maturity. Get it just right and you have mature greens and roots just sitting in the garden at just the right size and they can be picked whenever you want (up until a big killing frost).
If you're gardening along with us at home, now is the perfect time to seed spinach, arugula, radishes, and turnips. Give it a try! All you need to do is get them germinated (which if you plant in the midst of the rainy week shouldn't be a problem) and they will just love the cool nights. I wish I could find the picture from our home garden of our son Josiah holding a turnip that was way bigger than his head, and it was super sweet and tender-not tough at all! Certain crops are just best in the cool weather!
So what's going strong right now? Beans of various kinds, cucumbers, tomatoes and LETTUCE! Hurray that lettuce is growing well again. We never skipped a week of lettuce harvest all season but sometimes our harvest was way down so you might not have seen it available. (A 100 ft bed of lettuce in mid-summer yields 1/4 or less of what the same bed would yield in spring or fall). We sneaked some lettuce and arugula for a family salad yesterday and we realized it had been a really long time since we'd had salad (everything was going into your shares:). Now that it's cooling off, from here on out (barring disaster of course) we should all get to enjoy salads to our heart's content!
"Man cannot live by bread alone. Every once in awhile he needs a salad." ~Woody Allen
We're making plans for the winter CSA and part of the survey mentioned above is a call for CSA site hosts for winter and potentially next summer as well. We can't do CSA pickups at markets this winter because we don't expect any indoor markets to be open (and we kinda want to take Saturdays off this winter) and we are considering dropping the Lee's Summit market next season so we can focus more on the CSA but that means we need more midweek locations. Check out the survey and let us know what you think. We value your input!
So grateful for you!
Dave and Sheri
