In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Carrots
• Celeriac
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Onion, Wallas
• Peppers, sweet & jalapenos

Crop Notes

Celeriac: This is an awesome fall treat that many people are probably unfamiliar with- it is also sometimes referred to as ‘celery root’…and we have lots to say about it! Celeriac is a rather bizarre looking root vegetable- but when peeled down, its great for savory fall dishes. Think of them like you would potatoes (they are an excellent companion to just about any potato dish, by the way)- boiled, roasted, seared, smashed, stewed, etc. When you’re ready to cook up your celeriac, start by cutting off all of the hairy, fringed roots on the bottom. This is where a lot of the excess soil tends to hide, so I generally just compost that part. Now you have a flat bottom that you can use to make peeling the rest of the bulb easier. Cut the top off as well, then run your knife down along the sides to remove all of the hairs, knobs, and rough skin. The flesh underneath is a nice creamy white color and is now ready to be cubed, sliced, or whatever you plan to do with it. Do not trim down the celeriac too far ahead of time, because it will begin to oxidize and turn brown and rust colored (not to worry, if you put your celeriac in a plastic bag in the fridge it can last for several months with no problem, so trim it right before use). Celeriac really enhances the flavor of stocks, soups, and stews, and when its in season I never make a batch without it…so if you make stock at home with your vegetable trimmings, make sure to save the celeriac skins and tops to toss into the stock pot. This week we are featuring an heirloom variety that is not commonly produced commercially because it oxidizes rather rapidly and has a pretty hairy root compared to other varieties- but the flavors is *great* Enjoy!

Kale: Its kale season again! The hot summer months are difficult to grow decent looking kale, since they do not enjoy the hot, hot heat. The hot dry weather tends to leave the kale plants stressed and thusly more susceptible to pest and disease problems. We usually grow a small amount of Lacinato kale through the summer months, but had a complete crop failure this summer. That is all behind us now, and we have lots of beautiful Red Russians, Lacinato, and Rainbow Lacinato to look forward to! This week you’ll be receiving a Red Russian type- we currently grow several varieties of Red Russians because we like them all so much we could not pick just one…plus having some genetic diversity helps protect us against losses- so if one variety isn’t doing so well, another one is likely to still be performing well.

Peppers: As mentioned last week, we have completely fallen in love with the vibrant colors, sweet flavor, and heavy yields of the sweet pepper varieties from Wild Garden Seed The folks at Wild Garden Seed really know their stuff- we can tell the difference in quality right from the very beginning as the seeds germinate and grow into healthy plants, up to harvest time where we evaluate yields, plant health, flavor, visual appeal (yes, we eat with our eyes too!), and storage capability. Our pepper plants are so happy this year that they are loaded down with huge clusters of peppers and showing no signs of slowing down as we approach cooler weather. Viva local agriculture, from seed to table!

Other News

We are extremely proud to be working with Portland Public Schools this fall! We have been in contact with them since last season about providing certain fall crops and are now going to be providing sweet peppers for them to feature! We love the idea of getting more fresh, local, healthy vegetables into the schools and are excited to get to participate in that process.

Speaking of schools- we are also selling produce to University of Portland, Reed College, Lewis and Clark, and more recently, Oregon Episcopal School. We enjoy working with higher learning institutions and feel honored to get our produce onto their campuses. Plus, college students can use some healthy food in between cram-sessions! We thank the colleges and universities we work with for having the forward practices to feature local products, and appreciate their ongoing support of our farm.

Jessica Gabrielle Nelson

• Carrots
• Chicory Mix
• Corn
• Dill
• Eggplant
• Kohlrabi
• Onions, red
• Peppers, sweet mix
• Tomatoes

Crop Notes

Chicories: This week Full Share members will receive a head of Escarole and a head of Frisee. Half Share members will receive a head of Escarole. These are both in the chicory family, which includes Radicchio and Belgian Endive. They are somewhat like lettuce, but thicker and toothier with a refreshing bitterness. You can eat chicories either raw or cooked- the bitterness subsides with cooking, and even more so with the application of an acidic substance like balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. 

Corn: This is the best tasting corn I think we have produced so far this season! All of that, despite the fact that the wind storm last weekend flattened our corn field to the ground…plants are amazing and full of surprises!

Dill: Our dill has struggled the past few seasons, but not this year! We realize that the amount of dill in the share may be a bit much to use fresh all at once (unless you’re a total dill fanatic like I am), but it is one of the easiest herbs to dry.This website has a quick and easy guide on how to dry your dill so you can enjoy the harvest long into the future.

Kohlrabi: If you’ve been a CSA member with us in the past, you know we like to grow HUGE Kohlrabi! This variety is a little more mild-mannered and petite, and the leaves are edible as well. At this stage you can sometimes skip the peeling as well since the skins aren’t very tough and leathery like they are with the giant storage varieties. Kohlrabi is in the same family as kale, cabbage, broccoli, and radishes- and has a flavor reminiscent of broccoli but with a sweet, juicy crunch. I enjoy Kohlrabi raw (used for dipping into hummus or baba ganoush) or shredded and made into slaw. One crew member reports having made the best kraut she has ever created out of Kohlrabi.

Peppers: We grow an assortment of red and gold roaster type sweet peppers on the farm. They are all varieties that have been developed by Wild Garden Seed and we can’t get enough of them! We encountered these peppers several years back through a series of happy accidents that resulted in us trialing small amounts of lots and lots of peppers- and these were the hands-down winners! Treat them just like a red or yellow bell pepper (although we find that they are sweeter than a bell pepper).

Tomatoes: Its the last of tomatoes! In anticipation of the rain that was forecasted this past weekend, we rushed to get the last of the tomatoes we could harvested before the rains arrived. Sudden applications of water to tomato plants often times causes the fruit to crack and split, so we did the best to get what we could off of the old and slowing plants. Its a modest 2# distribution of tomatoes, and you may notice that they are less of a vibrant red then the ones you previously received- if thats the case then just leave them out on your countertop for a few days until they’ve turned deep red and then enjoy. We hope you enjoyed your heirlooms and slicers this season…adios!

Zack Schlanger

Celery: This week we are distributing the last of our early-summer celery. Due to some less-than-ideal germination in the greenhouse back in early April (yes, celery takes a long time and a lot of patience to grow) we have less celery available than we had aimed for. We still want you to enjoy the tastiness of local celery, so we are putting it in the share by large/small head size. That means you may receive a head of celery that has been cut in half. Enjoy!

Crop Notes

Baby Bok Choi: We liked the rapid growth rate and flavor of the baby bok choi we grew for your very first week of the CSA, so we decided to plant another round. The same as before, we have opted not to wash the delicate heads in order to prevent cracking of the ribs and bruising of the leaves. They performed very well in the summer heat, but have lived their entire lives underneath the protection of row covers to keep out flea beetles. We see a noticeable difference in the texture and toughness of plants grown under cover vs. out in the open; plants underneath the cover don’t get as much direct sun or as much contact with the wind…so they tend to be very delicate and need to be handled extra gently in order to avoid damage.

Corn: This week you will receive Sugar Pearl corn. As the name suggests, it has pearly white kernels and tends to perform well in the earlier parts of the corn season. The plants are about 6-7 feet tall and each stalk yields 1-2 ears of corn. Corn is a wind-pollinated plant, meaning that it does not require the assistance of pollinators to reproduce. In addition, corn plants have both male and female parts (the tassels at the top are the male portion that produce the pollen and the corn husks with the silks are the female portion that catch the pollen). Did you know that corn is actually a grass? Other familiar and well-loved edible members of the grass family include rice, wheat, oats, rye, millet, sugar, and barley.

Cucumbers: We stocked up the share with a bounty of cucumbers this week since we can tell that the plants are starting to get tired and are making their final push before they sputter out for the summer. The Silver Slicers are the gift that just keeps on giving!!! We hope you love them as much as we do.

Onion, Ailsa Craig: These massive Spanish type onions are renowned for their large size. They date back to the late 1800’s and are sweet, mild, and juicy- perfect for onion rings or cut into slabs for burgers. Its not uncommon for Ailsa Craig onions to get up to around 2 pounds in size (a more typical size for an onion is between 1/2 – 3/4 pound).

Summer Squash: Just like the cucumbers, the squash plants are getting old and tired. Yields are declining and we are rapidly approaching time to say goodbye to summer squash for 2015…so bake em, fry em, grate em, freeze em, roast em, and make that zucchini bread while you still can! A great trick is to grate and freeze zucchini for later. Simply shred it with a cheese grater or food processor and pack into Ziploc bags for later- just squeeze some of the excess water out when you defrost them- great for winter soups and batches of zucchini bread to warm up on a cold day.

Around the Farm

The onions have come full-circle! They started their lives in the greenhouse this spring, got transplanted out into the fields, were weeded + watered, grew into beautiful onions, and are now being harvested and returned to the greenhouse for curing. At this time of year we stretch tarps over the greenhouse so its nice and shady for the onions to dry down. During this period the roots dry out, the skins dry and tighten, and the necks/stems lose their moisture and essentially seal off the bulb which is what enables them to store for long periods of time. Once all of this has occurred we trim the roots and tops off, sort by size, and pack into 50# bags for use later on.

 This spring onion trimming from March you see Jen (Harvest Manager), Jesse (Restaurant Manager), and Seth (your Farmer of the Week!) trimming the onion starts to prepare them for transplanting.

Speaking of dawn light, we are certainly already noticing the reduction of daylight hours both in terms of plants growth but also in how dark it is on the way to the farm in the morning! Although we are still full-steam ahead with plenty of harvesting, weeding, planting, watering, and the like…we’re at the time of year where we start pushing our start time back 30 minutes- hooray for ‘sleeping in’!!! And what other work commute comes with a sunrise view of three mountains from the Sauvie Island Bridge??? Its pretty glorious…

Meet Your Farmer

Seth Frank

Hometown: Logan, UT

Joined SIO Crew in May 2014. Seth started specializing in irrigation at the end of the 2014 season and has done a good deal of the irrigation so far this season and is now adding tractor operator to his resume.

Favorite fruit/vegetable: ”They’re all too good to pick just one”…but Seth narrowed it down to the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and potatoes.

Favorite part of working on the farm: The people- how diverse and awesome my coworkers are on and off the farm.

What he does off the farm: Seth is heading out this very weekend to hop onto the Pacific Crest Trail near Three Fingered Jack to put in a warrior-like 60-90 miles in three days…good luck Seth!

You’ll notice this week that the contents of the share changed from the projection sent out just this morning…the bounty of eggplant and several other items instigated some last-minute creative shuffling but we think the end result was quite nice!

This week there are lots of comments in the crop notes about storage temperatures and preferences of each crop. We realize that its not easy to store everything at the ideal temperature, especially all in the same refrigerator- which is why we have three separate refrigerators on the farm that we operate at different temperatures and relative humidity to ensure that our crops are stored under the optimum conditions so they can arrive in your share at their very best. Basil, tomatoes, and eggplant all struggle with the cold temps of a home refrigerator and oftentimes cold damage is the top reason these items don’t last at home. Basil turns black, tomatoes turn mealy and bland, and eggplant gets pockmarks and sunken spots due to excessive cold.

We are working on some rather large harvest projects on the farm- we have a field of carrots that are ready for harvest as well as a large amount of our storage onions to haul into the greenhouses for curing (more on that process later). The pepper plants are looking lush and full of fruit, the corn fields are tasseling, the winter squash is looking beautiful, and as always this time of year, the weeds are thriving as well. We also have winter crops and hearty winter greens coming along in the greenhouse that will provide us with food late in the season and into winter.

In Your Share This Week:

• Basil
• Carrots
• Celery
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant (either Japanese or Italian)
• Fennel
• Summer Squash Mix
• Tomatoes

Crop Notes

Basil: This is the first harvest for us this season.  We are picking the end tips of the plants so they’re nice and tender. The ideal storage temperature for basil is no less than 55…so as you can imagine, inside your refrigerator is far too cold and over the course of several days to a week it will turn the basil black and slimy. It can likely withstand a night or two in the veggie drawer, but be sure to keep it away from the coldest parts of your refrigerator.

Celery: Prepare yourself for a whole new experience of celery! We are all familiar with the crisp, watery quality of celery from the grocery store…but this is old-fashioned celery flavor that most people likely have not gotten to taste. We left the entire plant intact so you can turn all of the beautiful foliage into delicious bases for soups and stocks- definitely not to be missed out on.

Fennel: The variety in your share this week tends to have a fairly spreading growth habit, sometimes with stems that shoot out nearly sideways. We realize this may be a bit unwieldy to wrangle into a bag or into the refrigerator…but the fronds are so good we left them on anyhow. When you get your share home you can trim the fronds off of the main bulb and store them all together in a plastic bag. The fronds are good for up to two weeks, but we have seen fennel bulbs last for a month in storage trials.

Tomatoes: We grow several varieties of red slicing tomatoes, over a dozen heirloom varieties, and are also hosting a blind trial of slicers with OSU where we are evaluating the yield, health of the plants, taste, storage, and length of harvest- but we don’t know what each variety is, we only see ‘test #1’, ‘test#2’, etc. Its fun to work with new varieties and watch just how different each one can be. Our heirloom tomatoes are also yielding with gathering speed, so we will start adding those to the shares on rotation- if you do not see them in your share this week, you will get them next week. We have a whole rainbow of colors, shapes, sizes, and flavors that we hope you enjoy. They are a treat to look at on the plate as well with pink, orange, green, purple, and striped…they are all ripe and ready to eat no matter what color they are (yes, even the green ones!). A final not about tomatoes: they also do not enjoy cold storage temperatures, so the counter top is vastly better than the fridge, which turns them to a mealy texture and lessens the sweetness. Particularly with heirlooms, placing them stem side down preserves them longer. The top shoulders of the tomatoes are tougher and more resilient than the delicate flesh on the underside- and when you set a tomato on that delicate flesh it actually begins to bruise itself under its own weight and can begin to rot rapidly from the inside out.

Meet Your Farmer

Jerry Nelson

Hometown: Battle Ground, WA

Joined SIO Crew: July 2014. Jerry was part of a few weeding crews back in 2012, but didn’t formally join the SIO team until last Summer when he signed on as a full time farmer, eventually becoming the SIO restaurant delivery driver extraordinaire. More recently, you may see Jerry out and about as he just started driving our Tuesday CSA route.

Favorite fruit/vegetable: “Potatoes are just great–did you know they have 48 chromosomes (that’s two more than humans have)!!”

Favorite part of working on the farm: Jerry loves his coworkers, working as a team to tackle big jobs, “watching many hands make light work in action!” Also, lifting heavy things!!

What he does off the farm: Jerry lives in and is currently renovating a sailboat (with his cat Hubert), and has long term plans to sail south during the off-seasons and farm with SIO during the farm season. Jerry is an incredibly talented musician, plays in a rock & roll band, and is trained in classical guitar.If you are interested in guitar lessons you can contact Jerry at jerryrobert84@gmail.com, Jerry specializes in giving affordable guitar lessons to children and beginners of all ages.

 

In Your Share This Week

• Carrots
• Cilantro
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Onions, Red Tropea
• Peppers, Jalapenos
• Summer Squash Mix
• Tomatoes
• ***Eggplant on rotation (either Japanese or Italian)

Crop Notes

Carrots: These Ya-Ya carrots are from our May 7th seeding. So in just in just 11 weeks of care these carrots are ready and harvested for your share.

Cilantro: We have experimented with lots of cilantro varieties in the past and this one, Santo, seems to grow the best for us.  Harvesting with roots attached is much faster than cutting and bunching. The roots are also edible and they help keep the leaves from wilting.

Corn: We were introduced to this variety from a trial we participated in looking for corn that grows quickly in the cooler part of late spring and early summer. We are all glad that we were tempted by Temptation bi-color sweet corn because we have corn in your CSA share one month earlier than usual. We pick the corn for your share in the cool of the morning at peak sweetness and refrigerate it immediately to preserve that ‘just’ picked quality.

Cucumbers:  You may find either green or white cucumbers this week.  The white variety, Silver Slicer, is really producing prolifically this year.  Cucumbers are trellised onto cattle panels so that the plants can climb and the ripening cucumber can develop straight and even hanging down off the vine.

Lettuce: Everyone gets Nevada head lettuce this week. It is a bit like a combination of the best qualities from green butter and green leaf lettuces.

Onions: Tropea red onions are torpedo shaped and considered a fresh eating onion because they have not been cured yet. Their unique shape allows us to plant twice as many plants in the same square footage as the traditionally round shaped onions you will see in the future. They are only slightly peeled to protect the shiny inner layers from bruising.

Peppers, Jalapeno: We just added these last minute after realizing we were short one ingredient needed to spice up a potential bowl of salsa.

Summer Squash: By now you probably have tasted a few different varieties that we grow on the farm, and hope that you are enjoying all of the endless recipes that folks have created over time to help eat the fruit of such a generous plant.

Tomatoes:  The early heat wave this year ripened our first tomatoes super quickly. This week you will receive red slicing tomatoes, a mix of New Girl and Big Beef varieties.

On Rotation… Eggplant, Orient Express is long and thin and the Nadia variety is more bell shaped.

Meet Your Farmer

Garrison Tandy

Hometown: Portland, OR

Joined SIO Crew: April 2014. This week is bittersweet, as it is Garrison’s final week on the farm, but we are excited for the new ventures he is pursuing with R. Stewart and Co. Winery in McMinnville as a Cellar Hand in wine production. On the farm Garrison has specialized in tractor work, irrigation, and is generally a jack-of-all trades.

Favorite fruit/vegetable: “I’m a sucker for all the winter squash,” particularly the Butternut varieties, and also “the delightfully sweet Jimmy Nardello peppers.”

Favorite part of working on the farm: Garrison loves how everyday is new and an adventure. Also all of the different people you get to work with and the diversity of projects you find yourself working on. No two days are the same!!

What she does off the farm: Garrison enjoys hiking, live music, playing guitar, hanging out with friends, and riding his bike in town. He dreams of travelling to New Zealand to continue expanding his experience in the wine industry.

This morning ended a stretch of 44 days without rain falling on our farm. We received less than 0.125 inches in the overnight from Sunday into this Monday morning, not nearly enough to halt our field irrigations. The last two weeks of heat really got our summer vegetable plants and summer weeds growing very very quickly.  The orient express variety of eggplant in your CSA shares this week are producing three weeks ahead of what we have seen in past years, despite a somewhat later seeding date in our green house.  Some pig-weed, wild amaranth, we have seen double in size weekly to top out at about 4 feet. And we have sweet corn plants in tassel with ears sizing up along their stems, I think that is just crazy.  Our soil temperature has been above 70 degrees for at least one month, and in this last week holding at 78 degrees each day. In comparison, in 2014 July 18th marked our first day of the soil temperature reaching 70 degrees and our highest logged was 72 degrees in August.

In Your Share This Week:

• Carrots
• Chard
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Green Onions
• Lettuce
• Potatoes
• Summer Squash

Crop Notes

Lettuce : A mix of head lettuce varieties for you this week that were harvested up from underneath a forest of one of our most rambunctious and prolific farm weeds, Pig-weed.  This year has just been unbelievable with how the heat really conjures up multiple flushes of germinating weed seeds. To our advantage, in a way, the shade of those weeds does an excellent job shading a mature, ready for harvest lettuce plant from excessive sun.

Potatoes, new: Still considered new potatoes because their skins have not yet set, this week both varieties, Carola and Red Gold have a tasty yellow flesh. These spuds have been grown with absolutely no additional irrigation, you can probably tell from the depth of taste they will provide you at dinner.  

Summer Squash, Safari, Dunja, Y-star & Gold: We allowed this week’s zucchini varieties to size up slightly to provide different culinary opportunities, like stuffing and deep frying, they taste as smooth and sweet as usual.

Meet Your Farmer

Sidonie Harper-McPike

In You Share This Week:

• Beets, Red
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Garlic
• Kale, Lacinato
• Lettuce Mix
• Summer Squash Mix

Crop Notes

Beets: These Early Wonder Tall Tops have no tops this time around.  We seeded this variety back in March under an unheated hoop house with the plan of getting an early beet harvest with tops, which you already received in a prior week’s share, followed by a harvest of larger beet roots without the tops. Over the lifespan of our beet plants, as the leaves age, the once succulent leaves tend to get rougher in texture, suffer insect damage, and develop a slightly bitter taste. The older beet leaves do continue to function as sugar factories however pumping energy into the developing beet root, and that sugar is what you will be enjoying soon!

Carrots: Just as the seeding of our fall and winter storage carrots is happening, we are excited to be harvesting our first mature carrots of the season. Both orange varieties, Mokum is more slender, the Ya Ya a bit plumper,  were seeded 12 weeks ago on April 13th into our sandiest field.  Carrot seed takes up to 14 days to germinate in the spring’s cool soils.  Those carrot seedlings are much slower to emerge than all of the weeds, so this affords us an advantage in early weed control.  Ideally just before the carrot seedlings break through the soil surface a thick carpet of weeds have already blanketed the soil at a very young and vulnerable stage called the “thread stage.”  At that very moment one of our field crew passes over the field using a propane weed flamer killing all the weeds and like magic the carrots then pop up with zero weeds to compete against.

Fennel: This crop that does really well on our farm and does a great job lightening up heavy meals at home. Sliced really thin and added raw to salads is by far my favorite way to eat this weird bulb of a stem.  This year we will be transplanting a whole array of fennel varieties to evaluate as part of N.O.V.I.C. and Osborne Seed in Washington will be giving us fennel seed to trial and evaluate for very late transplanting that could potential survive overwinter in the fields. So, maybe winter CSA share members could see fennel in their CSA boxes this winter.

Summer Squash: The plants in our summer squash field are huge! We have a quarter acre of four different varieties of summer squash planted into a very thin green plastic mulch material. The green mulch feels and looks a bit like shrink-wrap and is applied to the soil surface with a mulch-layer implement mounted on the rear of our tractor. In one pass, drip tape is laid down for irrigating and then covered with the plastic. On June 1st, we transplanted into the plastic by hand and turned on the irrigation right away… and in just six weeks we have plenty of summer squash to harvest. The plastic technology is really nifty, the thin film allows the sun’s infrared light to pass though to heat the soil effectively below, but excludes all other wavelengths of light preventing weed seeds from germinating, and keeps the soil moisture from evaporating. The same method of using plastic is applied to all heat loving crops that prefer to get irrigated directly at the roots via drip tape instead of getting their leaves wet with over head sprinkler irrigation, the list includes, cucumbers, winter squash, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes. To help encourage pollinating insects to visit our squash field, miniature sunflowers, borage, and hyssop are interplanted throughout.

You are what you eat

The same goes for the vegetable plants we grow.  To have the greatest range of nutrients available for you at meal time, we add literally tons of certified organic fertilizers to our fields for our veggies to “eat” every year. Based on a spring soil test taken from each of our 24 cropped acres, for 2015 we decided to spread a total of 10 tons of liming materials (either calcium carbonate or oyster shell flour), 10 tons of minerals (a Sauvie Island Organics’ custom blend of Dungeness crab shell meal, fishbone meal, sulphate of potash, gypsum, Redmond Sea Salt, Humates, manganese, boron, and zinc), and finally about 3 tons of organic nitrogen from feather meal. Most of our farm’s vegetable nitrogen needs are met from growing lush stands of cover crops. Each fertilizer is applied for a very specific and precisely measured reason to avoid instances of over application and the potential high environmental costs associated with leaching and run off of nitrate and phosphorus.

Meet Your Farmer

Michelle Moulton

In Your Share This Week:

Favas: This is the second (and last) fava distribution of the season, and the field has been picked clean. If you saved favas from last week, why not try what we did and have a good ol’ fashioned shelling party? We spent an evening together along with friends, roommates, and even some farm alumni and shelled a sizable pile of favas over good company and snacks- and it turns a tedious task into a fun social event. We sampled them in a variety of ways; grilled, blanched, pureed, and sauteed- the winner being an entree of orzo with seared favas, parsley, garlic, bacon, white wine, and heavy cream. Molto delizioso!

Kale, Red Ursa: As mentioned in the blog from Week 1, Red Ursa kale changes in shape and texture as is matures- becoming significantly more lacy. This photo shows a sampling of some of the diversity that has developed in our kale field this summer. This variation is a great sign of the diversified gene pool that lends the crop its robust pest and disease resistance as well as its vigorous growth and great yields. When you chop up the lacy leaves, they fall apart into smaller pieces so I find that cooking time is just a little bit less and that I can chop it much more roughly. This is goodbye to Red Ursa kale until the fall, when it will arrive in the shares again.

Lettuce Mix: Its a mixed farmer’s choice surprise this week! We have an assortment of red and green butterheads, summercrisp, red and green leaf, and romaine that we are putting in the shares. You can read on below and meet Jane, who cuts nearly all of the head lettuce on the farm…she had a great time with this week’s mix!

Pickup Site Care

Meet your farmer

Jane Jacobs

Your Share This Week:

How Do Your Tomatoes Grow

Another ongoing project is tomato trellising and pruning- much higher yields can be achieved from every plant by some simple pruning tactics. It is very similar in concept to pruning an orchard- with mindfulness towards air circulation, sun exposure, structural integrity, number of fruiting branches, and so on. As the young transplants go out into the fields, the lowest hanging leaves are removed to avoid excess contact with the ground (in order to avoid rot and fungal problems later on). We also remove the very first flush of flowers to encourage the plants to put more effort into leaves and stems rather than focusing on making fruit just yet. As the plants grow, we attach them to vertical pieces of twine and remove all but two fruiting branches (this is known as the ‘two-leader’ pruning method and is very common in commercial production). Finally, once the plants are about as tall as we are and have a good heavy set of green tomatoes, we turn off all irrigation for the rest of the season. This stimulates the plants to hasten the ripening of the fruit due to drought stress in an attempt to propagate itself before the end of its life cycle…which amounts to sweet, juicy red tomatoes. Looking forward to it!

Meet Your Farmer

Max Evans