I’m not sure if this is week 6 or not, time has slipped away in the past few weeks. They’ve been a haze of vacations, hot weather, bugs and running around. I’m sure most of you can appreciate that!
This week we will have the absolute last of the lettuce until later this fall. This goofy weather is wreaking havoc on our broccoli (the heat causes it to go to seed almost overnight) but we expect to have a very small head for each of you. We also are expecting a bunch of potatoes (they’ll be harvested tomorrow morning with the help of the St James kids, not withstanding the duck that has taken up residence in the plants to hatch her eggs) as well as beets, carrots and kohlrabi. We may have a mix of zucchini and cucumbers for you to choose from. Kale should be ready but I’m not sure about the onions. They were really beaten up by the wind last night and most of their stems were snapped off. The stem is what captures the sun to make the bulb grow so they may be stunted at their current size. We’ll have to see.
Believe it or not, we’re already planning for the fall crops. Even as we harvest what we planted this spring we start replanting the same crops to harvest again later this fall. Broccoli, cabbage and kohlrabi have been seeded. More will be planted this week as we pull up the potatoes and replant, as well as planting carrots as space develops. Looking forward into next month we’ll start with more beets and greens next month. The goal with this planting is to enjoy another fall crop of our cool weather friends as fall develops. Let’s just hope that we don’t get any early cold spells.
The most important crop, tomatoes, are coming along great. We have a lot of fruit set, we just have to wait for them to ripen. If you haven’t had a fresh tomato before you are in for a treat. I’m also expecting a fairly large crop of cucumbers, zucchini and peppers, so you may want to think about ways to preserve a few of them. You may not be able to eat them all when they start really growing. Below I have included two different recipes for refrigerator pickles. They require no canning but have to be kept in the fridge and eaten in a few weeks. Keep this recipe for a few weeks down the road.
Some of the old time farmers are telling me that we’ll have a hot summer because we had a mild winter. I guess the mildness of the winter is relative to your perspective, but if that adage holds true we will be swimming in these hot weather crops as I planted them based on what was necessary the past few years (which were cooler) to get a decent crop.
We’ll see you all on Wednesday again. We’ll be in the tool library.
Fat Guy on a Little Bike 