In the share this week:
1.5 lbs slicer tomatoes
Sweet pepper mix
1 poblano pepper
1 lb eggplant
2 lbs summer squash
1 lb red long onions
1 lb sweet onions
2 lbs red beets
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
Our summer cover crops are looking fabulous right now (see pic above). This field is destined to be a large greenhouse and we are doing multiple rounds of cover cropping before we put that up and start intensive vegetable growing. The area had previously been home to two of our smaller hoophouses (now moved toward the back of this pic) plus a large aisle between them, so it had gotten a lot of use over the last four years or so. Cover cropping will allow the soil to rest, rejuvenate, and build back some important minerals. We like to use a mix of crops that provide lots of different soil benefits. This summer mix has a lot of buckwheat, which is a very fast growing plant and thus great for crowding out summer annual weeds. Buckwheat is also a great scavenger of soil phosphorus, which it will release after mowing and breaking down. The mix also has some grass family plants (annual ryegrass and sorghum sudan grass), which are awesome for adding biomass and organic matter to the soil, along with crimson clover for the nitrogen fixing legume portion. The biggest benefit we can see after we cover crop an area is the difference it makes to the texture and workability of the soil. Our soil naturally contains a lot of clay, which can make it very sticky and hard to work when it's wet, and really rock hard when it's dry. Increasing the organic matter with cover crops in our soil helps break the clay apart and really improves the quality of the soil. I'm really pretty passionate about cover cropping as compared to other ways of bringing in soil fertility to the farm. Animal manures can be great if you can be confident that they are free from harmful substances, but we've had problems in the past with supposedly fully composted horse manure bringing in persistent herbicides and lots of weed seeds. Also, just the cost, logistics and fuel associated with bringing in large amounts of organic matter from off the farm is a big negative for me. Bringing in seed and growing my fertility and organic matter in place is a huge win! The downside is that it requires enough space because you are taking valuable growing space out of production for a time. For us, that trade off is worth it :)
Oh my goodness the onions have been just crazy this year! I suppose we did end up with more transplants that we had orginially planned for and just planted them all. So now we have a whole lot of onions to share with you! We are giving both sweet and red long onions in the shares this week because these varieties don't store as well as the yellow and red onions. We are keeping the sweet onions in our cooler to keep them in better shape and I recommend that you keep yours in the fridge too. We are doing our best to make sure you are getting good quality onions, but I have cut into a few that had a middle layer going soft. We lowered the price of those onions and are giving a little extra too, so hopefully you'll still have plenty of good onion to work with.
Last week of beets for awhile. I know we've been giving more of those than usual, but they do keep for a couple of months in your fridge so don't feel like you need to use them up right away if you have the space to store them. I'm a huge fan of making veggie fritters and this idea of making both beet and zucchini fritters looks like a delicious and colorful way to use these up. I am surprised that this recipe doesn't include any onion though and I would definitely add some in because onions make everything more delicious!
The eggplants are super healthy this year and producing such a beautiful crop, so those are on again this week. The sweet peppers are also starting to really come. This week is a mix of green and sweet colored peppers again and next week will probably be all colored peppers. I'm thinking you could take a number of the items in the share this week and make a veggie heavy pasta sauce. Roasting everything before combining into a sauce really concentrates the flavors!
Alrightly, have a great week everyone!