In the share this week:
2 lbs red tomatoes
1 bunch cilantro
1 lb yellow onions
1 bunch celery
1 lb green beans
1 pie pumpkin
2 banana peppers
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
It's official! I transplanted the last flats of veggies that we'll harvest in 2024 today - some salad mix lettuces in one of our hoophouses. We still have a few more beds of quick brassica crops to direct seed over the next 10 days or so, and then we'll plant some overwintering crops (onions, garlic and hoophouse greens) in later October or early November. Planting out the last flats for this year feels like a nice milestone though. It means we can turn some attention to weeding and otherwise maintaining the fall crops already in the ground, and start the process of fall clean-up as well. Honestly, the weeds aren't too bad right now since it has been very dry for the last month. We've been deep watering all the fields with current crops at least twice per week lately. I'm so glad we decided to put in a higher volume water service when we ran utilities up the hill. It means that we can water two fields at once (8 total 100 ft beds), which makes it possible to water the entire farm within about two days. We always water for 2 hrs to make sure the beds are getting a deep enough watering to last for a bit and encourage deeper root growth. You can really understand the efficiency of drip irrigation when it is this dry. The beds we drip irrigate don't always look 'wet' on the surface of the soil, but they retain higher moisture levels deeper into the soil than the beds that we irrigate with sprinklers. The sprinklers have their own benefits though - they help crops like lettuce cool down when the temperatures spike, they are crucial for germinating direct seeded crops, and they are much easier to set up and move around than drip tapes. We were happy to get a bit of rain on Friday night, but we are hoping for even more this week. Looks like the best chance is Friday through the weekend.
We have a couple of new crops for you this week and lots of beautiful tomatoes! We are very pleased with our celery planting (see above pic) this year. It's been several years since I attempted to grow celery because it is quite a finicky crop requiring very consistent watering. After hearing about another farmers success with growing celery in a hoophouse, we decided to give it another go this year. One of the primary benefits of growing crops in a hoophouse is the ability to tightly control how much water those plants receive - which is great for tomatoes and peppers, and we are now seeing those benefits for celery too! Garden celery is a very different product from what you are used to seeing in the grocery store. It is much greener, much more flavorful, a bit more fibrous, and we leave all of the leaves on as well so you can use those to cook or garnish with. I think you could use some of this celery, the onions, and banana peppers (substitute these for the green peppers the recipe calls for) in a really delicious red beans and rice type recipe this week:
The cilantro planting was as happy about the cool temps of the weekend as we were (how lovely to get a taste of fall!), and we have beautiful bunches of this for you again this week. If you find that you can't use all of yours this week, cilantro freezes well if you blend the leaves with olive oil, then freeze the resulting paste flat in a zip top bag. You can then break little aromatic chunks off whenever you need them! Or you could use a good bit of your cilantro right away in this cilantro rice. In fact, you could serve your red beans and rice over the cilantro rice!? Yum.
Have a great week everyone!