TURNING NEW GROUND
We’re exactly half way through the farm-share season and planning for some variety in the next two months. Some greens we had in the spring that were done by the time our shares started will be making their way back into our kitchen are the weather starts to cool and the days get shorter. Think arugula, spinach and mesclun/mustard mix. We’ve also started a few different types of radishes and a second round of peas.
The corn might amount to something yet! The stalks are all tasseling and the ears are starting to swell. Still not a lot, but we should have about one week’s worth for everyone. And the potatoes! We dug the row of the late yukon golds and found the beetles had not infected this variety. What a sense of relief. Perhaps not all is lost.
Eric worked at a neighbors farm in exchange our first plow this past month and we have plans to turn over some old hay ground this week that will be put into vegetable production in 2016. Among the many lessons we’ve learned this year, working on weed control with cover crops the season before is essential. Winter rye seed will be planted as a weed suppressant this month. It has chemical properties that kill weeds and it comes back in the spring. It can be tilled under in the spring as a green manure.
We’re planning “Peak Harvest Celebration” at the Medford Market on Saturday, August 15 to bring people to the market who haven’t checked it out in a while. We have a caterer coming in to prepare dishes featuring the food that we grow on our farms. We Grow will have tomatoes and beans included in the dishes available for sampling. Not to mention, there will be drawings for farmer’s market gift certificates given away every half hour to those in attendance. And a big zucchini weigh-in open to all area gardeners. Please help spread the word!
Looking forward from here,
Eric & Rebecca