Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots or beets, and herbs Field Notes Ken cleared up areas of the garden and fields and transplanted several flats of greens since last week.  As the days shorten he fits in all the harvesting – there are still tomatoes, cukes, summer squash, and other crops that require regular and frequent picking.  With the heat he tends to get …

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Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, peppers, sweet corn, parsley, and basil. Field Notes.  The tsunami of tomatoes has crested; early varieties are about done.  Later varieties are still going strong.  It has been an interesting season – cooler nights meant later hot weather crops and heavy dew meant more work to prevent molds, fungus and blights.  Ken has moved up those seedlings pictured last …

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Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, cucumber, zucchini, kohlrabi, lettuce, basil and parsley.   Field Notes.  People often wonder what I mean when I say nearly every week that planting continues.  Well this week I have a photo of several of the fall greens.  Ken finds that in August it is often easier to start greens indoors where he can regulate temperature and moisture.  Another advantage of transplanting …

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Tomatoes – One of those Love Hate Relationships

Although I love tomatoes, there is one part of me that dreads tomato season.   I find selling tomatoes challenging.  We grow tomatoes for flavor, texture, and thin skins.  They are wonderful.       Many people want a perfect looking tomato that is perfectly ripe.  One can determine ripeness by rolling a tomato in one’s hand and feeling its firmness or ripeness.  Many people pinch tomatoes and a couple days later bruises appear – these …

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Where ARE Those Tomatoes???

Each year people eagerly await the first tomatoes.  And they expect us to have them the same time each year.  Unfortunately tomatoes work with the weather, not the calendar!  Tomatoes like hotter weather, but not too hot.  These wonderful, cool nights for sleeping mean that the tomatoes are slower to bloom and ripen than some years. Each day Ken is opening and closing the greenhouse to keep it warm, but not too hot.  I keep …

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Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini,  eggplant, garlic, cabbage. greens, parsley, and basil           Field Notes Ken has been cultivating adding compost and mulch to the area next to the mobile high tunnel.  This will add organic matter and fertility when the tunnel is moved to that location.  He has also been planting, weeding, and of course, picking.  either of us need …

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Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has greens, radishes, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, scallions, carrots or beets, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, Walla Walla sweet onions, garlic, basil and parsley. Field Notes.  Ken has started harvesting onions – first the Walla Walla onions.  Next it will be the red onions, and then the storage onions.  Once he digs and pulls them he leaves them to dry.  Then he moves them to the racks and I help …

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Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad greens, braising greens like kale or chard, green onions, asparagus, herbs, and snap peas. Field Notes.  Ken is busy; that seems to be a common spring theme.  He is wrapping up the full season plantings with sweet potatoes (they came late) and next season’s strawberry plants, and starting fall plantings of root crops like beets and carrots.  In between rain he cultivates.  And when …

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Happy Solstice!

Here we are at the solstice, the longest day of 2016.  Then the days slowly shorten, and the crops grow; their goal is to set seed before the season ends or in the case of biennials, store enough energy in the root for seeds next season.  Ken has moved a step ladder to the mobile high tunnel and has begun the regular task of trimming and tying up tomatoes so they continue to grow and …

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