This week’s share will include: garlic, onions, lettuce, green beans, okra, sweet corn, summer squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, green bell pepper, hot peppers, sweet frying pepper (red), tomatoes, and an herb. Sustaining members will receive eggplant.
When I was harvesting eggplant last Friday, I realized I made a mistake in planning. We have 3 successions of eggplant. The first is just coming in, but I don’t have any hybrid eggplant in any of the plantings. One of the huge “improvements” with hybrid eggplant over its open-pollinated and heirloom versions is its speed. Hybrid eggplant is often 2-3 weeks earlier, so all of our eggplant will be late! My fault…I usually have one hybrid variety, and don’t this season. Good news…they will all taste good! (I don’t particularly like the flavor of hybrid eggplant.)
On the late theme, our potatoes and watermelon will also be significantly later than normal. The potatoes are due to a supply issue, which I hope to sort out before next season. We are having a very difficult time finding a reliable supplier of organic seed potatoes. This season’s potatoes arrived 7 weeks late, forcing them to grow through conditions that are not favorable to potatoes. The watermelon are late because of the April-June drought. They took longer to germinate than normal because of the lack of rain. I think we will have some ready mid-August, but the bulk will be ready closer to the end of August. They look great, though. I will try to remember to take a picture of them for next week’s post. We are growing the three most popular varieties from last season, along with four more obscure heirlooms.
We have tons of green beans. I cannot come close to picking them all. If anyone is interested in pick-you-own green beans, please let me know. You can pick them for free. Otherwise, we will probably start tilling in late this week or early next week. Also, we have several varieties of pole beans as well as yard-long/asparagus beans that we grow for ourselves. If anyone would prefer these in their share over the green bean varieties we are currently handing out, please let me know.
We hope to start harvesting dry beans this week, too, if we can get a dry window in between the pot-up storms. It is not good for beans to dry down in humid conditions, so we would like to move them into the greenhouse for drying instead of field-drying them. We are growing 6 different varieties of dry beans this year. We do not have Tiger Eye – a favorite among many – because there was not organic seed available this season, but there are plenty of other beautiful beans out there. I’m particular excited about the Painted Pony beans.
I hope to make this torte this week, with another farmer’s potatoes :).