Spring Onions: Shawn harvested these for the CSA last week from GH1. We have a few different beds of onions around the farm that we harvest specifically in the early season as Spring onions or Green Onions: Onions with the green tops. These are fresh and don’t store.
In the past week we have embarked on cleaning up around the farm. The spring and beginning of summer has been a flurry of planting and preparing gardens and currently we are in a lull when it comes to harvesting. This momentary moment of “Hurry up and wait” before our days are spent harvesting what feels like all the time, has gifted us with a moment to put away some wood for the winter, catch up on some weeding and cultivating, switching over beds in gardens for the next succession of greens, planting fall crops of beets and carrots, and pruning/trellising cucumbers and tomatoes.
Tomato seedlings are started sometime in January, some years even earlier. We end a season take a breath and immediately start up again for the next season. Our production greenhouse tomatoes are mostly all grafted: The fruiting variety top or Scion is attached to a disease resistant, vigorous root system of another variety. fruit trees, melons and cucumbers are other plants that are sometimes grafted.
A wood-fired radiant system in both greenhouse 4 and gh3 allows us to get a head start in heating the soil. The air temperature can be favorable for growing however if the soil temperature is anywhere below 60 degrees, growth on tomatoes and cucumbers will be slowed and inhibited. Once the soil temperature is up where we want it, typically by beginning/middle of March, tomatoes make their way into the ground. Here in GH4, you can see tomatoes planted and trellised with salanova head lettuce. As a heartier crop, the head lettuce was planted a couple weeks before the tomatoes. See the snow out the right side of the greenhouse?
Propane heat with a torpedo heater as back up in GH10, made sure the low night time temperatures in GH10 did not affect the growth of these later cherry tomatoes. Temperature sensors in each greenhouse connected to our phone line, will call us if temperatures get too low or too high. Sometimes the nighttime heaters stop working!?
Early cherry tomatoes made it into the spring CSA baskets this season and we have been thrilled to have them for you too!
Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.
Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.
Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on your day, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!
Here's what you will find in this weeks share:
Everyone gets to take some form of Lettuce type greens….lots of lettuce this season!
Full shares receive an additional 11 choices
Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.
Want some recipe ideas?
CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!
Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Tobi, Franconia, Riley, Ridge, and Thatcher)