This Week on the Farm 7/30
We hope you have all been enjoying your produce this season! This week is the first week that peppers are in your boxes. For those of you who dislike hot peppers, take heart, the jalapeños in your box are the hottest pepper that we grow.
We have been waiting and waiting for the kohlrabis to bulb out, but at this point in the season we have given up hope. We are not sure what caused the plants to not initiate bulbing, but we do know that at this point in the season any bulbs that started to grow would probably be woody and wouldn’t taste very good. That is why we have decided to pull all of the plants and put them in your boxes as greens.
Kohlrabi greens are edible and can be eaten like kale, collards, and many other types of greens. Just remove the stem from the leaf before eating as the stem is really chewy! On last week’s newsletter there was a recipe for “Chips” and the kohlrabi greens can by used like that. While we aren’t thrilled that the plants didn’t bulb, we do love the fact that they are still providing our members with the full CSA experience. As members, you get to eat what mother nature provides, and this year the oddball item is kohlrabi greens!
Tyler and I took a short break from the farm this weekend to catch up on sleep (when you work where you live it is very hard to not work all of the time). While we were gone, Tyler’s parents and our neighbor, Pete, were super busy removing brush and a giant rock pile to reinstall the road out to the back. Pete brought his tractor over (which is much, much larger than ours) and in three days of hard work, we now have direct access to the back fields. We couldn’t be more pleased and would like to give Pete a giant thank you for spending so much time and labor here this week!
This Monday was a super productive day! Our workers finished weeding the eggplant and picked off any Colorado Potato Beetle larvae that were chewing on the leaves. The first of the eggplants are just starting, so within a week or two the eggplant should be producing enough to put in the CSA boxes.
When our workers were done weeding and debugging the eggplant they moved to the high tunnel and weeded the center row between the two tomato varieties that are growing there. I spent a good chunk of the day using our tapener gun to tie up the tomato plants with our new trellising system. The plants are so prolific I still have a bunch to do, so that will be my afternoon activity today.
We are very pleased with the trellising system that we devised and installed this year. It is a modified version of what is known as the Florida Weave, but without the “weave” part. The system consists of 6 foot t-posts every 15 to 20 feet apart. Yellow poly rope runs horizontally about every foot and is wrapped around the t-posts to keep it taught. Once the plants grow enough that the tip is about three inches past the rope, the plant is “taped” to the rope. Next year we are going to prune out some of the early branches to increase the airflow, but at this point in the season I don’t want to open up any wounds where disease could enter the plants. Best to leave them healthy and intact.
Tyler also cultivated the leeks with the two row cultivator. That field is very, very messy, but we are hoping to have time to weed and get it under control later this week. We want to get it weeded so we can fertilize and hill the leeks so we get a good yield this fall. I am already craving the Delicata squash and leek soup that was featured on one of last year’s newsletters!
Speaking of this fall, Tyler and one of our workshare members caught up on all of our fall seeding this week. The next step is to lay out drip tape so we can start irrigating the new plantings. Hopefully between picking beans and harvesting potatoes today, Tyler will have time to work on that.