The predictions for the share were pretty good, but one surprise was the chard. Last week we tried to harvest and it was covered in black aphids so we just left it. This morning it was almost completely cleaned up by lady bug larva that had moved in to feast! We harvested some nice bunches and we’ll hope for more soon. The lettuce today is from a mix of two plantings, for some there is leftover Nevada crisp from an older planting, and a for others there’s some young Dark Green romaine. The Romano beans continue to be delicious. We’re clearing a weedy planting of carrots so there’s a good amount of carrot in the share. Summer squash and cucumbers continue and we finally have just a couple of the first small Matina tomatoes from the hoop house. We’re to starting to harvest and distributing our onion crop and this week we have Siskiyou sweet onions, similar to Walla Wallas.
We’re selling some of the extra harvest items for folks who want more, and we’re also sending a bit of it to the Cully Farmers Market on Thursdays. Typically this is small quantities of summer squash, cucumbers, the same greens we’re harvesting for the CSA, and basil. We have small quantities of tomatoes and beans too this week, and I’m guessing we’ll add some eggplant at some point.
We’ve gotten a lot of comments on the heat, and it has definitely been changing the way we work a bit. I’ve been trying to save a few jobs in the shade for the afternoons so we can get a break from the sun. Mostly it doesn’t get really hot until after lunch for us. We’ve been taking lots of water breaks, and probably working a little more slowly. We’re also giving some of the needier plants a little more frequent waterings, and they’re growing great with all the heat. The exception has been some newly planted fennel that didn’t do well, and some lettuce seedings that were slow to germinate, but other than that the crops we planned for are doing well and not only that we’re on top of all of the field work, a minor miracle! Actually, it’s probably due to having a great crew that knows how to get work done.
Cully Neighborhood Farm 