Collards, green onions, basil, cucumbers, summer squash, Hakurei turnips, green beans, kohlrabi, arugula, and summer crisp lettuce. A big share today, bridging spring and summer. It’s hard to tell right now what the longer impact of the heat will be, but in the short run it seemed to kick start a lot of the summer crops that were a bit sluggish after a cool start in May. We did see scorching on some leaves, and had to sort and clean more with the lettuce and green onions. Ironically, the arugula was absolutely beautiful after I predicted last week it wouldn’t survive the heat.
Harvesting for the full week all in one day was a big task, but in the end it turned out to be the right thing to do – Monday was just too hot and the harvested vegetables would not have survived until pick-up – not to mention no one would have wanted to be on the farm that afternoon. Today was kind to us, cool and overcast all day, making harvest and packing much simpler without having to dodge the sun and heat.
Today was also super long. Harvesting and packing twice our usual amount took us all day and even with an extra early start I didn’t leave until late and didn’t get a chance to survey the fields to make predictions for next week. Here’s my guess based on my field walk early in the week: lettuce, beets, kale, carrots, fava beans, summer squash, cucumbers, parsley. I’m very unsure of a lot of this list. The kale is questionable after the heat, and chard or more collards might end up being better; we don’t usually do two roots in one week so beets and carrots might get spread over two weeks – and potatoes are coming soon, too; the favas don’t look great after the heat so I’m unsure of those; the cucumbers and summer squash are also a little unpredictable as the heat may have impacted the immature fruits; it’s even hard to tell how the lettuce held up – it looks good up top, but sometimes the inside sees heat damage that causes internal rot. So we’ll just have to wait and see what looks best on Tuesday when we harvest. Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll be able to pull together another decent share, and there’ll be more good summer stuff coming soon.
Cully Neighborhood Farm 