Today’s share includes: green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, romano beans, summer squash, sweet onions and lettuce. This is the first time in many years that we’ve put more than one kind of bean in the share at a time. Beans are pretty labor intensive to pick so we try to pick just one variety at a time; but today two were ready and we had time so we picked them both. The romanos are the larger flatter beans and the others are a classic round green bean. They can both be used in all of the same ways, and they both have slightly different flavors and textures. I’m not certain both will be in the shares on Thursday, we’ll have to see how many we get and how much time we have to pick.
There were three tomato varieties in the shares today, and by Thursday we’ll probably have one more. The earliest tomatoes for us this year have been Afghan, a ruffled yellow/orange variety that’s new on the farm. We also have red and yellow saladette types, Matina and Jaune Flamme, both ones we’ve grown and have been good for us in the past. The first of the large slicers, Black Volunteer, is also starting to ripen so we’ll see that one soon. That’s a variety we’ve been growing on the farm for a few years and started out as a volunteer in my garden – probably originally from Black Krim or Cherokee Purple.
This week’s potato is Huckleberry Gold, with deep purple skin and a golden interior. The potatoes have been dying back a little faster than usual this year, probably partly due to the heat, so we’re digging them a little earlier than usual and thus yields are a bit lower.
◦ We continued to plant lots of crops for the fall today, getting rutabaga, cabbage and lettuce in the ground, and beds prepared for more planting on Thursday. The crew sped through hand weeding our next bed of carrots, and even managed to hoe a few beds of recent plantings. I think we’ve all gotten a little more acclimatized to the heat. Low 90’s didn’t even feel that extreme today.
Cully Neighborhood Farm 