Heat and the multiplying to-do list

Sun gold cherry tomatoes have a shorter shelf life then other varieties.  If your sun gold tomatoes are ripe, you might consider storing them in the refrigerator if you aren’t going to eat them in the next day or two.

It can be hard to write the newsletter at this time of the year.  It is hard to step back and get perspective when we are in the middle of our busy season.  It is hard, as they say, to see the forest for the trees.  Even if it is lacking in depth, the least I can do is give you a little run down of what we’ve been up to.

The small fruited tomatoes are really coming in.  It is all we can do to keep up with picking all the cherry and Juliet tomatoes.  But the slicing tomatoes are still making us wait.  It is unusual to be this far into July and still feel like we are waiting on tomatoes.  Amid the constant cherry tomato harvest there is plenty of other work to be done.

At the end of last week we shaped beds for the very last warm season crops we will plant.  Now those pathways want mulching.  Once I had gotten the irrigation set up, we planted two of those beds with squash and zucchini that will be ready in September.  I transplanted tomatoes into two more beds that should yield in October.  Now they need stakes and a trellis. There are eggplant and pepper seedlings hardening off outside the greenhouse.  They suffered a hornworm attack, and I am waiting to make sure they are on the road to recovery.  It doesn’t take a lot of hornworms or a lot of time for serious damage to be done to small, tender seedlings.

Even with a multiplying to-do list, we are out of the field by noon each day.  The heat this week is intense.  Randy and I might get a few more hours of work done as the sun gets low in the evening.   But it can be hard to find the hours to get the work done at this time of the year.  July is an exciting month because of the bounty coming out of the field.  The thing that makes it exciting is the very thing that makes it so challenging.

Small Shares

• Sungold Cherry Tomato
• Sakura Cherry Tomato
• Juliet Plum Tomato
• Cucumber
• Squash or Zucchini
• Sweet or Bell Pepper
• Red Onion
• Eggplant

Full Shares

• Sun gold Cherry Tomato
• Sakura Cherry Tomato
• Slicing Tomato
• Cucumber
• Squash and Zucchini
• Sweet or Bell Pepper
• Red Onions