It’s put your head down and power through season

It’s “put your head down and power through” season.  I have caught a little time to reflect on the week but I find myself stuck on the minutia.  Big picture perspective is too much to ask right now.  My brain is completely occupied by the cycle of “do this thing, do the next thing, take a break.”  I can tell you what has been going on, but my ability to put that in a larger context is limited, so it’s hard to make it interesting or meaningful.  I’ll do my best.

All tomatoes, all the time

Now that July is here we are spending a lot of time picking tomatoes.  Then we spend more time sorting them.  We still have tomatoes to trellis and tend.  The last succession, which will ripen in September, just got planted.  We spend a lot of time on all things tomato.  But I love growing tomatoes.  And eating tomatoes.  They are an important crop for the farm.   We are trying lots of new things this year.  New varieties, new trellising methods, more pruning on the high tunnel tomatoes.  I am thrilled by how healthy the heirloom tomatoes look in the high tunnel and how easy they have been to harvest under more intensive management.  It’s nice when the extra work pays off.

I learned my lesson: Landscape fabric or bust

We harvested the last of the celery and I finally got a chance to weed eat the giant mess that was the double bay high tunnel.  It really got away from me.  I mean REALLY.  The grass was chest high.  Lambs quarter over eight feet tall.  We will rake it out and cover it with a tarp in an attempt to reclaim it for fall/winter planting.  All of which will be on landscape fabric.  I learned my lesson.  I was trying new crops (like celery) and new spacings.  And I didn’t want to burn a bunch of holes in new fabric if I still needed to tweak things.  I knew it was a potentially not great idea at the outset.  And I was right about that.  Sometimes its a compromise.

Weeds: the horror!

One job I haven’t managed to get on top of is weeding the sweet potatoes.  I just haven’t managed to carve out the time.  Every time I look at them is like a horror movie in slow motion.  Every day the pig weed it a little taller.  There is a little more nutsedge.  “We have got to weed those sweet potatoes!” I say to myself, then go pick more tomatoes.  Because our energy has to follow the urgency.  And there is just never enough time in July!

Small Shares

• Slicing Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Squash and Zucchini
• Harlequin Gold Potatoes
• Red Cabbage (Wednesday only)
• Celery (Saturday only)

Full Shares

• Slicing Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Squash and Zucchini
• Harlequin Gold Potatoes
• Celery
• Savoy Cabbage (Wednesday only)
• Even more tomatoes (Saturday only)