CSA Newsletter for the Week of May 17th
Good Morning. Glad to be back online. have been unable to access my blog this past week with no explanations to why my same password stopped working. The printer also went down this past week and various interesting problems related to electronics. Whether you follow astrology or not, it is an interesting coincidence that problems occur during Mercury’s retrograde!
This week we will be spending our time removing the runners from our strawberry plants. With all of this rain, not only have the weeds grown out of control, the berries have been sending out ‘runners’ - long vegetative growth that sprouts out of the main berry plant. The runners have a ‘baby’ berry plant on the end and if they get too long they will root into the soil between the beds. While this may sound great - more berry plants = more berries - this is not the case. The main berry plant will actually slow down fruit production and concentrate on vegetative growth which we do not want.
Weeds are always a huge problem for organic farmers - this year is an especially problematic year due to lots of rain with sun in between. The perfect combination for growth. We are needing to catch up on our weeding this week as well as planting our summer squash, green beans, pumpkins and winter squash.
Some of our tomatoes already have flowers! We planted a 1/4 acre of large plants in order to get an early harvest for the CSA boxes and for the farmers markets. Look for 20 varieties of tomatoes this season including cherry tomatoes, heirlooms, early girl and red slicing tomatoes.
The first planting of English Shelling Peas are almost finished. Coming soon snap peas, snow peas, cilantro, raspberries, red romaine, red and green butter lettuces, and baby heirloom broccoli.
In the Box Today: Celery, Red Leaf Lettuce, Carrots, Leeks or Shallots, Gold Bunched Beets, Avocados, Strawberries and Meyer Lemons, baby artichokes, Fava Beans and a basket of snow peas and/or snap peas
Hopefully we will see you at the Cooking for Solutions event at the Monterey Aquarium on Friday evening.
Have a great week!
Recipes to follow
Jamie Collins