CSA Week 10; Crop Flip Flop

Out with the old, in with the new. That familiar adage guides us through the season as our fields fill and empty and fill again with seasonal crops. It begins in the hoop houses. In March we till the  beds and plant early spring crops like lettuce, scallions, broccolini, salad turnips, mesclun, spinach, dill, and cilantro. These tender greens grow through the cold days of spring and are the first to table in the early weeks of the CSA. We savor them, but are also eager to harvest and “flip” the beds for the main season’s crop of tomatoes and cucumbers, getting big in their greenhouse pots by mid-May. The tomatoes thrive in the heat of the hoop houses, ripening weeks earlier and lasting longer than their outdoor cousins. We are at the start of the tomato wave right now, with our earliest varieties in full swing and our later varieties beginning to ripen. Get ready! We’ll have many weeks of juicy harvest before they, too, will make way for the next crop. Winter greens will eventually take their place, to stock the winter CSA and farm stand through the colder months. Then the cycle will begin again!

This week we’ve started to till under many of the early crops in the fields. Some will be replaced with a second vegetable crop for fall harvest, while others will be followed by a cover crop of oats, peas, buckwheat, or winter rye to build the soil. Our field maps are an intricate puzzle of successions, maturity dates, and crop rotation.

This fall we’re excited to add a new wrinkle to the puzzle. With our new wood-fired boiler heating the greenhouses, we find ourselves able to grow heat loving crops deeper into the fall and even winter! For the first time ever, our summer greenhouse seeding includes crops like eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and tomatoes; all slated to flip flop with the summer tunnel crops in October. This is new territory for us, and I’m so excited to play with how this fits with our crop rotation and expands our harvest!

Cheers

Norah and the Sweetland Crew

Week 10 Harvest

Crops Half Pint Brimming Basket Veggie Monster
Cucumbers x x x
Eggplant x x x
Green Cabbage x x x
Greenleaf Lettuce x x x
Mesclun Mix x x x
Tomatoes x x x
Zucchini/Summer Squash x x
Kale x x
Sweet Peppers x
Scallions x
Savoy Cabbage
Romaine Lettuce
Arugula
Farmers Choice Shares Includes items with x
Free choice shares choose any 6(HP), 8(BB), or 10(VM)

What’s Cooking This Week

You can find ingredients for all of these recipes in our farm store! We source meats, dairy, grains, beans, sweets, and more from local and sustainable producers. Don’t forget to use your CSA member discount by entering your account phone number in our POS (member discounts are automatically applied to LocalLine purchases for off-farm delivery). Have a recipe you’ve been loving? Share it with us and we’ll feature it here!