This Weeks Veggies
Reine des Glacies Lettuce –This is the last of this variety of lettuce for a while. It does well in cool weather but is bolting now that the weather has warmed up again. It will be replaced with other varieties of lettuce, at least until the fall.
Bok Choi – Enjoy it while you can. At most, you’ll receive Bok Choi this week and next. After that, we will move on to other members of the brassica family.
Kohlrabi – This weeks featured Veggie of the week. See below for information on its history and use.
Spinach – This is the first spinach of the season. Unfortunately, the sudden change to hot weather (it was 102 here on Saturday!) has caused the spinach to begin bolting. Hopefully, I will be able to salvage enough to include in next week’s shares as well.
Radishes – This is also the last of the radishes. They are fairly mature. Those of you that like more heat in your radishes will appreciate this.
Scallions – More of the Lisbon White bunching onions. This is the third time you have received onions from this same planting. Do you see how they are maturing? They are beginning to form a more discernible bulb. You will continue to receive these until the bulb is about an inch in diameter, by which time other onions with a longer growing period will be ready to harvest.
Farm Tales
Good news. The tractor is repaired! And just in time for preparing more beds. There are more than a thousand onions ready to go in to the field in preparation for fall harvest.
The tractor still has a slow leak in a tire. But, thanks to the kind offer of help from my neighbor, I’ll be able to get the tire off and down to the repair shop fairly easily.
More good news. The first of my order of irrigation equipment has finally arrived. I mentioned last week that I will be irrigating with water from an irrigation pond at the back of the property. Once I get the water from the pond to the fields, I will be using drip systems to irrigate.
Drip irrigation has many advantages. From the environmental perspective, it uses much less water, leaving more H2O for the fish.
Drip irrigation also has many benefits from the agricultural perspective. First, it waters the vegetables and not the weeds, reducing the amount of time I have to spend weeding. Second, it reduces the transmission of water borne diseases, resulting in healthier crops. Lastly, it does not splash dirt onto your vegetables, meaning you spend less time washing your lettuce. (Please note, while I do wash the worst off the field dirt off of your vegetables, you should wash them again before eating them.)
Drip irrigation does have one major draw back. It is made with plastic. As you know, plastic is made from a finite resource, petroleum. It is difficult to reconcile my goal of a sustainable, earth friendly farm with the use of plastics in the field. Consequently, the choice of a plastic product weighs heavily on my mind. Plastic irrigation equipment is particularly weighty because the built-in emitters make it difficult to recycle.
After much research, I have concluded that the use of the plastic irrigation equipment will have less of a long term impact on the earth than the other alternatives. And, as the price of oil rises, there will be sufficient economic incentive to create a local recycling center for agricultural plastics. Right now, the closest recycling center is in California.
Meanwhile, I will continue to struggle with these choices. And, when I do use plastic, I will try to make it last as long as possible. And, I will continue to try to find venues for recycling it.
Veggie of the Week
This weeks featured vegetable is Kohlrabi. As the link below describes, kohlrabi has been a staple of the European diet for centuries, despite it’s neglect in the US.
http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch24.html
The link below will lead you to several recipes for cooking kohlrabi. I’d try the cheesy Kohlrabi but substitute a good quality local orange cheese. Or, you might try the slaw if fish is on your menu soon.
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q=Kohlrabi
1 response so far ↓
sandrar // September 10, 2009 at 3:12 pm |
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.