This Weeks Veggies
Savory Cabbage We had three days of temperature over 90 degrees this week. Since the cabbages can’t wear sun screen they got a little sun burned, hence the yellowing around the edges of the leaves.
Cosmo Savoy Lettuce
Pears
Apples
Farm Life
On Tuesday we found that the gophers had eaten the roots off of an entire squash plant! Today, the gopher has pulled the remains of the plant halfway down in to its tunnel. From the gophers perspective that means one plant down and 89 more to go. Since they are beginning to set fruit now, I hope we get to eat some before the gophers get through them all.
Earlier this week we harvested the first of the Cippollini onions. They will be cured in the shade of the apple tree until the tops fall off, after which they will be included in your shares. Interestingly, the Siskiyou Sweets were supposed to be ready first. Since they will not need to be cured, you may end up with both Cippolini and Siskiyou Sweets in your share at the same time.
We spent the last week weeding, rebuilding the hoop house, building a new irrigation system, fertilizing, amending the soil , and mulching.
The hoop house blew down the beginning of July. I didn’t worry about it too much because it was staying fairly warm at night so I didn’t really need it. But in the last week, the night time temperatures dropped. This meant that the soil temperatures didn’t stay consistently warm enough for seeds to germinate. So, I spent a day buying materials and repairing the hoop house. The result has been flats and flats of nicely germinated lettuce, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. that will be included in your share in the coming months.
I mentioned in a previous newsletter that the well will run out of water before the growing season ends, requiring that I install a system for pumping water from the irrigation pond at the back of the property to the growing area at the front. Since the last newsletter, I have installed about 900 feet of pipe. All that is remaining is the final connections to the existing system, which shouldn’t take more than half a day. I am using combination of used plastic pipe and used aluminum pipe. I’ll have to keep an eye on the aluminum pipe as it is often stolen and sold for scrap metal.
Featured Veggie of the Week
Your featured veggie this week is actually fruit. You have both pears and apples included in your shares this week.
The fruit trees on this property are about 70 years old. Several of the trees are more than 30 feet tall. There are no records which indicate which tree is what variety. Consequently, we will be learning together the characteristics of the individual trees.
One of the apple trees is quite interesting. At some point in its history the trunk split, perhaps from a lightening strike? It is producing a thin skinned, delicate apple that ripens to a soft yellow. This apple seems to have a very weak stem to branch connection. The apples are falling off the tree before they ripen. Since they are thin skinned, all of the fallen apples are too damaged for eating. Consequently, I decided to begin picking them before we loose them all. If you put them in a closed paper bag on your kitchen counter, they should finish ripening up quite nicely.
You also have pears in you share. Like the apples, there is no record of the variety of pears growing here. I would guess that these are not Bartletts because they are staying green when they ripen. Perhaps they are Anjous?
Pears do not ripen well on the tree so they are always picked at a mature but unripe stage. If you put them in the paper bag with your apples, it will hasten the ripening process. Check for ripeness by gentling pressing on the neck of the pear near the stem. If it is soft, the pear is ripe. Pears ripen from the inside out. If you wait for the thicker part of the pear to get soft, you will likely find that the pear is over ripe.
