Emergency Garlic Harvest
With another week fully of rainy days, we did more maintenance than planting this week. The fields are just too wet to work in.
Despite the rain, the tomato plants are doing well, but the eggplant & peppers seemed to have stopped growing. This is probably due in part to the lack of sun, excessive wetness and the cooler night temperatures that we have been experiencing at the farm. The fava beans are almost ready to be harvested and we should have them in next week's delivery.
This week we started the potato harvest on our first planting of the Pontiac variety. There were a lot of cracked potatoes and the yield was low. We have an additional 10 plantings of potatoes which include blue & red gold varieties. We can only hope that these additional planting will fare better than the first.
In the greenhouse, the seeded Brussel sprouts, chard, spinach, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, cukes & zukes are ready to be transplanted. The raised beds are saving us somewhat, but the furrows are just filled with water and in some places it is ankle deep.
We received the stevia transplants, but have not planted them yet due to the weather. We hope to get them planted this week. Stevia is an herb that many people use as a natural sweetener.
From the Fields: As mentioned earlier we were not able to do any planting this week. We were able to cultivate the beds to keep the weeds in check. The garlic harvest was started, as the sheaths that surround the garlic bulbs were being compromised by the rain and we thought it best to start the harvest. Better to have small garlic than no garlic due to the possibility of the bulbs rotting the wet beds. At least half of the garlic has been harvested as of Sunday afternoon. We plan on transplanting the lettuce, Chinese cabbage & spinach into some of these beds. The garlic is now lying out on the racks to start the drying & curing. We are pleased to mention that the garlic harvest this year is far better than last year's harvest!
Weather Report: It rained almost every night this week, from a trace to about 1" each day. We did manage to get a few hours of sunlight on a few days! We narrowly missed a hail storm which would have been devastating to the field crops. The storm passed just north of us into NY. The forecast for the week shows periods of more rain & thunderstorms during mid-week. We can only hope that they will be "scattered" and not over the farm.
Animal report: The deer just love the tomato plants in our fields at Scott's farm! The plants they forgot to eat the first round, they found the second time around. Scott is aggressively working on the problem with the fence and we hope to report all is well by next week. We have had a quiet week at the farm and all our fences are doing well and we haven't had any animal break-ins. Many of the tomato plants eaten at Scott's have started to re-sprout. This will delay them bearing fruit, but we are fortunate they all were not lost.
Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.
- Recipe Links
- Beth Haverim Shir Shalom Delivery
- Crossfit Hoboken
- Franklin
- Hoboken Midtown Delivery
- Hoboken South Delivery
- Hoboken West Delivery
- Jersey City Hamilton Park Delivery
No comments:
Post a Comment