Catalpa Ridge News–Volume 21 No. 4–July 5, 2016

Happy 4th of July

We hope that you all had a very Happy 4^th of July.

 

The 4^th always signals the start of summer and what a beautiful day it was.

 

News from the Fields & Farm:  We started the garlic harvest and have 4 rows out and another 2 rows to go this week. We will try to get some fresh garlic into next week’s delivery as we do like it to start curing to set in the flavors.

 

In the garlic beds we transplanted cantaloupe and sweet peppers and seeded more zucchini and winter squash. Also additional herbs were transplanted; winter savory, parsley and oregano.

 

The pea plants are now shut down due to the hot weather. We were hoping that the additional irrigation would have given us another week of harvest but the plants just seemed to collapse overnight. There were quite a few hot-hot days in a row and the plants just didn’t like it. The fava beans were also harvested this week and we will be seeding fava greens for late summer/early autumn delivery.

We just started seeing that some of the zucchini were ready to harvest and they are coming in slowly as you will only be receiving one this week. They notoriously increase their production rapidly as you will see over the next month. We have many different varieties seeded so at least when they are at their peak you will be receiving different kinds (light green, dark green, yellow, golden, heirlooms etc).

 

Franklin Greenhouse Report: The newly seeded crops from last week are all coming up nicely. The eggplants and peppers continue to look great and they should start to be harvested over the next two weeks. More tomatoes are ripening up and this will increase the harvest each week.  

 

Weather report: We finally received some rain on Friday evening. Just about ½” fell and this definitely did help out the field crops. There were severe thunderstorm warning in the area with threat of tornadoes and hail. Fortunately, that severe cell didn’t approach the farm. Additional rainfall is forecast for late in the week.