Catalpa Ridge News–August 14, 2017

Rain – Rain – Rain

After an incredibly rainy season we received another 2 1/2” of rain on Friday evening. This could impact future harvesting as many of the plants are water logged. The pumpkin plants are compromised at this point though the winter squash plants are OK. The cucumbers are suffering abit, although we hope that they will bounce back for another few weeks. The peppers & tomatoes continue to produce nicely. The chard, kale & cabbages are happy!

The main planting of zucchini are almost at the end, but the 2nd planting is doing incredibly well. The oriental greens planted in the greenhouse are harvested for delivery and that area will be replanted with greens for autumn deliveries.

The crew picked apples from our on-farm apple trees during the week. These are Red Free variety. This variety was developed by Developed by: PRI (Purdue, Rutgers, Illinois Co Op). They are small but tasty!.

With the lushness outside the fences, due to the rainy season, the animals have not been too much of a problem breaking into the fields. We have had just some minor problems with the occasional deer and a ground hog. There is a large crop of rabbits running around the outside the fences and we are happy that they haven’t decided the break in and eat your crops.

We did find a deer resting among the tractors, apparently finding a nice area to lie down.