The News from Windflower Farm
This week’s share
- Assorted tomatoes
- Winter squash
- Eggplant
- Shallots
- Chiles
- Cilantro
- Leeks
- Lettuce
- Koji
- Kale
This week’s fruit share will be Gala apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm
Next week, you’ll get butternut squash, sweet potatoes, garlic, sweet peppers, onions, a variety of greens and the last tomatoes of the season, and your fruit share will be more apples and a half gallon of the Borden’s cider.
What’s new on the farm?
It has been very dry throughout September, but it’s raining as I write this and, because we sowed several acres of cover crops this past week, we are pleased. Soon, winter rye, hairy vetch, oats and pea seedlings will emerge in fields that grew this year’s vegetables. The cover crops will protect the soil from erosion during the winter, and they will capture nitrogen and carbon, enhancing soil organic matter. The rain means that our fall greens and new strawberries will also have a little more of what they need. There are still five weeks to go in the CSA distribution season, and the greens need regular watering.
Next week, we will remove all of the tomato plants from our tunnels so that we can transplant winter greens into them. This is something that we’ve done for the past fifteen years or so. It’s always a little sad to see summer tomatoes disappear from the share, but the shorter and cooler days mean that tomato flavor has begun to deteriorate anyway. And October 10th is the last day to plant greens before we run the risk that they won’t have developed before the cold stops them altogether. And so, after a last harvest, we will yank the tomato vines out one by one, throwing them in a heap on the compost pile. Then we’ll add fresh compost to the beds, work them with our smallest tractor, a Kubota 3700, and plant the greens, four rows to a bed, nine inches apart. With any luck, they will be fully grown six weeks later.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 