The News from Windflower Farm
Happy summer from Windflower Farm!
What’s in your share?
- Dinosaur kale
- Magenta Lettuce
- Garlic scapes
- Zucchini or summer squash
- Purple kohlrabi
- Bunched green onions
- Boc Choy OR Arugula
- Potted Rosemary
Fruit shares will consist of sweet cherries from Yonder Farm. Next week, we’ll be heading down to Yonder Farm in Columbia County for more strawberries and perhaps some rhubarb. Then, we’ll either be back here for our blueberries or stay with Yonder for their delicious sweet cherries.
Our cucumbers will be starting next week, and should begin to yield significant fruit in the week after. In the meantime, zucchinis and squashes are starting and will be in many shares this week and most next week. Japanese turnips, red beets and purple and green kohlrabi are all on the cusp of ready and will begin showing up shortly.
Last Monday’s rain totaled 8/10ths, but it’s been dry since, with little chance of rain in the forecast, and so we are back at our irrigation routine. With some new equipment, and water in abundant supply, it is not bad work. Today, it was cucumbers, squashes, melons and tomatoes, tomorrow it will be peppers, teenage salad greens and new seedings of beets, carrots and arugula.
What’s new on the farm?
Although we won’t be shipping tomatoes to you for another three or four weeks, we’ve been spending quite a bit of time with our tomato crop lately. Tomatoes are vining plants, and if allowed to grow without intervention a single plant will produce dozens of vines. Each tomato plant is trained to two leaders by pinching out all of the new vines or suckers that come along over the course of the season. Each leader is trained to climb a string that is suspended from one of the trusses that form the greenhouse roof. The plants are four to five feet tall at present, but by season’s end, they will be eight or ten feet high. This year, we’ve filled three high tunnels and a dozen smaller tunnels with tomatoes, so keeping on top of tomato pruning takes a lot of time. A look at our tomato greenhouses is to know that the Medinas are caring and skilled craftsmen. Salvador and Candelaria have taught the rest of their family well, and together they make order out of our tomato jungle. They haul out crates and crates of newly pinched suckers each time they prune, tossing them onto the compost pile, and carefully wrap the tomato leaders around the strings they climb on. By the end, a tomato vine will have been wrapped twenty times or more around its string. It’s pleasant work, and the Medina’s conversation and laughter is unceasing. To watch them work is a joy.
Best wishes, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 