The News from Windflower Farm
Reminder: there will be no delivery next week. We will resume CSA deliveries during the week of July 7th with delivery #6.
What’s in the vegetable share?
- Green oakleaf lettuce
- Romaine lettuce
- Purple kohlrabi
- Red radishes
- Summer squashes
- Cucumbers
- Napa cabbage or choy (from Dension Farm)
- Red Russian kale
- Garlic scapes
- Onions
Lettuce and kale fare poorly in high temperatures. To preserve them, rinse them with cold water when you get home, spin or shake dry and store them cold.
The fruit share is a quart of Yonder Farm’s strawberries.
News from the farm
Warm season crops are beginning to come in with the arrival of summer and the season’s first heat wave. Cucumbers and squashes are starting, but quantities are limited. It’s my hope that when deliveries resume after the July Fourth weekend, we’ll have an abundance of both. One of our projects during the delivery hiatus is to transplant our second succession of these two vegetables. Experience has taught us that three or four plantings of squash, separated by a month or so, is sufficient to maintain a supply for the season. As one planting goes down, usually because of powdery mildew or another disease, the next kicks in.
Cucumbers are more difficult for us. They are susceptible to everything that infects squashes, and they are susceptible to downy mildew, which is virulent enough to cause a complete loss. New to this year’s crop plan is the addition of two varieties of cucumber with a degree of downy mildew resistance. Plant breeders have so far had success developing resistance in pickling varieties, adding two weeks to the harvest window. If all goes well, you’ll find these picklers in your shares later in the season.
Plans for the week include hand weeding the bare ground onions and herbs in what we’ve come to call the Woods Field, transplanting a block of sweet corn, seeding green and yellow wax beans, staking and trellising the sweet peppers, and buzzing all over the farm with our electric cultivators.
Other plans for the week ahead include moving Nate’s sheep to a new pasture, covering the blueberries with insect/bird netting and weeding the rest of the farm. And, time permitting, going paddling in the Adirondacks.
Be careful out there this week – it’s going to be hot!
Have a great Fourth of July, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 