CSA Week 7

Basil
Green beans
Haricot vert (French filet beans)
Sweet onions
Summer squash and zucchini
Head lettuce
Cucumbers
Scallions
Tomatoes
Fairytale Eggplant, okra, or sungold cherry tomatoes (we will rotate these crops to the different pick up sites throughout the season)

The story on the farm this week has been irrigate, irrigate, irrigate. We got away with not running our well for so long, but with no rain in the forecast and temps in the 90s our run has come to end. That means we will actually use the drip tape that gets laid next to the plants when we plant. The drip tape in this planting of lettuce was never even run!

We used to have to run out drip tape on all the beds by hand, but this year we purchased a drip layer that attaches to the tractor. We can either plant and lay drip tape at the same time or, as pictured, lay paper mulch and drip tape at the same time. This has been a huge time saver for us!

The drip tape as a little slit every 12 inches that releases water one drip at a time, hence the name. This is a nice way to irrigate because it only waters where there are plants ( no need to share water with the weeds! ) We also don’t lose any water to wind, like you would with overhead irrigation. And now with the drip layer attachment, it is super easy to get it laid and hooked up.

You can only run a few lines at a time, which means we spend a lot of time switching what gets water. We go out every night and get new lines turned on that will run all night long. Then in the morning we switch lines and get water on some other crops during the day. A couple nights ago we had an awesome sunset while we set up irrigation for the night. We hope we get a good rain soon, because we would rather spend the time doing something else, like cut sunflowers, or seed lettuce, or tie tomatoes, or sidedress the crops with fertilizer, or weed the peppers, or etc. etc.!