This Week’s Harvest
Beets with greens
Scallions
Spigarello
Kale
Red butter lettuce
Salad mix
Red round Radishes
Cilantro
Sugar snap peas
Farm News
Not all farm news is good news and we do have crop failures from time to time. Sugar snap peas are a CSA member favorite but they can be tricky. For years we had issues of seed corn maggot eating our snap pea seeds when we direct seeded. About 3 years ago we switched to transplanting pea plants. This has definitely worked. This year we wanted to spread out the pea harvest over a longer period of time in hopes that peas would be in the CSA share more than once. We decided to sow 2 varieties of peas on the same day whose maturation date varies by 10 days. So sowing and transplanting would happen at the same time but harvesting would be a week apart.
Well this week’s box features the later maturing variety which worked great with good yields and yummy fruit. Unfortunately peas were supposed to be in last week’s box too but the other variety was a crop failure. I am not sure if it was the 27 degree night that set it back beyond repair or the 90 degree days in May and June, or maybe the variety just doesn’t transplant well. In any case the difference between the 2 varieties is about 100 pounds. Next year we will stick with the variety that produced well and do 2 plantings 1 week apart. Now we’ll just have to hope the weather works out for us to be able to plant both sowings! It is nice to be able to have solutions to crop failures but such a bummer to have to wait an entire year to implement them.
Recipes
https://food52.com/recipes/13241-broccoli-rabe-sausage-and-cannellini-beans (use spigarello in place of rabe)
Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) Beets, Swiss chard, Cilantro, Bok Choi, Salad Mix, Purple Scallions, Summer Squash and more!