This Week’s Harvest
- Salt and Pepper Cucumbers
- Green cucumbers
- Sweet Corn
- Tomatillos
- Poblano Peppers or Jalapeno Peppers
- Tomatoes
- Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
- Tendersweet or regular cabbage
- Golden Beets
- Basil
- Sweet Onions
- Eggplant
Farm News
We hope you are enjoying the sweet corn as much as we are! Sweet corn comes ready all at once so a trick to extend the harvest window is to plant 2 varieties that have different maturity dates at the same time. Last year we found “American Dream” and it became a quick favorite. The problem was that the other variety we planted was only ahead of it by 4 days so the harvest window was too narrow. One of our co-op partner farmers suggested the variety “Catalyst” which matures 11 days earlier than Ameircan Dream.
We do 4 seedings of each variety every 2 weeks for an 8 week non stop sweet corn season. This is the first year the varieties work in perfect sync to the plan and the first year we were able to plant all 4 plantings. So hopefully that translates to more corn for you all!
I took a picture of 3 of our sweet corn plantings on the same night to show the succession planting plan at work.
Yesterday was the last chance to cultivate the final round of corn with the tractor. There is a little bit of clearance under the tractor, so once crops get too tall the tractor isn’t able to drive over them without damaging them. We nearly missed our window and even though it was dark, Ben got the job done thanks to tractor lights!
We continue to fight the birds eating the tops of the corn. Last year our theory was that the birds were actually after the worms, so as long as we had worm free corn they wouldn’t be a bother. This year, though, our corn is relatively worm free but the birds are here! The new theory is that there are no mulberries for the birds this year (remember that 27 degree low on May 9th?) so they’ve settled on a corn diet. We just saw the other day that a farm we follow on Instagram lost 6000 ears to birds! Yikes. With a combo of a noise cannon, scare ribbon and balloons, and a portable radio playing loud music all day, we hope we can keep the birds at bay for our final plantings!
Recipes
Scrambled Eggs with Cabbage, Tomato and Hot Pepper
Marinated Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Salad
Coming Up Next Week (our best guess……) salt and pepper cucumbers, melons, sweet corn, sweet onions, tomatoes, sweet Italian Peppers, basil, carrots, and more!