CSA Week 4: Summer Produce

We are starting to enter in to the time of the CSA that I know everyone (including me) looks forward to: the harvest of popular summer vegetables. While I get excited for just about everything as it comes available in our fields, vegetables such as beets, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, beans, and summer squash are some of my favourites. This week, we will see the early versions of some of these items, with more to come in the following weeks. Baby beets and carrots will be options this week and there will be beautiful baby potatoes for everyone! We spent a day uncovering and weeding the broccoli and I am pleased to see many small heads forming. They may only be the size of a toonie, but they will size up quickly and be ready in a week or two. The cucumber plants are looking fabulous and I see many teeny, tiny cucumbers that will be available in a few weeks. We are seeing some cucumber beetles, which feast on the leaves, but so far, some moderate hand picking seems to be keeping the damage at bay. As a test, I harvested some baby potatoes earlier this week. Aren't these little gems beautiful?!

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Share Contents:

Head Lettuce
Green Garlic
Baby Carrots OR Baby Beets
New Potatoes
Turnips
Pea Shoots
Swiss Chard OR Cabbage
Herbs

The one crop that is challenging us this season is the summer squash. It seems that the location we planted them in this year has sub-par soils and they are growing at an extremely slow rate. We have added additional amendments to the soil (compost, kelp meal, and two types of rock flour) in the hopes of speeding up growth and enriching the soil for future crops. When I noticed the slow growth, I also replanted the three varieties of summer squash in another, richer area of the field. So this means we will be without summer squash for July, but probably have a plethora of squash in August and September. 

Check out this pear-sized eggplant ripening in the greenhouse! A few more weeks and eggplant will be an option for share members as well. 

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Green Garlic

You will notice that Green Garlic is one of the items in the share this week. Green garlic is simply freshly harvested garlic bulbs that have not been cured. They will have a fresh, light flavour and can be used in the exact same way as cured garlic (which will be coming in a few weeks). Since the bulbs are not cured, green garlic should be used within a week or two, but can remain on your counter-top because refrigeration will dull the flavour.