July field notes

(CSA Newsletter: Week 24)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

This time of the season marks several important things on the farm. First of all, as of last week, we’re past the halfway mark for the CSA season. This week is week 24 of 45, meaning that we still have 21 delicious week’s worth of CSA shares ahead of us.

Also, July itself is an important ‘check-in’ point for a farm season. Very often, this is when we get a true sense of how the entire season will fare. In spring, certain plantings may go well or not, but there is still time to recover and redirect. Once we hit the heat waves of July, most of the field is planted, and we better be headed in the right direction. If we’re behind on weeding or irrigating in mid- to late July, it is much harder to ever get caught back up. Each July day is critical to the growth of our important long-season plantings such as tomatoes, winter squash, potatoes, onions, and others.

So, if we feel pretty good in July, that’s a great sign for the year. And, guess what? We feel pretty good right now. It’s been an interesting season, and we had a particularly ‘interesting’ spring with a few out-of-control weedy plantings and others that were perpetually under-fertilized. Consequently, some of our earliest crops weren’t exactly what we were hoping for in terms of quality or quantity. We would have loved to provide you with more peas, for example.

However, with the help of our employees Daniel and Erika and others, we quickly turned the season around as we headed into summer. Our entire crew has been diligent about carefully tending all of our plantings so that they stay well weeded and watered. The work shows in the fields: the potatoes plants are the healthiest and the biggest we’ve ever seen; the sweet corn is dark green and already beginning to tassel; the winter squash are setting fruit; the onions are practically weed-free and growing every day; the sweet potatoes are beautiful (hoorah!); and so much more.

We’ve also been continuing to work towards our important fall and winter crops. Last week we harvested the over-wintered garlic and hung it to cure for the winter (not counting the garlic we’ll plant again this fall, we have over 2,700 heads!). We also planted 18 beds of ‘brassicas’: cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower for fall and winter eating.

Every day, new items end up on our ‘to do’ lists of course, but we’re managed to keep pace with the tasks. It’s a truly amazing feeling, and we’re cautiously proud of the garden.

Cautiously proud, of course, because so many elements of farming are still always beyond our control. While it’s great to feel that we’re doing everything we can to insure a good season, we’re also always prepared for a surprise. This year already dealt us one giant unexpected blow: the freak hail and wind storm of early June.

Most things in the field look so good that it’s hard to believe that it’s only been a month and a half since that crazy afternoon. In fact, often we forget about it completely until we realize we’re still seeing signs of damage in some of our longer-term crops. For example, today (Monday) we were picking this week’s cucumbers and noticing that the plants just don’t look great. They are slowly showing signs of withering away. We contemplated all the possible causes: soil pests? a disease? fertility issues? damage from weeding?

But none of these answers seemed to explain the extent of what we were seeing. It was frustrating to face such a mystery, until finally we remembered the storm. Our cucumbers were some of the hardest hit long-term plantings: their tender stems were riddled with large holes. So, even though we are now harvesting lots of delicious cucumbers, we had to realize that the plants themselves will never be as healthy or vigorous as undamaged cucumber plants. Whether the die off is caused by a pest or a disease is probably inconsequential, because either way the plants were made susceptible by the storm-caused stress.

We were relieved to remember that important detail in our season’s history. We’re still seeing signs of damage/stress in our eggplants and melons as well. Fortunately, it seems as though most of the tomatoes and peppers have recovered more fully, but I imagine that even they will have slightly reduced production and vigor as a result of the set-back.

Given the dramatic impacts of the storm, the current state of our season seems even more impressive to us. Again, the storm’s effect lingers, but our season is chugging along with no signs of slowing.

This week’s share is abundant with summer flavors: our first summer squash, eggplant, more basil, and crisp delicious romaine lettuce. Soon we’ll be enjoying beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, more peppers, and melons … and in case we weren’t sure whether it was summer, we’ll all be seeking shading spots to dine this week as another heat wave hits the Willamette Valley. We hope you find meals that don’t heat up your kitchen too much, and enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla