(CSA Newsletter: Week 41)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
As we’ve mentioned several times before in our newsletter, over the last year and a half we have ventured into new territory here on the farm: perennial plants and trees!
Our area of ‘expertise’ (i.e. ‘what we know best’) is annual vegetables. To us, growing annual vegetables is ‘easy’ because we always get a another opportunity to improve what and how we grow. From season to season (and even within one season), we can try out new varieties, cultivation methods, and harvest techniques.
Perennials, on the other hand, are something we’ve felt that we need to ‘get right’ from the start. The whole theory of planting a perennial vegetable or tree is that it will be in exactly the same place for many seasons to come. If it’s not quite the right variety for the situation or in not exactly the correct location on the farm or the ground prep inadequate, we’ll have to live with those mistakes for years. What a daunting thought!
But we wanted more diversity in our offerings, so last year we bravely jumped in and planted several kinds of perennials: Jerusalem artichokes, cardoons, artichokes, rhubarb, and asparagus. And, guess what? We got a lot of things wrong. We didn’t prep the ground adequately and ended up with a huge weedy mess; we realized that we didn’t really want to grow cardoons; we lost our artichokes to the severe winter weather; and we put the plants in a not ideal place.
Failure? Not so! We also realized over the last year that perennials can be just as flexible and forgiving as annual vegetables. This summer, we successfully dug up and moved the perennial plants we wanted to keep (asparagus and rhubarb) to a new better location.
We also planted more perennials this spring when we put in our small fruit orchard (apples, pears and plums). And, of course, we realized later that some of the varieties we planted were better than others. We also realized that we really wished we had planted the orchard closer to the house (fruit trees are so pretty year-round!). This time, the original orchard is staying in place, but we have already ordered another round of trees for a slightly smaller second orchard.
Of course, the continued challenge of perennials is the delayed gratification. It may still be a year or two before we can harvest significant quantities from our perennial vegetables and several years for the orchards. But, we’re getting some sneak previews already. This year the orchard produced a basketful of apples from different trees, and we got to try out some of the different flavors. Some of our favorites so far? Chehalis, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, and Newtown Pippin (tasted for the first time just this week) …
I hope that by writing about these new perennial adventures, I don’t frustrate you too much (delayed gratification!) — we want to keep you in the loop, even though we all have to be patient and let these things develop.
Fortunately, in the meantime, we have many delicious annual vegetables to eat. Don’t forget to order extra veggies next week for your upcoming holiday meals! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
Finding it hard to keep up with the fall abundance? Many of the fall veggies will keep for several weeks or longer if stored properly. Try storing some of this week’s veggies for eating after the CSA season is over (last pick-up is on December15):
Also good storing vegetables that you may encounter in upcoming weeks:
