We are wondering when the first killing frost will arrive. For many years we held October 11th as the arrival date our first killing fall frosts. If we wanted to have peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and the like for a final harvest, we tried to pick them clean before this date. For hardier, but still tender crops like lettuce, broccoli, and other greens we might cover them with a layer of row cover fabric (sort of a protective blanket for vegetables) around this date. The shift to benign late summer weather to the harshness of first frost is one that still startles us and seems somehow improbable: that one week we could be working in 60 degree sunshine and the next be looking at cold obliterated crops. Everything changes, ends, declines; but until that moment arrives you can somehow delude yourself into thinking it isn't coming just yet... Recent years our first frost date seems to have moved out by a week, or two, and in a few years a month or more. So, we read the weather forecasts and ready the harvest lugs and crop blankets, hoping we have more time, worrying that we might not.
This Week's Extras (crops not in the main list, but which will appear during today's customization period and which you can swap for crops on your preliminary list or purchase as extras to this week's box):
* Fennel Root (Crow's Farm) * Honey Crisp Apples (Cloud Mt. Farm Center) * Bulk Orange Carrots (Hopewell Farm) * Red Potatoes (First Cut Farm, Mt. Vernon)
This weeks photo: several varieties of multi-hued Delicata Squash.
