Here come the two most delicious months of the year, in my humble opinion! We get to enjoy all the crops that take a full season to mature, a number of the spring crops are back with the cooler weather, and summer treats are still coming in. There are lots of options for swapping or purchasing extras, there's more in the gardens than you can eat these days! The rains have started coming back (fingers crossed) and we're pulling through the drought. I'm going to give you the full forecast below so you know what to expect when. First, a few notes about your current bag schedule, those "travellers" shares, our new "farm stand" which can be delivered to all our locations, and winter boxes!
Our weekly deliveries continue until Oct 21st/25th. If you've got any shares on hold, make sure you set a date for them. If you've got an extra share I always recommend putting it to the last week. By then we have lots of longer storing crops available so you can stock up for a couple weeks easily. For those of you with traveller's shares your shares ended late September unless you've rescheduled any. To check your personal schedule anytime, just log into harvie and go to deliveries.
We're offering up bags on a week by week basis, so if you run out you can always get a bag through our "farm stand" which is the overflow product after we fill our CSA bags. You can have a "farm stand" bag delivered to any of our locations! If you have a friend who'd like to try our veggies they are welcome too :) If the farm stand is closed, you can put your e-mail address in for notifications when it opens just select the location where you'd like to pick up. It uses the same customization process as our regular season bags, but you have to click to purchase a bag on a week by week basis (and then customize it). So instead of getting a customization e-mail, you get a "farm stand is open" e-mail which is effectively the same thing, just select a location and click to purchase the bag so that you can then customize it.
It's also the time of year we start looking ahead to our winter boxes - members from last winter can expect an e-mail this week with more info about renewing :) Last winter CSA members have a spot reserved for them, and then we'll gauge our harvests and see how many new members we can bring in this winter. More info to follow.
Crop forecasts:
Arugula, Mesclun mix and lettuces are all looking to be in good supply for the next couple of months, some romaine heads coming too.
For herbs Basil is nearly done, but we'll see if we can get our last bed sized up before the mildew steals it from us. A new patch of parsley is coming on, and I can't wait to get cilantro back for a week or two coming up soon. We have a round of fennel to share likely late October.
Beans haven't been as strong this summer as usual, I wish I knew why, but we have two more plantings to share still.
Beets are in good supply, and we've planted a nice big supply for winter - fingers crossed they size up.
Bok Choy, Hakuri, Kohlrabi, and Radicchio all have a few rounds to go to share with you.
Napa cabbages are all planted, to harvest in October. Our red and green cabbages didn't make it this summer, but Ed may have some to share with us.
Carrots are all tidied up and ready to grow, so that they can be frost sweetened. Bunches won't be until October. While we tried a summer patch, we lost them to the weeds while crew members were delayed.
Chard and Kale are looking great, we will have some spinach too!
Cucumbers and Melons have both been badly hit by various issues, we've typically got a few to share each week but it's luck of the draw to snag them.
Eggplants are doing great and just starting to be ready, and will be followed shortly by our peppers. These take a long to time to grow, but once they come on we typically have lots! First come the hot peppers that we can enjoy green, the shishitos, poblanos and jalepenos. Then the colourful sweet ones ripen up we have the red Carmen back from last year, and a yellow similar pepper this year called Escamillo to try. I'd expect late September through October - we can keep harvesting these till the frost steals them from us.
Garlic was a bumper crop, you can expect it available weekly as well as through the winter.
Our Brussels Sprouts and Kalettes have been "topped" so they can start growing their delicious little treats, we usually harvest in October. Leeks are usually ready around then too, but they had heavy weed pressure and are very small, we won't get much size on them sadly.
Okra will stay around a little longer, but the plants are winding down.
Onions are ready for the big harvest hopefully this week, and then we'll cure them and have them back on the menu! Despite two rounds of hand weeding this spring (and fully mulched beds) the weeds have gone wild and we are expecting lower yields than last year - but we never know until we pull in the crop.
Pattypans and zucchinis have been steady even if I can't have them for everyone each week, I'm hoping you've all had lots over the course of the season! They usually wrap up sometime in September with the cool damp weather which allows fungus to take the plants from us. If not, they make it till frost!
Potatoes are a bit of a gamble, we've planted more than ever before and given them good water and we'll be harvesting them in late September. We don't know till we start digging but we're hoping they put on some good size since we dug those new potatoes in August. We're expecting them to be on the small side, and don't expect them to be as plentiful as we had hoped. We save our potatoes for winter CSA first, and then offer up any extra in your weekly bags, so we many not see many this October.
Squashes... the winter ones suffered the same beetle pressure as those melons and our cucumbers. We had to turn in a few beds, but were able to keep our butternuts/honeynuts. Ed is a big squash grower, so we'll be bringing in some of his for those that love them!
Sweet potatoes usually do great in droughts, so my bet is that we've got a bumper crop just waiting to be dug, so I expect to have them in steady supply starting hopefully late September.
Radishes are busy growing for the winter, we usually offer up some bunches of watermelon, daikon, and black radish in October.
Last item on my list is tomatillos (which haven't been doing great, but we can list some each week) and Tomatoes! Last year we never got around to trellising our cherry tomatoes, and we had them coming out our ears. This year we carefully tended them, and we're barely getting any. It seems they prefer to be left to grow wild? Clearly we've some learning to do. Our greenhouse tomatoes are also lagging this year, we suspect it may be fertility issues and that we've pushed them to grow a third year in the same spot (they prefer to be rotated, but we only have one greenhouse to protect them from the late frosts in spring). They'll continue being assigned at random to those who "love" them (set your preferences!) on a weekly basis into October. Plans are in motion to put up another greenhouse so that we can rotate them, which would also provide more winter and spring greens but that's a story for another day :)
