A cool start to the week has turned into a hot finish. These days are especially suited to focus on irrigation and cultivation or weeding. Generally, when it's rainy or even just on the cool side, we don't spend much time cultivation -- the reason is that those darn weeds have a higher likelihood of surviving despite our best efforts if the weather is in there favor. But give us a hot dry day, and 'most of the time' a cultivation pass through a bed will disrupt and actually kill most small weeds. We've definitely had many disheartening experiences of spending a lot of time weeding an area, then to come back the next day and see many of them revived after a night of rain!
We'll be harvesting for your boxes right up until tomorrow morning. One of the crops we'll be picking is cherry tomatoes, and the yield is increasing each week. But we want to explain that many of our favorite crops (like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers) begin producing very slowly with individual plants at a time. It usually takes several weeks before ALL of the plants are producing in a relatively consistent manner. So while we have started to harvest cherry tomatoes, our yield is still very low, and that's why you may see that cherry tomatoes were in our harvest estimate, but are not available. When we are packing over 100 boxes a week and only have say 20 containers of cherry tomatoes, they are either immediately allocated to boxes or are snatched up very quickly by folks customizing their boxes. But very soon, we'll be harvesting A LOT of them, and will be able to consistently estimate our harvest to ensure that we can put a lot into Harvie and also actually harvest those when the time comes. Any extra produce that is beyond our relatively conservative Harvest Estimate for Harvie will be available at the Farmers Market. That means that these early pickings often result in some very desired crops being available at the market, while they were not available for boxes -- that's just the nature of estimating ahead and needing to play it safe. Our tomatoes are looking great and we're starting to see some of the larger slicers turning colors. Stay tuned for tomato goodness soon!!
Cheers, Bonnie & Rudy
