Welcome to Week 14! We are definitely in late stage summer now, hope everyone is eating well and storing up all of this sunshine before the rains return.
We started Bulk Harvest Season with the onions last week! TBH, this is the best onion crop we have grown at this farm. Onions are one of the trickier crops to grow well (need to start them In February, hard to keep weed free, need a lot of nitrogen/water, downy mildew often comes in right when they start to size up) so it always feels like we know what we are doing when we pull in thousands of big, beautiful onions!
In addition to all of the harvesting, we have begun to take down some tired old crops in preparation for cover crops. Cover crops (my fav crop) are grown to enrich the soil and soil biology and not harvested for sale. We use a mix of various legumes (clover, vetch, peas) and cereal crops (rye, oats, buckwheat) that are able to help increase organic matter, suppress weeds, attract pollinators, hold onto soil during rainy days, and feed all of those microbes once they are incorporated back into the soil. After all, veggies are nutrient rich, so we need to return some of those nutrients back to the soil. This fall/winter cover crop might be the most important as they protect our sandy soils from erosion and run off, especially since we are right on the Puyallup River. It can actually be costly to plant so much cover crop, so we are thankful that our local Conservation District as a cost share program that we participate in.
Veg this week:
Peppers- More shishitos, the first sweet peppers (limited for now)
Eggplant- One of my favorite summer veggies! Due to limited availability, you could get mini eggplant or big Italian eggplant or Asian eggplant, all delicious! Good time for A Little Eggplant Parm.
Celery- This is very celery tasting celery. In addition to the stalks, don't sleep on the leaves!
Edamame- Its fresh edamame season! Most of the edamame you find in the stores are imported and frozen. This is not. This crop doesn't make a lot of financial sense to grow, but I love it.
