CSA week 4 july 2-5

This weeks share consists of kale, beets, garlic scapes, spring onions, giant tender snow peas, mesclun lettuce, and zucchini, and dill.  The garlic scapes are the long curly things.  dice them up and use them as you would garlic. They're great sauted with the spring onions and kale or snow peas.  They are also good raw; just dice them up really fine and toss on anything.  With the exception of the lettuce and dill, everything in this week's share grills up nicely.   

this week's heavy rain washed the soil right off the potatoes. this should make for an easy harvest later this month.

washout! the middle of the bottom row of potatoes is buried...

the winter squash planted higher along the contour handled the runoff fairly well.

The most important thing with susainable farming is that we encourage the native beneficial insects and soil microbes. They are an esssential component of the labor force on an organic farm, so we focus on providing these workers with room and board in our fields. However, creating habitat for the beneficials means that we are also potentially providing habitat for the bad bugs. For example, these cucumber beetle are taking their share of our winter squash leaves. Note that they enjoy eating and breeding simultaneously. Fortunately, they tend to concentrate their feeding on particular plants/leaves, thus leaving others plants alone (see healthy leave in lower left corner). This is because the weaker plants send out pheromones which the cucumber beetles have evolved to sense. The beetles are culling out the herd, just like a wolf who smells blood and proceeds to slay the injured deer.

The lower yellowish rows are one type of zucchini. The upper taller green rows are another variety. This is an incredibly clear display of differential disease resistance. Just like in nature, the greater the genetic diversity, the more resilient the system. So we plant a whole bunch of different varieties of each crop. And we plant them several times over the course of the season. And we plant each type in several different locations. And we plant them at different spacings and depths. The general idea is to create several different micro-climates for each crop. We do this in an attempt to have at least some of that crop do well (regardless of what the weather does this season). Basically we are a crop management firm providing our shareholders with a diversified portfolio.

cucumbers in front of tomatoes