Harvested in three parts over the last week, the garlic is now all in! This crop seems to’ve done well once again (I LOVE growing garlic!). For the first time, there’s a small pile of damaged goods, water-logged from all the rain. But overall, things are looking good. The combination of oat straw (from last fall’s cover crop) and grass mulch worked great (below)—weeds were kept down, and although the paths weren’t as heavily mulched as around the plants, they weren’t bad. We’ve been having trouble starting the riding mower, which means no trailer, so the tractor bucket took its place for transport duties. The garlic is stacked on pallets in the barn. Lynn seems to’ve taken to garlic harvesting and went to town: fork and pull, fork and pull…around 3,000 garlic bulbs hit the local food chain!
Harvest
CSA share check-in
Monday morning means a quick small harvest for about half a dozen CSA shares. What’s in each share is my main harvest concern each week. The goal is to maintain the basics, like lettuce, carrots, onions, and also have some exciting new stuff each time. In a year like this one, with slow growth, this can be tough. But we’re doing OK so far. Today’s veggie menu, taken directly from the CSA newsletter: “In your share this week: basil (sweet); bean (Jade); beet (Scarlet Supreme); carrot (Touchon); garlic (Music); green onion (Ramrod); mesclun (all-lettuce); parsley (curly & flat-leaf); potato (Yukon Gold); Swiss chard (Bright Lights).” This season, shares are packed in really nice reusable shopping bags from one of the supermarket chains. They’re big and roomy, decorated with an assortment of veggie and fruit photo blow-ups, cost a buck, and can be replaced free of charge when they wear out. Much cooler than the hundreds of plastic grocery store shopping bags with the farmers’ market logo on ’em that I used to go through, and we also pass on the bags at cost at the market.
Rinsing…
On-going debates about the merits of rinsing are…academic right now as the near daily rains continue, and the soil remains between moist and mucky. Even on a rare hot and sunny day like today, crops are coming up caked in mud. Carrots are messy…
…and so are green onions (being rinsed by Mike) with tangled roots that hold clumps of mud so well…
Massive new potatoes
Our first potatoes of the year are HUGE, some of the biggest potatoes I’ve grown by far. I guess they really liked the rain. First dug: Yukon Gold and Chieftain. As usual, the harvest method is as manual as it gets: crawling along the rows, pulling up the plants, and scrabbling around by hand. More fun in the mud…
Digging garlic
Considering that our clayey soil has hardly had a chance to dry out with all the rain, this year’s garlic is looking good. With Lynn digging away, the first third of the garlic patch is up and stacked to dry in the barn. I’d been worried about rotting (and Con at the market had already reported losing a lot of his to rot), and checking every couple of days for the last two weeks. Maybe 20% of the bulbs are soaked and come up pinkish-brown—dunno how they’ll look when they dry out, but the cloves are fine, so it’s lots of home use and seed garlic at the worst…
Backstage at the farmers’ market: harvest bins
Rubbermaid storage bins are the main harvest containers again this season (I suppose that’s a plug for Rubbermaid, unintended, it just seems like they’re the only company in the plastic storage bin market!). They’re inexpensive (around $8 each), hold a little over a bushel, and the lids fasten well. They’re easy to clean, and they stack well, loaded and covered, or empty. And they’re durable. I somehow ran over one with the Kubota compact tractor, pulled it back in shape, and it’s in service again. They’ve changed color this year, the new ones available around here are a kinda tacky metallic blue, but that’s no reason to give ’em up. We have about 25, along with a dozen or so green bushel trugs…so I guess that’s the cap for the maximum harvest haul for now! Today at market, there were about 15 of ’em full… Balanced on the edge of one is a stack of three selected gardening books, brought to market for customers to check out…
Harvest wet work
Yet another in this summer’s series of wet and gray afternoons, the weather blending perfectly with the wet work of rinsing and sorting muddy root crops. Instant efficient team chemistry between Rachel and Mel, both doing post-harvest here for the first time. (Above, carrots, below, beets.) The process is very small scale and manual. Crops are first dumped from harvest bins onto the screen table, clinging earth is quickly blasted off with the jet setting on the water wand. Next, double handful bunches are dunked for a final rinsing. Then it’s back into the bins… Simple and quick for a few bushels. Get wet!
