Looking pretty good for the end of October. Classic cool-season crops include leaf lettuce, pointy cabbage, bok choi and kale. Plus, the summer-loving sweet peppers are still hanging in.
Harvest
A bushel of Music
A bushel of Music garlic: The bulbs were significantly smaller than expected, for no reason I could point to, but the fine, strong flavor is fully there. Still plenty of time for planting, going by the 14-day weather forecast… Cause if you can’t count on the weather, what can you count on?!
Cutting greens
Harvesting salad greens: bin, harvest knife, hands. This has never been one of my favorite things to do—doubled over one 50′ bed after another. A while back, we made a seat on wheels that straddled the bed so you could sit, pushing yourself back with your feet. It worked pretty well, but it became one extra thing to lug around and faded out of service. The greens—lettuces, arugula, mustard, mizuna, other brassicas—at this time are maybe the best of the season, growing before full summer heat. In the background, the goldenrod, native residents of the field, are thriving, towering over all the crops. I don’t think of them as weeds, because they don’t
Greens in the sun
Not the best place for them to be, basking in the sun, but it’s only for a moment, fresh in from the field, and they’re also bathing in chilly well water. Mustards, mizunas, lettuces, kales, bok choi, more… Salad mixes are what’s up for the moment, hanging in there and quite delectable, even as the heat and near total absence of rain continue for the third week straight!
Stack of lettuce
Friday harvest and the main green going right now is LETTUCE, appearing as small leaf salad mix. We’re waiting to do new greenhouse seeding – it’s still way wet in there – but a bunch of lettuce transplants are already in, some bok choi, too. So the season’s ramping up and the weekly look around to see what the weather has delivered for market…begins!
First winter harvest
Yesterday’s harvest that went to today’s farmers’ market, my earliest market start by almost two months! From the unheated greenhouse: kale, green and red mustard, and lettuce mix times two. Harvest conditions: -2°C outside, a perfect-working-weather 10°C inside. At the end, the sun came out and it started to get sweatingly hot under a T-shirt, shirt and fleece. But, already done! No rinsing, just covered and into a cool room for a 6 a.m. pick-up this morning. It felt a little odd, starting the year’s Saturday markets so early, and indoors—this fall, if all goes as intended, weekly market will cease to end for winter and become instead a fully year-round thing…
Early share
This week’s harvest basket, still greens, mainly: young curly and flat leaf kale, baby bok choi (autographed by a few flea beetles that made it under the cover), our Zippy Mix (today’s version, mustards as always, with mizuna and some baby Chinese cabbage), 4-lettuce mix (out of sight), plus garlic scapes and baby zucchini. Pretty simple. Not bad… We’re not doing CSA this year, but we do have a handful of share commitments!