Newsletter: CSA #8

Sunday July 26

Good morning everyone ( which is now Good evening...)

Sorry i'm a little late. Baskets were pretty simple this week. It was nice to have salad mix back in there for you. Tomatoes are really starting to pick up and the ground cherries look out of this world! Also, the bees have arrived! I was getting worried as the zucchini field always seemed quiet and pollination was poor. This year was the first time i did not include borage in my squash plantings and it really seemed to make a difference...bees love borage! However, they are here now and every morning the field is humming.

In your basket this week:

2 tomato portions
Dragon Tongue beans
Chez Nous Salad Mix
Shallots
Zucchini

Extra greens: extra salad mix and 2 cucumbers

A few of the new varieties i am trying this year. The yellow is Rugosa Friulana, Zucchini Gray and White Marrow at back

The patty pans

At the moment, we have lots and lots of planting going on...Fall crops. Flower sprouts are all planted, single rows this year...last year we did double and found that the plants shaded each other out. It should be a good year for flower sprouts. We had a new roll of netting arrive from Quebec this week, so expensive, for a pantyhose type material which is essential for planting any members from the cabbage family. It's our protection from all the little pest that are relentless when it comes to these crops. It's a pain to put on and remove every time you need to get in but it's the best guarantee.

Lots of scraping and digging.

We've also been working on drainage again this summer. We started last summer but this spring proved it just wasn't enough. Lots of rain meant beds stayed wet and we couldn't get to them and lots of crops were lost to the weeds that took advantage of the situation. We are hoping that this finally fixes this problem. Plus we were able to build 2 extra market gardens in a lower spot with our extra soil that needed a place to go.

Some outdoor cucumbers also covered in nets to protect them from cucumber beetles, the cover will have to come off soon for pollination.

We now have 12 gardens that are 12 rows x 50 feet. There is also the greenhouse and the moveable greenhouse (in background) which contains 3 plots, an herb garden, some random strips here and there and a mini greenhouse attached to the garage out front. We often have people ask us if we would like to go bigger, honestly, my goal is to reach the day we can manage what we have as well as we'd like.