This week on the farm we harvested hot weather vegetables including pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, red and yellow tomatoes, and patti pan squash to name a few! It’s been hot and smokey due to the east winds but the tomatoes, squash, peppers, and eggplant are finally starting to ripen. With greenhouse temperatures reaching 120 degrees during the day, we’re glad we captured all that rain water back in the spring! Even though tomatoes and peppers do love heat, they don’t produce fruit if they get too hot and dry. We irrigate sparingly in the evening to conserve water and discourage fungus. Gardening tip: For ripe tomatoes, hold back on the irrigation. Lack of water will stress them and cause the fruit to ripen before the first frost.
We’re placing our garlic order this week to begin planting by mid-September. Seedlings of winter lettuces and mustard greens have sprouted and will be transplanted out in a couple weeks for winter harvest.
Our farm animals are enjoying the summer weather and since we feed the damaged vegetables to our chickens and pigs they’re pretty happy on harvest day! The pigs prefer brassicas like cabbages and cauliflower while the chickens love damaged cucumbers.
A note on egg safety:
Remember to cook eggs using safe handling instructions! Even though our chickens are raised free range on pasture and fed certified organic feed, it’s still important to keep eggs refrigerated, get rid of any that are cracked or dirty, and cook them thoroughly.
The honey bees are doing well this summer. After a rough spring due to rainy days and cool temperatures, they’ve come back from the brink. They spend a lot of time near the pond in the tall fir trees, but we’re not sure why. This time of year they feed on wildflowers like fireweed and flowering native plants like Douglas Spirea. We’ll smoke them and check the hives this weekend to determine the honey harvest. Yum!
We’ve been working on our biodynamic and organic certification for the vegetables and we should be submitting the application by this fall- more to come soon….
