In This Week’s Share
- radishes
- salad turnips
- tiny carrots
- beets
(the above four items are bunched together – great for a little crudites picnic pack)
- salad mix – baby arugula and baby summer lettuces
- turnip and black spanish radish – one of each bunched together
- summer squash – see notes on the different varieties below
- potatoes – pretty red-skinned potatoes with white flesh
- cucumbers – one big green and one small white
- green beans
- basil
- chives
- red cabbage – only if you didn’t get it last week
or
- broccoli – if you got cabbage last week
Every other week half share members: this week is an “A” week.
Thanks to everyone for being understanding about last week’s share being a tad on the smaller side – that’s what a week without sunlight will do. The sun and the heat were fully present this week though, so you’re getting nice big bags today.
Farm News
This is the time of year that harvesting gets exciting. Yesterday’s prize was potatoes. We took a chance and peeked at the first plant in the row of Dark Red Norlands, our very earliest-maturing variety of potatoes. We were greeted with perfect fist-sized vibrantly red beauties. Harvesting potatoes is fun – it’s like an underground treasure hunt (or at least that’s what we tell ourselves to distract from the fact that we’re basically digging a ditch in 90-degree heat). After loosening the plant with a pitchfork and unearthing the potatoes still attached to the main roots, you plunge your arms elbow deep into the soil to feel around for any stragglers. We got a pretty solid harvest for this early in the season, but there will be more potatoes in different colors and sizes as our mid- and late-season varieties mature.
We choose plant varieties based on a bunch of factors – taste, appearance, growth habit, disease resistance, climate preferences… In case you are curious, here’s a list of some of the varieties in your shares:
Summer squash – zephyr (yellow with green tip); eight ball (dark green, round); bush baby (dark green with light green stripes); sunburst patty pan (yellow, looks like a flying saucer); costata romanesco (large, light green); raven (dark green standard zucchini)
Cucumbers – marketmore (dark green standard cucumber); mini white (short white with some yellow – my favorite); little leaf (small green, great for pickling); armenian (light green, very few seeds – these will be coming in later in the season)
Lettuce – we have a lot of lettuce varieties: little gems, mottistone, red fire, red cross, flashy trout back, blushed butter oak, magenta, adriana, deer tongue
Carrots – dragon (dark red); purple haze (purple outside, orange inside); white satin (white); oxheart (orange tear-drop shaped)
Radishes – black spanish (large black root – very spicy); cherry belle (red, round); pink beauty (pink, round); french breakfast (oblong, red and white); easter egg (multi-colored)
Recipes
Enjoy some raw veggies in the park with Martha’s crudites dip.
Use up a bunch of the produce in your share in this perfect early summer salad.
Celebrate our first potato harvest of the season with these lemony basil potatoes.
