In this week’s share:
- salad mix
- summer squash
- cucumbers
- red cabbage
- paris market carrots
- cylindra beets
- red torpedo onion
- fingerling potatoes (these will be dirty – they are just freshly picked and we didn’t want to damage their sensitive skins by spraying them with the hose)
- purple and lemon basil (sorry about the small bunches, our basil crop is suffering a bit)
- sage
packed together in a clamshell:
- tomatoes
- cherry tomatoes
packed together in a small bag:
- tomatillos
- gherkins
- ground cherries
- jalapeño pepper
Half share members, this week is a “B” week.
Farm News & Recipes
Today we present to you the Guide to Growing Heart Farm Tomatoes. All of our tomatoes are good for fresh eating, but certain varieties also shine with other uses. Almost all of them are heirlooms, which are very sensitive and prone to some cracking and scabbing. Please excuse these imperfections – sometimes you have a sacrifice a little beauty for flavor. We pick the tomatoes as close to ripe as possible but if they feel a little firm just leave them out on the counter for a day or two. We recommend you store all your tomatoes at room temperature as refrigeration can dull the flavor.
Moskvich – Small or medium sized, red with yellow around the top. These mature earliest so they make up the majority of our crop right now. Great for fresh eating and cooking. Slice it in a sandwich with basil mayo.
Cosmonaut Volkov – Similar to Moskvich – medium sized, round, darker red tomatoes, sometimes with a little green around the stem. The green remains even when the tomatoes are ripe. Good for fresh eating and cooking. A Ukrainian variety developed by space engineer turned gardner who named it for one of the first Russian astronauts.
Green Zebra – Small fruits with green skin and subtle yellow stripes when ripe. One of the sweetest varieties – best for fresh eating.
Speckled Roman – Long red roma type tomato with yellow speckles and stripes. Great for slicing on sandwiches and ideal for saucing.
Orange Banana – Long orange roma type tomato. Good sliced, chopped in salsa or processed into sauce. Also good dried in a dehydrator or slow roasted in a low oven.
Copia – Large, red and yellow striped tomato. Delicious sliced in big slabs in a Caprese salad.
Golden Buddha – Medium to large, round orange tomato. Best for fresh eating, it adds color to salads and salsas.
Pineapple – Similar coloring to Copia, yellow with red stripes. Very sweet, good for fresh eating.
Pruden’s Purple – Dark pink, medium to large tomato. Rich, sweet flavor similar to a Brandywine.
Cherokee Purple – Dark pink to purple, medium to large. Developed by Cherokee Indians pre-1890. Best for fresh eating.
Principe Borghese – This Tuscan variety is a red grape tomato with a pointed tip that is great for drying, saucing, and cooking. Perfect with some cucumbers in an Israeli salad.
Honeydrop – Yellow cherry tomato. Bright, sweet flavor makes it great eaten alone or in a salad. Not technically an heirloom, but it is an organic, open-pollinated variety. Chop them up with some of the other varieties in a tomato salad with crushed croutons.
Green Doctors Frosted – Greenish gold cherry tomato. These are slow to ripen but will hopefully arrive later in the season. They are low-acid but still quite sweet.
Fox – Bright red, large for a cherry tomato. New to the farm this year, the seed came from the Hudson Valley Seed Library.
Sungold – The only non-heirloom hybrid we grow, just because they are too good not to. Irresistibly sweet orange cherry tomatoes.
