What’s in the box?

Carrots, kohlrabi, salad turnips, head lettuce, zucchini, fresh herb bunch, garlic scapes.

• Our 1st carrots are ready – already! Last year our 1st carrots appeared in week 11, so that makes us 6 weeks earlier this season. We seeded them much sooner this spring and hit it just right with sunshine, rain, weeds etc. Hurray! (Subsequent plantings did not fare as well so there will be a lull until the next time that carrots are in the box.) So enjoy! Fresh carrots are so delicious.
• Kohlrabi is a strange-looking vegetable – sort of like a cross between a little cabbage and a turnip. It is considered a root vegetable, though the edible round globe grows above ground. Kohlrabi is most often eaten raw – just peeled & sliced. The taste & texture resembles fresh, crunchy broccoli stems, with a bit of radish thrown in, and perhaps cabbage. Use on raw vegetable platters and serve with a creamy dip. Grated kohlrabi can be added to slaws. We like to spiralize our kohlrabi and use it instead of pasta. Kohlrabi can also be steamed or boiled – cook until the bulbs are tender, then peel the skin, season with butter, salt, and pepper, a cheese sauce, or just enjoy plain. They are good for mashing with other vegetables – parsnips, carrots or potatoes. Kohlrabi absorbs the flavour of other ingredients making it ideal to add to soup, stew and stir-fries. The bulbs should be stored, unwashed, in a plastic bag in the fridge. Our favourite way to cook kohlrabi is to sautée it in butter with garlic scapes for just a few minutes. Then add just a dash of nutmeg. Delicious!

• They’re back! Salad turnips are in the box again this week.
• We have a selection of head lettuces this week. Here are some of them …

And this interesting one called spinach lettuce. Row 7 seeds who developed it describes it as a revolutionary romaine selected to bring more nutrition and flavor to everyday lettuce. Spinach lettuce marries the best of spinach and romaine, with tender, dark green leaves that are as stunning as they are delicious.

Another variety has heads that look look like this with a crispy burnt edge to some of the outer leaves. This is caused by the extreme heat we have experienced lately and is cosmetic only.

This is one of our favourite kinds of romaine. The other day these were small, perfectly formed round heads. Now they have stretched tall & lean due to the heat. We will leave them in the field for the groundhogs to enjoy.

Yes, there is a family of groundhogs who live along the banks of our pond and spend much of their day munching on our romaine lettuce. They know what’s good! Fortunately we have other beds maturing so we are leaving this one mostly for them (hoping they stay here and leave the others for us). If you read the newsletter last week, you will understand that this is one of the weedy beds that we are harvesting now and thus will not attempt to clean up.

• Zucchini, fresh herbs and garlic scapes complete the box this week.

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Around the farm this week …

Most of the lettuce that we have planted in the last two weeks has been lost to the heat. We are using shade cloth on these beds to try and save them. Shade cloth – as the name suggests – shades the crop, providing protection from the hot sun and also preserving moisture in the soil. So far the lettuce appears to be doing ok.

Hot days are meant for taking it easy – at least for some of us!

Canada Day treats from our CSA members. You guys are the best! Thank you!