What’s in the box?

Green onions, carrots, beets, romaine lettuce, zucchini.

Fruit share – Sweet cherries

This will be the 1st week for fruit for those who signed up for fruit on their application.

The sweet cherries come from Wall Farms. Similar to Amy, the Wall sisters (who happen to be Amy’s cousins) farm together with their parents. Their fruit farm is located just a few roads east of us at the edge of St. Catharines. Wall Farms will be supplying sweet cherries & apricots for our CSA this season. Peaches & plums will come from Pineview Orchards.

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The heat continues!

And the contents of the CSA box this week reflects this.

All these vegetables in the box were planted long before the heat set in and were well established by the time the temperatures rose. Certainly the green onions, carrots, beets & romaine were slowed down by the heat & humidity and have taken longer to mature & get to size – but now we have them. And the zucchini thrives in the heat and is pumping out a plethora of fruit!

(But we know that with the heat comes disease so the next planting of zucchini is already seeded and waiting in the wings.)

Shorter season crops including all our salad greens, and anything else planted in the last couple of weeks are really struggling to take hold and grow. Normally we transplant and then water the seedlings for several days to get them growing. Now, we transplant and then have to water several times a day for at least a week, with limited success. Fortunately we planted a lot of romaine lettuce earlier so there will be salad!

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Around the farm this week …

The black shade cloth that we used to cover a new planting of lettuce seemed to work. Much of the lettuce survived, plus it required only half as much water as the uncovered crops. However it supplied too much shade, hindering the growth. We removed it after a week and replaced it with a white covering which still provides some protection from the hot sun. Fingers crossed we will be picking lettuce mix in a week or two. And more romaine.

Cucumbers under the white insect netting. Once they outgrow the cover we will remove it and the vines will spread over the straw.

It is Japanese beetle season. Right now they are mainly feasting on weeds in the edible flower rows – so that’s good! But they also enjoy edamame. There are plenty in the blackberries as well, but hopefully not causing too much damage.

The blackberries are growing.

Shady spots provide welcome relief from the hot sun!