What’s in the box?

Blackberries, sweet peppers, cucumbers, carrots, shishito peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, salad green, garlic.

Fruit share – Nectarines & Vampire plums

(Vampire plums are round, red plums with delicious blood red flesh – and the greatest name!)

• The 1st taste of blackberries was a surprise in the box last week. But now you can expect blackberries for the next few weeks at least. For those not familiar with blackberries, they are a bit sweet & a bit tart. If they aren’t quite ripe they can be sour. Too ripe and they are soft & mushy – but incredibly sweet. We try to pick them as ripe as possible but still firm. Unlike raspberries, blackberries are not hollow but have a soft edible centre core. The only way to eat a blackberry is to pop the whole thing in your mouth. Try to take a small bite and you will be covered in dark, staining juice. While best eaten fresh, blackberries also make great jam, juice, sauce & ice cream. Please note that we do use pesticides on our blackberries, for the spotted wing drosophila. This invasive vinegar fly has the potential to cause extensive damage to many fruit crops, especially soft and dark coloured fruit – like blackberries. It is found throughout much of southern Ontario and most of the fruit-growing areas of North America, and has become a chronic pest in berry and tender fruit crops. There are cultural practices that we use to help reduce the insect populations, but the most effective control is chemical. So we spray regularly to protect our blackberries & keep them free of worms.

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Here are some questions we have been asked this week – and our answers.

1. Why aren’t there more beefsteak tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers … etc in the box?

The quick answer – too much heat and too little rain.

Vegetable plants are feeling the heat & humidity the same as us these days. They’re thirsty, tired & wilting. The entire ripening process slows down as they use their energy to survive rather than ripening the crop. Blossoms drop instead of pollinating and setting fruit. Diseases also show up when it’s so hot. When conditions improve – temperatures moderate & we receive some rain – the plants should perk up and vegetable quantities will increase.

But not the cucumbers! We have only been picking them 1 week and already they are succumbing to disease.

Tomato leaves curl when they are under stress.

2. What about spinach?

Spinach is a very popular crop! But we have only had limited amounts at market recently and it has not been in the CSA box since week 3. This is because spinach is a cool weather crop that grows best in spring & fall. We do attempt to grow it all summer with some success (call us optimistic, stubborn or maybe not too bright?). When this extreme heat eases there should be more spinach available again – and our lettuce mix too.

3. How do you irrigate & water your crops?

Only newly transplanted vegetables receive water. We water them using our old orchard sprayer with a hose & a water wand. They get water once or twice a day for about a week in this heat. By then their roots are established and they can hopefully survive on their own.

We collect rainwater from our barn roofs in 2 big cisterns which we use for this watering. When this is used up and it does not rain, we purchase water by the truckload, 3000 gallons at a time. It doesn’t last long!

In a season without rain we realize that our efforts to improve our soil are paying off. Our soil holds moisture longer because we have added organic matter with our cover cropping, and use manure & compost instead of chemical fertilizers. We have reduced our tillage, keep the ground covered with something growing most of the time, and use a lot of mulch. Without these measures I know our crops would not be growing as well as they are, and we would be purchasing even more water.

4. Did you pick everything this morning?

This is the classic question we get at the farmers’ market. The answer, of course, is a big no, which elicits surprise from the customer asking.

On market day (Saturday) I leave the house at 4:15am or earlier to load the truck. We’re on the road by 4:50 and arrive in Georgetown just around 6am. We unload, set up and are usually ready for customers by 7:30. It is a busy few hours! When could we pick?

Most of our harvesting for market happens on Friday (some vegetables might be picked earlier in the week as well) along with all the washing, packing and other prep. There are 6 of us working and it takes us all day to get ready. The notion of picking on market day is unrealistic.

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Around the farm this week …

The downside of watering is that the weeds grow too. So more weeding is necessary.