Summer CSA week 4

Oh, the tomatoes, peppers, squashes, eggplants and basil love this heat!!!  Summer veggies love summer weather.  Good fruit set on some of the earliest tomatoes and peppers.  Awesome lettuces this week--melt in your mouth awesome.  Garlic scapes!!!  This is the flowering part of the garlic plant.  Clip off the flower end, and use the rest in every dish you prepare until they run out.  Great pesto!

7 things to do with garlic scapes!

Next week, 4th of July falls of Thursday. Join us in the garden for a fundraiser if you can:  Flowers and Fireworks in the Garden!

We harvest all day Wednesday and the stand should be fully stocked by late Wednesday.  If you absolutely need to pick up Wednesday, feel free.  Otherwise, pick up is on Thursday, or you can certainly wait until Saturday, or Sunday.  Just let me know your plans so I can know how to stock the fridges.

We have March Farm tomatoes at the stand for purchase.  Best tomatoes you will get before ours are ready!

In the share this week:

Must take:

1. Strawberries
2. Head of Lettuce
3.  6 Garlic scapes
4.  Peashoots
5.  Parsley (absolutely delicious...use in everything!)

Choose 2:

Baby kale
Mixed greens for salad (some asian greens and kale mixed in)
Baby arugula
Basil
Senposai
Rainbow Chard
Some green and red cabbage
Fantastic microgreen mix with sunflower shoots, arugula, cress, radish, and kale!!!
Radish microgreens
Chives

Summer CSA Week 3

 

Still very fine weather for all the greens; heat loving veggies, not so much! The early potatoes are flowering, the garlic scapes will be harvested next week, the tomato plants look healthy, but boy, do they need a couple of weeks of 80 degrees and abundant sunshine!  Lousy germination on cucumbers--I believe many of the seeds drowned--so we try again.  Beans are coming nicely--cross your fingers the rabbits stay away!

Strawberries are MUCH better this week; last week they were swollen with rain water, and while tender, the flavor was watery.  This week's, again from Red Jacket Orchards, are smaller, juicier, and sweet with a bit of tartness.  Very nice.  Last big cutting of this crop of the Senposai, the chard remains very tender, and have you tried the parsley yet?  It is packed with flavor--makes a great pesto--and of course, is absolutely loaded with all sorts of GOOD THINGS!

We've added watercress to the microgreens mix--nice and tangy mix this week!  Also, I am now packing it in vented bags, which should allow it to breathe and last longer in the fridge.  They are usually moist when I harvest, so the new bags should take care of that. 

Special offering to CSA members:  Our non-profit, Friends of the Garden of Ideas , is hosting a 4th of July "Flowers and Fireworks" cocktail party in the Garden on the 4th.  Park in the Garden, enjoy the flowers with a summery drink in hand, eat some yummy vegetable nibbles, let the kids run free, then walk down to the High School for the Fireworks--it'll be much easier leaving our parking lot than the high school's!  We're asking $25 per adult; kids are free.  It goes to support the Friends, an entirely volunteer organization.  Click here if you're interested: Flowers and Fireworks!  We can only handle 20 cars, so first come, first serve.

In this week's share:

MUST TAKE:

1.  Strawberries

2. Swiss Chard (Rainbow or Pink Passion)--Tasty chard recipe

3. Spring onions (Use the whole thing!!!)

4. Head of lettuce (mostly green romaine, some red leaf)

5.  Cress/radish/kale microgreens

CHOOSE 2:

Arugula microgreens

Red Russian Kale

Senposai

Salad mix

Beets (Use the greens!!!)

Parsley

Chives

Basil (some--we need heat!!!)

Summer Week 2

Haven't been able to walk across the marsh for a while now...and here comes another deluge tomorrow!!!  One summer a few years ago, when Ridgefield had a farmer's market and we were there, it rained nearly every Friday, the day of the market.  Seems like Thursday is the day this year...sorry to make you get wet!  If the weather is too bad, please feel free to come on Friday.
 

In this week's share, we kindly ask you to take:

1. Pint of Strawberries! (From Red Jacket Orchards in the Fingerlakes Region of NY--this is the source of the wonderful juices we carry!)
2. Pea shoots
3. Swiss chard
4. Head of lettuce

Choose 3 from the following:

Baby Red Russian Kale
Senposai
Kale/radish microgreens
Basil (first cutting!)
Lettucey-mustard greens
baby leeks
Spring onions
salad mix
parsley

Summer Share, Week 1

“This is June, the month of grass and leaves. The deciduous trees are investing the evergreens and revealing how dark they are. Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought.”

Henry David Thoreau

June.  Last week for spring spinach, arugula, asparagus, rhubarb...radishes are gone...the beets and turnips have not appreciated this roller coaster of a spring...all the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers have been planted.  The potatoes will receive their first hilling of hay this week...Beans will roll out in succession, zucchini will be planted over several weeks to avoid the borer in at least one planting...Every day,  something is being harvested, ripped out, or planted--this will continue late into fall.

I figure someday this will happen to the garden we so carefully tend: The wilds return.

In this week's share:

Must take!!!!!!!

Head of lettuce

Spring onions

Microgreens

Choose 4:

green kale

swiss chard (first cut--very tender!)

semposai (hope you're not sick of this--this is the greatest plant ever!)

rhubarb (last call!!!!)

arugula (last call until fall--except in microgreen form)

spinach (last call for the tender spring stuff--we are planting out New Zealand and Gator Spinach,  both delicious but not nearly as tender)

chives

parsley

possibly turnip greens

Last of the asparagus is for purchase only, to be fair.  Tough first spring for the asparagus field!!! Next spring can't be this bad...we tripled the size of the field, and have nearly 800 plants now.