September 7th, 2021
What’s in your share?
Yellow Onions
Butterhead Lettuce
Kale
Sweet Italian Frying Peppers
Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomatoes
Fennel
Scallions
This might be one of the last summery shares! The cherry tomatoes are still rockin’, but the bigger ones have drastically started to slow. The leafy greens have been loving the shorter days and cooler nights, and so have we! We’ve been starting to prepare our fields for the winter already. Pest pressure is down, as the life cycles of many of our pests are coming to an end. The row cover is off and the plants are loving some much needed airflow.
As some of you may know, we took this past weekend off from the market so that we could take the necessary time to prepare mentally and physically for the end of the season. We’re already starting to think about that first frost, usually coming around mid-September. When we finish harvesting from a bed, we either prep it for a second planting (never three plantings in a season) or plant a cover crop. A cover crop doesn’t produce a vegetable that we’ll bring to market, it is a plant that restores and maintains life in the soil. One of our main goals is never to have an empty bed. A bed with no life in it is dry and exposed. The more living roots are in the soil, the more it retains moisture, provides a habitat for microbial activity, and creates continuity for life in the soil.
We have been working hard this past week, with our amazing workshare crew, to get beds ready for cover crops. This will be the last time the soil is worked before next spring, so we take extra care in making the beds as sexy as possible. We have a heavy clay soil that becomes easily compacted, so enhancing and balancing soil structure is key. The cover crops will hold the soil in place to protect from eroding rains, melting snows, and provide nourishment for the life in the soil; hopefully keeping the earthworms and microbes happy and healthy into the spring. For the beds we won’t be able to cover crop, we will compost and mulch them heavily with straw grown by a farmer in the area. We hope that next year we can grow our own straw!
This time of year, when the end of the season is growing close, its easy to get excited about planning a vacation and leaving without tying up loose ends. But we’ve learned from experience that the end of the season is arguably more important than the actual season itself. Taking the time to set ourselves up for a successful upcoming season is well worth the extra bed prep, endless wheelbarrow loads of compost, and spreading straw by hand in the midst of allergy season.
That being said, we’re really excited to have some fall crops start coming your way! The winter squash is the best its ever looked, so stay tuned!