I can smell summer in the air today, finally, but I can’t quite taste it yet. Aside from a little spinach, the crops aren’t quite ready for harvesting yet. Some years deliveries are just around the corner in early June, but this season the crops need more time to grow. Despite the routinely wet weather, we squeezed all our Spring plantings in on time. This includes snap peas, carrots, beets, spinach, lettuces, broccoli, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, leeks, onions, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, melons, watermelons, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and let’s not forget parsnips this year! All of these are in the ground and starting to grow. In order to get all this done on the few dry days we had in May, there were several long weekends of field work and planting before the Monday rains. I figure if God wanted vegetable farmers to take Sundays off, he wouldn’t leave the faucet on all week.
Even though we got everything planted on time, things are slow to get growing because of the cool weather and cold nights mixed in with all the rain. Just two nights ago we hit 39. That’s not cucumber growing weather. Nonetheless, our crops look nice. But we can’t harvest them yet! We’re now expecting a first CSA delivery of Tuesday June 18th.
Meanwhile, we are busy planting the late-season crops (second and third rounds of sweet corn, melons, lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, etc). And now that drier weather is upon us, we’re setting up irrigation, doing lots of weeding, and getting organized for the harvest season to begin. We can’t wait for the fresh veggies to start coming in, and I know lots of our members feel the same way. But the plants themselves have decided to wait, so that is what we’ll do!