Perhaps you are eating a salad as you read this crop update. I just made a smoothie with beet greens before I sat down to write it. Because at Old Plank Farm it is greens season, and it is off to a good start. The lettuce patch is growing nicely, providing many weeks of fresh salad mix and head lettuce to our CSA members. We're able to irrigate it fairly well, so it may even survive another hot week like the one we had last week and the one that is predicted next week.
If you blinked earlier in June, you missed spring. We went from 30 degree nights in mid-May to upper-80s several times over the last few weeks. I've farmed in Wisconsin long enough to know that this is somewhat common, and it's not bad for many of the crops. The crops it is too hard on are broccoli and kale. These veggies, which we sometimes have for the early CSA boxes, are a total flop right now. They are sickly, small, taste terrible, and will most likely not make it into any of the CSA boxes in the coming weeks. I haven't spent too many tears on this failure though, because these and the other brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc) all get a second chance to be planted and harvested for the second half of the season. And I don't have any free-time for tears these days. I am too busy finishing planting, working on weeding, and starting with harvesting.
Many crops at Old Plank Farm are planted numerous times throughout the season. This gives us more chances for harvesting, longer harvest windows, and the grace to accept the inevitable failures that happen from time to time. The plan each year for broccoli is simple: try, try again.
Early sweet corn is a bright spot here right now. It has already grown past knee-high, which is a bench-mark goal for the 4th of July. We expect to start having ears to harvest in late July or early August.
Meanwhile, the greenhouses all look healthy and very full of veggies that are nearly ready for harvest. We'll start seeing cucumbers in the CSA boxes in the next week or two. Carrots as well, and green peppers and celery are not far behind.
One favorite field crop which I measure the progress of the season by is potatoes. So far it's a good season. We planted early potatoes in April, hoping for a late-June harvest of new potatoes. The cold April held things up a bit, so they are not quite ready to harvest this week. But we should be able to put them in our CSA boxes in the first week in July. Meanwhile, the fall potatoes are up and growing, too. They provide us with a lot of hearty food in September and October, and a lot of weeding and digging to do before we get to it all!
A few rows of early potatoes for CSA box week 4. Photo by Angelica Menzynski
Snap peas are probably the most exciting vegetable going in the boxes next week, and maybe the week after that, too. I sample them regularly in the field, to make sure they meet Old Plank Farm standards.
Because we don't grow tomatoes in a greenhouse, we usually don't have these to put in the CSA boxes as early as other local farms sometimes do. But our field tomatoes are off to a good start. Sungold cherry tomatoes will be the first tomato of the season, and they will most likely start being ready to harvest at the end of July or the beginning of August. Slicers and paste tomatoes are never far behind.
One of these years I plan to write a crop update which includes a note about each crop growing at our farm. But that's more than thirty crops right now, and I don't have time to write a book! Overall, our farm is having a good start to the harvest season, with the best yet to come. We hope your own summer is off to a good start, with the best yet to come for you as well.