sweet corn time, eggplants are lovely, but yields are small

Greetings shareholders,

 

This week, we'll have sweet corn, collards and kale, cabbage, summer squash, potatoes, onions, garlic, chard, and cucumbers.  I also have a few carrots you can have, and hope to find enough eggplant for everybody to have one or two.  Green beans and bell peppers are likely in the next week or two. 

 

I planted enough sweet corn to have it for four weeks.  With the heat, of course it looks like it's all going to get ready in the next two!  The ears are small and not completely full, but it tastes great.  (Raccoon approved, too.)  We'll give you as much as my crew can pick in a morning, but I suppose that there will still be too much too fast, so there will likely be some to sell for the freezer.  I'll let you know for sure at the end of the week.  We start with Bodacious on Monday, and we'll have either more Bodacious or else Incredible for Thursday and the weekend.

 

We planted a few carrots in the hoophouse in March and finally dug them last week.  They are, of course, weird sizes and shapes.  Hope you like them anyway.  Carrots are a real treat around here.  I find them nearly impossible to grow when I really want to, and they unexpectedly survive when they shouldn't.

 

Eggplants seem to like drought, at least the plant parts like it.  The plants are beautiful right now.  Fruit set for eggplant is irregular when it gets hot, like it also is for tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers.  The flowers pollinate in the mornings when it is cool, but abort in the afternoons when the temp gets in the nineties.  So, we'll keep the plants alive, harvest as many eggplant fruits as we can find, and hope for more later in the season.

 

Summer squash, melons, collards, and kale also seem to like drought and are doing amazingly well.   So far this year, we've really only had success with plants that we have set out as transplants.  Anything planted directly in the garden from seed, including beans, herbs, carrots, chard, and cucumbers, has been tough to get as many plants as we need to survive.  We continue to plant and irrigate, just in case it turns around.  Hope it's pretty soon because most of the yummy fall crops are direct seeded, and it would be just fine with me if they would grow!

 

Onions this week will be Ailsa Craig.  They are often very sweet and don't store very well, like not at all, so use them quickly.  They are about half size, so we should be able to work through the half-size pile pretty quickly.

 

If you are a Thursday person who might like to change to Monday, you can do it.  I'd like a few families to change to Monday if possible to balance out our harvest a little better.  Let me know right away if you want to make the change this week.

 

Remember the Southeast Linn Community Center fundraising raffle.  I've got the tickets.  Last year, three people who bought tickets from me won.  It could work out that way again, so don't get left behind.  $1 each.  Lots of nice prizes.   Drawing at Sauerkraut Days in August.

 

Thank you very much for all your kind notes, pictures, gifts, and blessings.  It's getting to be a tough season!  Your encouragement and assurances, plus my EXCELLENT workers, really make it easier to manage.  We just keep doing our best to make this a good garden year for you.

 

See you this week,

Laura