Week 6: Garlic Harvest and reminder about pick-up pass policy

Garlic waiting to be bunched

Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday to help with this year's garlic harvest. We've harvested, bunched and hung only about half of our garlic in the barn, but we're already almost out of room! It's a nice contrast from last year, when we lost the majority of our harvest to garlic bloat nematode. Normally, we save seed from our garlic harvest, but since all our garlic was contaminated with nematodes, we had to buy in all new organic seed last fall. Because garlic bloat nematodes can linger in the soil for up to four years, we've also been taking a lot of precautions to ensure we don't spread the pest to other fields, including sanitizing all our tractor implements after using them in last year's garlic field. If you pick up your share on Tuesdays, be sure to thank Jon (who is in the shareroom that day) for all his hard work painstakingly power-washing the harrows and plastic mulch layer after he was done with his tractor work.

With many people going on vacation over the summer, I wanted to take the opportunity to remind everyone about our pick-up pass policy. You are allowed to use a pick-up pass to switch your pick-up block up to 3 times over the course of the season. The pass is intended for use within the same week, so if you miss your Monday/Tuesday pick-up block, you can come that Thursday/Friday. Likewise, if you know you will be unable to pick up your share during your regular Thursday/Friday block, you should pick your share up earlier in the week on Monday/Tuesday. You may not use your pick-up pass to take two shares in one pick-up block. If you will be away for a week, you should make alternative arrangements for a friend to pick up your share, or you can skip the week knowing that we donate excess produce to local food pantries. We do understand that things sometimes come up at the last minute, and that Thursday/Friday folks who unexpectedly miss the last pick-up of the week only have the option of using their pick-up pass the following Monday. In such rare cases, we can allow pick-up pass usage the following Monday/Tuesday, but you would only be allowed to take the one share at a time (so you would need to come back during the Thursday/Friday block to pick up your regular share for that week).

The reason for this rule is that we make our crop and harvest plans around a certain number of shareholders coming each week. We simply aren't set up to accommodate shareholders picking up double shares in one week, particularly with the popular and limited crops. Also, because some crops have short windows of harvest and because of the perishable nature of vegetables, leftover vegetables from one week often don't translate into a surplus to use towards the next week's share. If you have any questions about this policy, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me at lholdorf@ttor.org.

Finally, remember Week 2 of the CSA when we had about 8 inches of rain? Well, we will be seeing the effect of that this week in our greens harvest. The greens beds we should be harvesting from this week got partially flooded, destroying part of the planting. Those same beds were then too wet to cultivate for several weeks, so they got overtaken by weeds. The planting after that was seeded in a field with flea beetle issues due to lack of dry space elsewhere, and on top of that, it later got partially flooded as well. Be prepared for no greens this week and possibly next week as well. The good news is that the lettuce looks terrific, so you should still be able to make salads.

What's in the share: Lettuce, carrots, beets, mini cabbage, napa cabbage, bok choi, broccoli, summer squash and zucchini, radishes, salad turnips, PYO green beans and PYO herbs.
New this week: Cucumbers, Chard, Ailsa Craig onions, and PYO sunflowers.
* Flowers got picked pretty heavily this past week, so we may need to give the plants a chance to recover this week

Be sure to check out our Recipes blog for ideas on what to do with your share. Also, shareholder Megan Sudbay has a blog about how she uses her CSA share each week that you should check out!