Week 14: Slipping from summer into fall

A portion of last Friday's heirloom
tomato harvest.

As the days get shorter, the summer crops are finally starting to slow down a little. Our cucumbers and watermelon are done for the season, and summer squash and zucchini are on their way out very soon. We still have an abundance of tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, but they are beginning to ripen at a slightly slower pace. Though it's sad to see summer crops slow down, it couldn't come at a better time. Our field crew has dwindled from 12 people to 7 as many of our summer helpers went back to school for the fall. Also, with the shorter days, we are now starting the harvest at 7am (if we kept going at 6am, we'd have to be harvesting with headlamps!). In spite of the season change, it still feels like we could use all those extra hands and that extra hour in the morning. This is because although there are fewer summer crops to harvest, we now need to focus part of our day on harvesting some of our fall storage crops and cleaning up field debris, mulch and drip tape so that we can put down cover crop seed.

Last week we harvested our spaghetti, delicata and sugar dumpling squash. They are stored in the barn in squash bins and will be distributed in the share in the coming weeks. This week we plan to continue harvesting winter squash like butternut, acorn and pumpkins so that they can cure in the barn before distribution. The curing process not only sweetens up butternut and pumpkins, but it also improves the long-term storability. In addition to squash, we also continue to make inroads in harvesting our yellow storage onions. We started harvesting 3 weeks ago and are still going! With tomato, eggplant, pepper and watermelon harvest consuming most of our days over the past 2 weeks, we've only occasionally been able to carve out a half hour at the end of the day to work on onion harvest. I'm hoping to be able to finish the yellow onion harvest early this week so that we can till in that area and seed some peas and oats as cover crop. After the yellow onion harvest is done, we move on to red onions and shallots. These onions will all dry out in the greenhouse for a few weeks before we clean them off and start distributing them in the share.

In addition to bringing in our onion and winter squash this week, my other major goal (aside from keeping up with the regular harvest!) is to seed as much cover crop as possible. Cover crops are an important tool for organic farmers, as they prevent erosion of topsoil and help maintain soil fertility. Ideally, we would like to seed a legume cover crop like field peas or hairy vetch, as these fix nitrogen in the soil, which is an essential plant nutrient. However, most legumes can't be seeded after mid-September because the days get too short and too cold for the crop to germinate and establish itself properly before the winter. After mid-September, we mainly seed winter rye, which is a hardier cover crop and is more beneficial than no cover crop at all (as long as you till it under at the right time next spring). Also important to accomplish this week are transplanting strawberries, weeding spinach and lettuce, and thinning turnips, rutabagas and napa cabbage.

Many of you will be excited this week to see garlic in the share. As always, we will limit the garlic to 2 heads per share every week until we run out. We save the biggest garlic heads (about 25% of the total harvest) to use as seed for next year's garlic.

What's in the share: Lettuce, Greens, Escarole, Chard, Beets, Summer Squash/Zucchini, Eggplant, Peppers, Slicing Tomatoes, Heirloom Tomatoes, Plum Tomatoes, PYO Cherry Tomatoes, PYO Husk Cherries, PYO Green Beans, PYO Flowers, PYO Hot Peppers, PYO Herbs.
New this week: Keuka Gold Potatoes, Garlic, PYO Edamame