This weeks share
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Chard
- Beets
- Carrots
- Cabbage
- Summer Squash/ Zucchini
- Eggplant
- Peppers
- Fresh (uncured) onions
- Scallions
- PYO herbs
- PYO beans
- PYO Flowers
New this week
- Tomatoes- availability and quantity will be dependent upon harvest yields
- PYO cherry tomatoes
For many of us, tomatoes are one of the staple crops that
define summertime. At the CSA we usually
get our first question about the tomatoes in mid June, often during the very
first week of share distribution.
“How are the tomatoes
looking this season?”
“So far so good!” We’ll assure the asker although the
tomatoes are barely knee high at this point.
“When do you think they’ll be ready?”
“Well…”
It isn’t an easy question to answer and it only becomes more
difficult to accurately predict as tomato season comes closer. The seed packet may state that you’ll have
ripe fruit in 75 days but that is really more of an educated guess. Did we get enough rain or too much? Have the days been too hot or the nights too
cool? Of course even if we do see a few
ripe fruit precisely when expected there is no guarantee that we will
immediately have a steady supply.
Tomatoes can be fickle at first; they blush and flirt with ripeness one
day but seemingly have a change of heart and cool the next. Of course in our hearts and memories tomatoes
are always ripe on the first of July and by the last week of that month the inquires
really begin to increase in number and intensity.
“So do you think the tomatoes will be ready next week?”
“Well…”
“Well…?”
“Maybe in another couple of weeks?” We attempt to keep our promises vague less we
should be forsworn by those spiteful tomato plants.
“I heard they have Blight up in New Hampshire. Do you think that is going to be a problem
this season?”
“Well…”
Blight seems to be the second most common question we get
about tomatoes. No one really asks what
the blight is exactly. It is assumed to
be just one of those ominous, unstoppable forces of insidious evil shifting
unpredictably all around us and always surging closer, looming and pressing at
the edges of this small but happy agrarian paradise and threatening total
annihilation. This assumption is pretty
much accurate. Blight is our blanket
term to cover a number of diseases that can afflict our tomato plants over the
course of the season. Usually when we refer to blight we mean Early Blight,
Powdery Mildew, or Late Blight. Blight
may injury the plants, reduce yields or outright kill our tomatoes depending on
what variety of blight we are dealing with and how badly the plants are
afflicted. Blight, once present on our
plants, is progressive, un-treatable with organic remedies and ultimately
terminal. Now that I have hopefully
scared you badly enough to start stockpiling bottled water, duct tape and
plastic sheeting here is the good news.
Blight may be inevitable but it isn’t always the boogey man we make it
out to be. We have had many great tomato
years with weeks of prolific harvests while afflicted with Early Blight and
Powdery Mildew. Even Late Blight, the
heavy weight of the tomato blight game, isn’t a total season ender with many
resistant tomato varieties now available.
In addition to making good disease resistant selections we put a ton of
work into making sure our tomatoes grow in cultural conditions favorable to
plant health.
This season our tomato plants are looking very good with
lots of strong vine growth and an abundance of fruit. You may have noticed that I put a little
caveat next to tomatoes in the “This weeks Share” section. The second week of August is a pretty average
date of first tomato harvest for us but keep in mind that first harvests are
rarely best harvests when it comes to tomatoes.
If we are lucky, tomatoes will peak in a couple of weeks and continue to
produce straight through September and into early October. Hopefully by that time everyone will have
gotten their fill of tomatoes. I wanted
to clarify this point because during the first week when tomatoes are distributed
in the share room we often have to limit how many tomatoes each shareholder can
bring home. This results in our being
asked the third most common tomato question.
“What am I suppose to do with one Tomatoe?”
Well…here’s a list of suggestions to make use of your
limited supply of tomatoes this week and make sure to check the CSA Recipe Blog for more
great ideas.
- BLTs
- Gazpacho, heavy on the cucumbers
- Salsa
- Tomato sliders with Burrata, basil and olive oil balsamic drizzle
- Sliced and grilled on Kebabs
- Mixed Salads
- Omelettes
- Au natural with salt and pepper
- Let the your tomato continue to ripen on the sill for several weeks then bring it with you to the theatre
