Thanks to everyone who came out to the Bluegrass Picnic on Saturday, and thanks to Old Cold Tater for entertaining us with some lovely bluegrass tunes. We had a beautiful afternoon for a picnic. Everyone seemed to enjoy the delicious desserts and the kids certainly seemed to enjoy climbing on the tractors! If you missed out on Saturday, you'll get another chance to hear Old Cold Tater (and climb on tractors) at the Harvest Dinner in October.
This week we're hoping to get the last of our winter squash, gourds, tomatillos, hot peppers, and 2nd cuke planting into the ground. The past month has been a flurry of transplanting, and while I think the crew's done a really great job keeping up with our schedule this year, as always, there are a few things that are just going to have to go in the ground a little late. June is always tough because we still have lots of things to seed and transplant, the weeds really start to take off, and suddenly we have to start spending half our days harvesting. I'm looking forward to hopefully having some time to tackle more weeding projects! I particularly have my eye on our tomato, eggplant and pepper field, and the nutsedge that is popping up in between those plants.
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| Nutsedge popping up through plastic mulch | |
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Nutsedge is a particularly tenacious perennial weed affecting several of our fields. It's a grass-like plant that grows mainly from tubers (which are edible) that send out underground stems called rhizomes. In a single year, one tuber can send out rhizomes
producing 1,900 new plants and 7,000 new tubers. The tubers can remain viable for up to 3 years, and each tuber has up to 7 buds and enough energy to sprout (and sometimes re-sprout) them all. That means that even when you pull out the plant, if the tuber remains in the ground, you'll see new plants popping up in no time. Another challenge with nutsedge is that unlike many of our other common weeds (like lamb's quarter, pigweed and purslane), nutsedge is capable of poking through the thick layers of straw and the black plastic mulch that we put down in our fields to keep down weed growth. In a "nutshell" (sorry - I couldn't help myself!), controlling nutsedge organically is quite challenging - basically you just have to keep cultivating and hand weeding it in the hope of eventually just wearing it out. Fortunately, we have a fantastic crew that is ready to wage war on this persistent weed! In the next week you'll probably see us out in Field 5 hoeing and hand-weeding away.
What's in the share: Lettuce, Greens, Kale, Napa Cabbage, Kohlrabi, Fennel, Scallions, Radishes, Hakurei Salad Turnips, PYO strawberries, PYO peas (sugar snap, snow peas and shelling peas), PYO herbs.
New this week: Red Ace Beets, PYO Dill, and PYO Cilantro.
Be sure to check out our
Recipes blog for ideas on how to prepare your veggies.
