>Summer Week 1: Salad, Spinach, and Pea Shoots

>THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
Clockwise from Left:
• Mixed Salad Greens
• “Dinosaur” Spinach
• Pea Shoots
• Scallions
• Baby Bok Choi

Welcome Summer!

I want to welcome all of you to our wacky summer, after a crazy, wacky spring. We had so much interest in our subscription program this year, much more so than in previous years. I’m not sure if it’s because I finally updated our website this winter, or if all the fuel prices and concurrent food prices are pushing everyone a little harder into eating closer to home. Whatever the reason, it’s exciting, and we’re so happy to have all of you!

After so much prolonged winter/spring, “Junuary” weather, finally it broke last weekend and we have been hustling to catch up. We are so behind in planting a lot of things, but then there’s not much we could do about it. Two weeks ago, when the sun broke out last, we hurried to get some ground ready and throw what we could into the ground before the rain came again—I think we had two days—one day to dry up the soil a bit, and another day to get it ready and plant. I got all of the pole beans planted that day, and 1000′ of bush green beans. Then it rained for nearly a week, and it was cold. Too cold. The spinach and peas thrived in it, the lettuce and cabbages were soaking up all that water. But it was just too cold for the beans. I poked around in those rows and all I came up with was mushy, slimy remains of bean seeds. I was crushed. That never happens to us. But, it did this year—$50 of seed, and two weeks lost to rain. But, at least all of my special pole beans germinated—all of them. That includes my four heirloom Italian varieties of shelling beans, the romano beans, and my experimental patch of green string beans. All are ok, and that’s a relief, because all that Italian seed was very expensive, and it took over a month to get it here. There wouldn’t have been time to replant. The bush beans are more expendable. I’ll be replanting Thursday and won’t really have lost much time—we’ll still be picking green beans by late July. Not too bad.

The peas are gloriously happy and one variety is blooming, so shelling peas are only a few weeks away. You can see for yourselves how happy the spinach is—hence the name this week. We don’t plan on having salad mixes regularly in the summer because it’s a lot of work to prepare it for so many of you, but it’s ready early, and the head lettuces won’t be big enough for another two weeks or so.

It looks like we’re off to a bit of a slow start, but there is so much promise in the wings. Just expect a lot of green for the first few weeks—it will all start changing before you know it. In about four weeks we’ll have tons of peas, lettuce, baby beets. In about six weeks we’ll have broccoli, new potatoes, summer squash, and basils. Hopefully we’ll get the tomatoes going here and they’ll catch up quickly in the greenhouse. But no July tomatoes this year—it will be more like August. Rest assured, no matter what happens we’ll be able to feed you though, and you won’t get bored!