Summer Week 9: More Bounty!

Finally, the first carrots of the year are ready. Hopefully they'll last a while.

THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• Fava Beans
• Yellow Snap Beans
• Big, Beautiful Lettuce
• Sweet Onions
• Zucchini and/or Summer Squash
• Carrots
• Thyme

Click on the links above for information and recipes about these crops.

COMING SOON:
Green Beans
Purslane
Cucumbers
Basil
Fennel

Fresh Yellow Snap Beans

The snap beans are finally ready to pick. I don’t know if we’ll be able to u-pick this patch because it is very weedy. Not just ordinary weeds, but with something called “wild buckwheat”. It looks like a morning glory vine, but it’s actually in the buckwheat family. It creates a viny tangle though, very hard to work through, and impossible to rototill because it winds up in the tines of the machine. So, we slowly pick our way through to get the camouflaged beans. There will be another patch, close to the farmstand. You WILL be able to pick those when they are ready, toward the end of the month.

Beautiful lettuce again this week. This one is called "Flashy Green Butter Oak". Frank Morton, in Oregon, has taken to breeding amazing varieties of lettuce. This is one of the prettiest.

We are back to heads of lettuce again. The salad mix was a fill-in item. I wish we had more heads of it, but one of my new favorites is “Flashy Green Butter Oak.” There is a man nearby who spends his time developing new, beautiful lettuce varieties. Not hybrids, but just cross-pollinating different strains. This one is beautiful, tasty, and quick to mature. One of his tastiest is “Blushed Butter Cos”, but it hasn’t done well so far this summer. It doesn’t appreciate temperature fluctuations.

The heat has been fun for the kids. Cosmo loves to get muddy and dirty. Della just loves the sprinklers. Look for more produce to come. Unfortunately the broccoli hasn’t done well. Sadly, the heads are small and most flowered while we waited for them to size up. Broccoli doesn’t appreciate the swings between hot and cold either. Too temperamental. It was doing fine while the weather was cool, but as soon as it got hot it bolted and ran away. Don’t fret too much though, a new patch of broccoli and cauliflower has gone in the ground and should be ready toward the end of September when the weather is nice and cool.