Summer Week 4

Like Christmas in July. Sugar Snap Peas!

THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• Sugar Snap Peas
• “Irish Cobbler” New Potatoes (best steamed, roasted, or boiled)
• Fresh “Spanish Roja” Garlic
• Beet Greens
• Salad Greens
• Purslane (click on the link for recipe ideas)
• Fresh Dill (try it in a potato salad, or chop up and add some to your green salad)

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

COMING SOON:
Baby Carrots
Spinach
Fennel
Green Beans

Hot weather means we need to water. The problem is, everything needs water at the same time. It’s not too difficult for the crops that we plant in black plastic mulch, because we use drip irrigation tape underneath. It’s just the flip of a switch. The drip tape conserves water, and the black plastic holds in the moisture. Everything else uses sprinklers, and there are only so many of them around here, so we end up moving the pipes around all day long to make sure everything gets wet.

Honeybees need water too! We shut off the sprinklers and the honeybees came in for a drink.

The animals need water as well, and that includes the bees. I caught them sneaking water from the puddles left behind after shutting down the sprinklers. We don’t think about insects needing water, but they do. There’s not enough moisture in flower nectar.

This is the busiest time of year for us, and now that Teo is happily married and back from his honeymoon we can work towards getting caught up. We have many crops still to plant, and it’s time to get the winter crops in the ground as well. AND they all need to be weeded and kept clean and watered, even though we won’t harvest much of them for several months.

The cucumbers are starting to bloom—two weeks until we are overrun with fruits!

When we push to get so much work done in a short time, it’s all the more rewarding to find glimpses of the rewards, like the first cucumber and squash blossoms. Or to dig the first new potatoes.

Have a great week!