Tuesday, September 25, 2012

14th CSA Week


Sure was alot of rain over the weekend!!!  The garden was soaked for a few days but was not too bad to work in today.  Lovely harvest weather today although the winds this evening were a tad chilly at the Culinary pick-up location.

This weeks large share had carrots, French breakfast radishes, parsnips, winter squash (choice between; red kuri, butternut, acorn, buttercup, spaghetti, delicata and pie pumpkins), leeks, tomatoes, lettuce mix, hardy mix (baby tatsoi, purple mustard and red kale), peppers & broccoli or cauliflower.  The grab bins were busting at the seams with kale, dill, cilantro, parsley, onions, broccoli, cabbage, zucchini, cucumbers & more of the above mentioned veggies.  I had to bring a third table to be able to hold all of the grab choices.



The french breakfast radishes were pristine.  I had covered them right after planting with hoops and row covers to ensure "nobody" would munch the leaves making them less than pretty.  They looked amazing and are so crisp and tasty!!  Lovely.





Parsnips usually taste better after a frost as they tend to become sweeter but I thought I would start harvesting them this week to give people something new in the boxes.  Almost everyone was so excited to see them in the boxes!!  We have three rows of about 260' length each and we discovered while digging on Monday that one row has much bigger parsnips.  I looked in my planting map and it showed that I had planted two different varieties.  One variety must have a bit smaller seed so more seeds fell through the seed plate.  Good thing for field notes as I'll not want to plant the smaller seeded parsnips next year, they really should have been thinned about 1 month ago to ensure good size.  Oh the things we learn.



This coming Sunday is farm day in the city in downtown Charlottetown from 11-5pm.  It's part of the fall flavours events and I will be there along with a few fellow growers so stop on by and say hello if you get a chance.  I'm really hoping for nice weather but of course as of right now its saying "periods of rain".  I'm just hoping the weather man is wrong and it'll turn out to be a lovely day.

Red kuri & pie pumpkins

Delicata winter squash

 

The first of the winter squash got harvested late last week.  Still a tonne left to pick.


Pie pumpkins!!!



We live in a very popular spot for geese.  The fields all around us are a frequent stop over on their journey.  The boys love hearing them fly over.




Fall greens being uncovered for the first time since planting.  They looked perfect.


Purple mustard, part of our "hardy mix"
Arugula!!!




Cauliflower ready for harvest

Still wrapped up and not quite ready









Still cucumbers and zucchini although their plants are quickly dying off.


Ben was sitting down reading one of my seed catalogues the other day.  He was obsessed with the two tomato pages. 

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