Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we'll have sweet corn, eggplant, a cucumber, summer squash and zukes, green beans, beets, red potatoes, onions, garlic, kale and collards, cabbage, and a taste of basil.  The sweet corn on Monday will be Incredible from last week and some very nice Bodacious for this week, so you can pick which maturity you like.  I think there might be a enough Bodacious in this planting that we'll have some for freezer corn on the weekend, but I'm not making any promises after the corn surprises of last week.   I'll let you know of Friday if we'll have some.

Eggplant, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and beans continue to set much less fruit than we would like.  Peppers are even more behind and won't be ready to pick for at least a couple more weeks.  But we'll harvest everything we can find for you, and maybe the slightly cooler week we're expecting will allow more fruit to set for next time.  The beans have been especially disappointing.  They plants look pretty good, and they are loaded, loaded, loaded with blooms.  Just not too many beans, so they are VERY slow to pick.   I have enough data now to tell you that the summer crops, like the things we are getting this month, are making somewhere between 25% to 50% of normal yield, tending more to the 25% to 30% neighborhood.  It's a lot of work for just a little crop, but maybe if we keep the plants alive and the weather turns around, we'll have some very good crops for late summer.  Gotta hope so.

We had .8" of very nice rain on Wednesday night.  It soaked in about 2 1/2" into the soil and was present for a couple of days.  By Saturday when I started planting fall crops, it was totally dry again.  One great thing about the mid-week rain was that it gave me a chance to do some tillage for fall crops.  I've been reluctant to get on the tractor and till dry soil, partly because it's damaging for the soil, but mostly because I think it would be too dangerous for me to work in the thick cloud of dust that the tiller stirs up.  But, the rain held the dust down and I was able to get quite a lot of prep work done on Friday.   We had an additional .1" (if I am generous) this morning.  Every little bit helps now.  One consequence of such dry soil is that the organic material that I till in to build the soil and get rid of the previous crop doesn't get decomposed because the soil microbes don't have enough moisture to live right now.  So the residue remains and makes planting and cultivating more complicated.  I sure didn't see that one coming when I thought about what it would be like to farm in a drought!

Now comes the big puzzle.  How to figure out what to plant and where to plant it.  Fall brassicas like arugula and broccoli can't go back into places where there were spring brassicas like cabbage and turnips.   Too much disease risk.  Some things like lettuce and beets have to go inside the deer fence, so you don't want to waste space in there on things that don't require protection.  Then you need to find a place with the row the right length, and enough room to the next row, and with good enough tillage, and with access to an irrigation line to plant each of the other fall things.  Usually it's easier.  I just put the fall crops in the potato fields where I have plenty of room and nice loose soil and no diseases that can jump from potatoes to the fall crops.  Can't do that this year because the potato fields can't be irrigated.   It's a pretty big jumble.  A challenging mind bender.

Because I've had enough excitement this summer, I'm delaying the open house that is supposed to be next Sunday afternoon.  Most of you probably don't have it on your calendar, but if you do, scratch it out please.   We'll do it later in the summer when it's not so hot and I'm not so preoccupied.  If there's something you want to see before then, please feel free to look around.  You're welcome in the gardens any time.  But you might have to pull some big weeds if you're out there strolling around and I catch you.

Here's an interesting story about the unintended consequences of breeding tomatoes for all-over red color, maybe explains why modern hybrids aren't always as good as the goofy looking old-timers.  And here's a site with twelve marvelous recipes for grilled eggplant.  Now, if I can just get you twelve eggplant so you can try every recipe!

Please remember to buy your SE Linn Community Center raffle tickets.  Your donations help us keep the doors open.   Only $1 each.

See you this week,

Laura