Hello Everyone,

It’s been a dry summer and we’ve been waiting and hoping for some
rain. Many of the scattered storms that have been about have missed us
and we finally had to hand water most of the recently transplanted
lettuces last week or risk losing many of them. Now it seems we’re
headed into a rainy stretch for the first half of this week. Rain is
of course critical for the crops, but it can be a mixed blessing.

Long periods of damp and overcast conditions accelerates the spread of
diseases in the tomatoes and in other crops as well. These conditions
also make the harvesting more of a challenge.  The flood of tomatoes
we’ve seen over the past 2 weeks is beginning to ebb, as most of the
early varieties have produced their crop and succumbed to disease. We
are bringing in a lot more plum tomatoes now, there are still
heirlooms that will continue to produce and we are still picking lots
of the cherries.

The melon bonanza is also starting to slow, but we will still have
them in the shares for  the next couple of weeks. Eggplant production
continues to be slow, so we will probably be in the every other week
rotation for a while. The first planting of edamame soybeans is ready,
so we will be harvesting the 60 or 70% that the groundhogs have not
destroyed as weather permits this week. We will likely offer them as a
choice with the string beans.

We have been busy transplanting lots of broccoli, cabbage and
cauliflower over the past couple of weeks. I have also seeded many
other fall crops, such as spinach, turnips, broccoli raab, arugula,
and other mustard greens. I will be continuing to make successive
planting of these crops over the next month, until about the third
week in September, in order to provide you with ample quantities of
greens during the second half of the season.

The share for this week will be: Potatoes, white onions, tomatoes,
string beans or edamames, peppers, savoy cabbage, carrots, melons or
watermelons, choice of ground cherries or cherry tomatoes, and choice
of an herb.

Enjoy!
Farmer John