Even while we are just getting started on harvesting some of our summer crops, August is a sprint for the finish line production-wise. This week the very last of our successive plantings will go into the greenhouse. And through the middle of next month, we will be making the last plantings of the crops that we seed directly into the field, like carrots, beets, scallions, parsley, cilantro and snap peas. Relative to our spring and early summer plantings, these last plantings will be larger. Because they will be maturing during the shorter and cooler days of fall we will have a much longer window in which to harvest them. A well timed August/September planting can carry us a good way into winter for harvesting. A good illustration of this is the herb cilantro, which literally gives us a week to harvest it before it sends up a seeder stalk during the late spring/early summer. A September planting, on the other hand, slows so much that we can harvest from it for months.
At our new Lewis Road farm, we are primarily planting things that mature fairly quickly, like radishes, arugula, mei quin choi, Tokyo market turnips, and the like. Because the soil there is sandy and prone to erosion, we plan to take them out of production and plant cover crops early in fall. One exception is the field where we have planted the first of our avocado trees. The field we chose is ideally suited for the purpose—sandy well-drained soil, south facing, and situated high enough on the hillside so that it should be protected from frost during the winter. The variety we chose is Lamb-Hass, a third generation descendant of Hass that is very productive and has great flavor.
As with any new piece of land, there has been a learning curve in getting to know the Lewis Road ground. We have had many successes and a few failures there this year. We had some plantings of carrots, cucumbers, and peppers that have not done well due to soil borne pests or diseases. But one thing we have found does exceptionally well there is beans. In heavier soils, the seeds are prone to rot before they germinate. But the Lewis Road soil is so well drained that we get beautiful stands of seedlings. And because beans are in the legume family and capable of fixing their own nitrogen, they are well suited to soils with low residual nitrogen. Beginning next week, the first of the filet beans will start to appear in your boxes and in the weeks after that we will be harvesting shell beans, romano and regular green beans.
We are harvesting the first of the padron peppers to balance out the strawberry shares this week, as our strawberry production is starting to drop off in the second-year berry patch. We’re growing the padrons at our home farm. Unlike most peppers, which need hot growing conditions, the padrons do fine in a cooler climate. Because they are essentially harvested prematurely, they don’t need heat to give them color and size. It also means they take forever to harvest, which is why they are so expensive to buy. Padron peppers are worth it, though. We’ll put more in the boxes next week, so you’ll all get them soon.
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