Two Feet in the Dirt

We finished the big job of harvesting the garlic this week, which means that our longest planted beds are empty at last. Garlic goes into the ground in early November and spends over 8 months growing before being ready for harvest. As it’s our first year farming in this location, we had to put on our thinking caps to figure out where to dry all of the garlic, a process that is essential both for the cured garlic we are all used to buying and for saving our “seed garlic” which will be planted this fall for next year’s crop. After some research by Mike, we came up with a pretty nifty technique using metro shelving to hang the garlic and then hanging the shelving from our front porch ceiling, which definitely gives our front porch a unique appearance! We’ll start having cured garlic in a few weeks once the drying process is complete, but for now make sure to pick up some fresh garlic, which is only available for a few weeks each year and which, as I mentioned last week, I actually prefer.

Otherwise, we’re spending more and more of our time on the summer harvest. I picked the first cherry tomatoes in the field this week and the cherry tomatoes in the hoop house are starting to produce like crazy! The cucumbers and zucchini are still going strong and the eggplant production is really starting to ramp up as well.

Check out this week’s harvest list below for a full round up of this week’s crops and we’ll see you at market!

Farmers Katie & Mike

This week at the market:

• Cucumber
• Summer Squash
• String beans
• Jalapeno peppers
• Beets
• Carrots
• Lettuce salad mix
• New potatoes
• Basil
• Kale (large leaf)
• Rainbow chard
• Piracicaba Broccoli
• Storage onions
• Eggplant
• Fresh garlic
• Cherry tomatoes