Two Feet in the Dirt

It looks like scorching temperatures are in store for us this week. With highs at the end of the week topping out near 100 degrees, it will be the hottest weather we’ve seen this summer. This is definitely a challenge as we are at the height of our fall transplanting and it’s a tough choice to decide whether it’s better to hold off on planting seedlings to spare them the heat or risk the heat in order to get them out of the seedling trays that they are beginning to outgrow. Besides just the heat, we’re also struggling with extremely low rainfall. Until a series of thunderstorms yesterday, we hadn’t gotten any significant precipitation in over two weeks and, even after yesterday’s rain, the soil is still incredibly dry. While we have most of our planted beds on an irrigation system, it can still be hard to get the soil wet enough when putting in new seedlings in the heat given how dry everything is. 

With tomatoes continuing to peak, we actually harvested even more cherry tomatoes than last week, which is hard to believe! My two-plus hours of cherry tomato harvesting on Monday were at least made a bit more fun by having our son Caleb’s help and commentary throughout the process. He enjoyed helping harvest the cherry tomatoes last summer and asked if he could help again this year. It’s amazing to see how much he has improved over the past year and it was fun to have someone to talk with while picking for hours!

This week’s harvest list is below. We’ll look forward to seeing you at the markets this weekend!

Farmers Katie & Mike

Harvest List:

• Lettuce salad mix
• Arugula
• Slicing tomatoes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Rainbow Chard
• Beets
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Beans
• Eggplant
• Garlic
• Okra