Yes, the summer crops are starting to grow even faster than they had been.  Here is a shot of a Delicata squash, just a wee little one that I photographed on the June 26th. The winter squash plants are filled with blossoms and growing like mad.  The beans too… flowers when I last looked, and a few tiny beans popped out last week.

I’m usually on the farm four days, and then back up at my cabin in Eldora working on my Colorado Local Sustainability projects and trying to move them forward.  Usually during the few days I’m away from the farm, new growth keeps popping up, and I’m blown away when I get back down there.  Just the other day Tracy said not only are the winter squash growing like mad, but the beans are producing, and the zucchini plants have a bunch of zucchini’s growing!  Wow, kind of crazy since I didn’t even remember seeing flowers on those plants last Thursday.  

I’ll have to see where things are at when I’m back at the farm Tuesday, but is sounds like zucchini and green beans might not be that far off for our CSA members, wholesale customers, and the farm stand!

I’d also like to mention that as the heat of the summer hits us, some of the cool weather crops are winding down.  Many of the greens are starting to bolt (go to seed), and are near the end of this life cycle.  When I last checked, there are still several varieties of lettuce that seemed fine.  Hopefully the slower to bolt varieties will keep producing a bit longer.  We are also out of radishes and getting close to the end of the turnips.  I’ll be replanting all of those items for late summer & fall harvests.  With those items going away, we have the summer crops to look forward to!  Two varieties of beans, three varieties of summer squash, three types of eggplant, five or more varieties of tomatoes, a couple types of bell peppers and a whole bunch of hot peppers.  Can’t wait!

Wow!  What a great 4th harvest!  Here you see Aimee and Gabriel holding a full share box… totally over-flowing.  Things are really starting to grow like crazy and we’re happy to be providing you with more food.  Tracy & I were thinking about it last night, and we are quite sure our CSA members got a deal on that box! Add that up at your local market…

And as Tracy said in the newsletter, “I dare ya to eat that all before next Weds!”

Our third harvest for our CSA was a nice one!  A good variety and bigger quantities. We’re looking forward to the summer crops when they start producing.  The beans, squash, tomatoes and various other plants are growing nicely.

I’d also like to point out that I’ve added a Harvest Totals page to our site.  Each week I’ll be adding what and how much we’ve added to the full share boxes.

Last Thursday the weather forecast was calling for hail and we scrambled to try to cover everything with row cover in hopes of protecting the plants. The hail never came. Sunday I was driving up Boulder Canyon on my way back to my cabin in Eldora and it started to hail. More of the slushball type of hail, but I was a bit concerned. Got home and heard Fort Collins was getting hit by heavy rain and hail, and then heard about tornados. I checked in with Tracy and she said we did get some small hail, but everything in the garden was okay. Phew!

Later that evening I heard that Happy Heart CSA in Fort Collins got a beating with 3 inches of hail. Dennis posted it on his Facebook page and didn’t know the extent of the damage at that time… other than plants had been shredded or smashed down. It was really wonderful to see the supportive response from his CSA members who were also on Facebook. So many folks expressing how happy they were to be supporting his CSA, for better or worse, and many offering to lend a helping hand in whatever way they could. That is the true spirit of the CSA model!

Sending good wishes to Dennis & crew, as well as any other farms who got crop damage from the hail…

Thanks to our working share members, and our regular share members for a fine start to our CSA! Here are a few shots of our harvest, getting boxes ready, and some of our CSA members at pick up time. It was great to see everyone, and to meet those of you who we had yet to meet. Thanks for your support, and we look forward to bigger and better harvests as the season progresses!

Today will be the first harvest day for our CSA! We plan to include the following in your first box:

Radishes
Arugula
Collards
“Rouge” Lettuce
Mixes sauté greens (Spinach, Chard, Rapini, turnip greens)
Basil tops

Check back later tonight or Thursday for harvest photos!

Wow, we’ve definitely been getting some much needed moisture! I’m sure the plants are loving it. It looks like rain is in the forecast for the week or so… love the moisture, but I am missing the sun!

Over the weekend we managed to get some work done in between the rain. On Monday, Tracy, Neil, and I got caught up on planting seedlings and seeding some more rows. If Weds is free of rain, we’ll get the final seedlings planted, seed a few more rows, and then the weeding begins… again. Amazing how fast the weeds grow, but once the veggies are growing bigger, they will help crowd out the weeds. That is already happening with one row of arugula.

Overall, things are looking great! Some items are going a little slower than expected, but I heard a similar comment from another farmer. I think with all this rain, hopefully followed by some warm sunny days, things will start to explode in the garden. (Exploding growth, that is…)

So far, the hardest part about farming for me is keeping up with my farm notes. I’m keeping detailed notes on each item planted, with detail on when it was seeded, when it germinated and at what percent, transplants, and all of that detail. I’m getting most of the detail, but once in a while is miss a detail here and there. For anyone doing a farm (especially just beginning one), take good notes!

One example of not so good note-taking: Being that we have two very small hobby-sized greenhouses, we combined different varieties of seed in seedling trays. I had great notes for the initial seeding. Once the seedlings were ready to transplant into a bigger seedling trays, I had okay notes–to missing notes. It is definitely very important to keep tight notes when the seedlings are playing musical chairs. So, for some tomatoes and peppers, we’ll have to wait until they fruit before we know which plant is which. Sigh.

One lesson learned here is keep detailed notes! The other is one seedling tray, one seed variety… no mixed trays as we did this year. For the number of seeds we started in the greenhouse, that means we need more space than the two small greenhouses we have. Next year we’ll setup a larger hoophouse for our plant starts.

Today Tracy, Jillian, Bunny, Jenny and Leslie helped plant a ton of seedlings! We’ve planted most of the basil seedlings, a good deal of the tomatoes, eggplant, and various peppers. We ended up with more tomato plants and pepper plants than we originally planned. That is okay since we’ll probably have more to sell at the farm stand and to restaurants.

Neil helped Tracy start planting the basil and tomatoes while I cut openings for the plants in the ground cloth. Lots of stuff going in the ground this week….