CSA Report Complete with Schedule for Rest of Season

[Scott Hertzberg]

We needed that rain. Things have been so dry that we have not been able to plow. Now with the ground soaked we plowed a lot more ground in preparation of planting fall crops like kale, arugula and turnips.   Your shares this week included potatoes, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, watermelon and peppers organically grown by us and corn once again from Joe Goldsmith’s farm south us in Brandywine Maryland. Depending on when you showed up for pick up, you also received some early salad greens or fingerling potatoes instead of the greens.   Most years we don’t have greens until mid-September but I planted a small amount mid-summer to see how they would do. They came out pretty well and we are going to try to have more mid-summer greens in the future.   Most of the tomatoes this week were from the greenhouse. The greenhouse has saved the CSA’s ass this year. This spring the strawberries in the greenhouse did much better than those in the field at our farm Tomatoes planted in the same rows right after the strawberries were done and pulled out of the ground also did much better than anything out in the open field. Across the northeast, other farmers experienced better results in greenhouses like ours that prevent all the disease out in the field caused by the cold, wet spring and early summer.   Planting strawberries and tomatoes in the same ground is not advisable because they share the same plant diseases. With only one large greenhouse, I had no choice but to disregard the textbooks and take a risk. We came out pretty well but it’s time to stop pushing our luck in that one greenhouse. As I have said before, we got to put up at least two more decent sized greenhouses this fall. I’m thinking two smaller houses on wood skids that can be pulled to new spots with the tractor.   Some of the watermelons we grew are suburb. Others we know are, to be frank, messed up in the middle. This is from being left unpicked in the field too long in the intense August heat. This is only the second year we have grown watermelons so we are just learning the art of harvesting them at the right point. If you got a bum watermelon, we hope you were able to salvage much of the outer part.  Jug Bay Market Garden is very much a work in progress. This is our eight year farming. Our goal as stated in the Jug Bay Market Garden Master Plan is to be able to grow well everything the CSA requires by our 15th season.   Farm management has finalized the CSA schedule for the rest of the season. The accounting department says we just completed week 14 of 20. I lose count after a few weeks so I figure they are right. Any how, here are the days we will have pickups and the weeks we will skip because of holidays and to give fall crops time to do their growing. We’ll also post this schedule on the website at jugbaymarketgarden.com and on the CSA blog.   August 31: Pickup September 7: NO pickup. Labor Day. September 14: Pickup September 21: Pickup Sept. 28: NO pickup. Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Episcopalian Calendar October 5: Pickup October 12 No pickup. Columbus Day Weekend October 19  Pickup October 26  Penultimate Pickup     Some things to look for in your shares the next month or so   Next week, your shares will include tomatoes, corn, eggplant, okra, garlic and herbs. We will also try to include heirloom tomatoes and squash again from Parkers farm near us in Prince Georges and perhaps collards again.   On September 14 and 21st we plan to have turnips, kale and mustard from Ronald Zimmerman’s farm. He is the same farmer who grew a lot of peas for the CSA at the beginning of the season. Ronald starts his fall greens very early and tends to have them before us. If all goes well, we should start to have a lot of our own greens by late September. During the next few CSA distributions we also plan to include red peppers and a few other things from other farms that we have not had much of from our farm this season.   One final note, a lot of CSA members have been asking about the Great Horned Owl pictured on the farm website. Great Horned Owl joined the farm management team in late March when he got caught one night in the wire fencing around the free range chickens. After a naturalist from Jug Bay park came to untangle him     I hope you enjoy your share this week,   Scott