CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  this box has salad mix, cabbage, onions, shallots, garlic, potatoes, beets carrots, rutabaga, and Shogoin radish.

Field Notes.  spring is coming!  Monday we had daytime temperatures in the fifties.  Monday night it did not freeze.  The snow is coming off the greenhouses and the air and soil temperature is warming.  Ken monitors and soon the soil will be warm enough for seeds and transplants.

Ken has been planting crops that will be transplanted once the soil appears and warms - onions for one.  Onions depend on length of day and they are one of the crops Ken plants first each season.  

Although they may not look like much, these trays are Walla Walla , storage, and red onions and leeks.

Ken has also been planting greens for harvest as micro greens.  We do micro greens in winter for a couple reasons.  First they are a nutritional power house, and second that is what we can do in our window space during winter.  so when days are short and things grow slowly we harvest each month.  During prime greens season, we can grow a head of lettuce in about eight weeks.  This is a more efficient use of seed, space and time.

From the Kitchen.  Here we are in spring - it is egg season!  As the days lengthen, hens we have fed all winter start laying eggs.  And so we use eggs in creative ways:  

Since we have had squash for a long season already, I will cook up squash and mix with a beaten egg and cook in some butter in a skillet - it puffs up and seals in herbs or spices.  Today I used curry.  I also top with chopped toasted nuts.  Or cook atop sauteed onions.

I also make squash soup with spicy sausage and crushed red pepper.

The Shogoin radish is very similar to a daikon - a little more bulbous and a little sweeter.  I often grate them and use them in salad and they are also good in soup.  Enjoy them raw or cooked.

It is also a great time for hash browns using potatoes and rutabagas.  I also do "American fries by peeling cubing and precooking potatoes and rutabagas and then frying them up with a chopped onion.  Delicious!

This box ends our 2013 - 2014 season.  In response to requests for more winter harvests we will add one harvest per month in January, February and March 2015.  Sign up soon to avoid a gap in great vegetables! Thanks and until April, 
Judith