CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This box has  lettuce and salad greens, carrots, chard, green onions, turnips, celery, radishes or daikon radish, and the first cucumbers, zucchini and raspberries.

Field Notes.  Ken is in the final planning of fall plantings.  This involves not only figuring out what we will put in the root cellar, but also calculating how long crops will take as days shorten. This is very different from spring planting when days are lengthening and heat is on the rise.

Ken is picking about every other day - cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes.  Soon we will make decisions on peppers.  Do we focus on ripe peppers or green peppers.  Picking green peppers means the plant will keep making peppers at a faster rate than if we allow them to ripen.  Ripe peppers take longer and have less shelf life.  That is why ripe peppers cost more than green ones. Many of our CSA members and on line customers prefer ripe peppers.   We do as well.  Ken will probably balance requests for green peppers with those for ripe ones.

From the Kitchen.  Chard, a summer green, is a cousin of spinach and beets.  We like chard in any recipe for greens - I usually braise it, and it is nice in cooked egg dishes. I like to cut out the stems and chop them and cook them a bit longer than the greens which only need wilting - similar to bok choy or Chinese cabbage. We have LOTS so if you want some to blanch and freeze for winter, contact us soon.

Cucumber and zucchini!  These members of the cucurbit family are often the first  heat loving crops  followed by the nightshades or solanaceae family of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants.  Ken often runs a fork lengthwise down the cucumber to form thin lines that break the skin and look nice.  We both slice and salt an let stand about a half hour.  I often add a yogurt dressing and sliced onion or an Asian dressing with tamari, sweet wine, hot pepper, and some sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds.