Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden.  This week's CSA box has fall greens - lettuce, spinach and braising greens, a pie pumpkin, onions or leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage or kohlrabi, parsley, apples and raspberries.

]Field Notes.  The "big dig" has begun!  Each fall Ken starts digging roots for winter storage.  Last weekend he dug the potatoes.  I sorted and boxed them up for the root cellar.  All month we will be adding storage vegetables like celery root, carrots, beets, daikon and black radishes.

As he takes out crops, Ken plants green manures so the soil is covered over the winter and to add back what we have taken instead of mining the soil.  Plant matter also tempers soil temperature so microbes can survive.

Although we have not had a hard frost, most of the heat loving crops are slowing down.  

From the Kitchen. Well even though there has not been a hard frost, we have had some cool nights and lighting the oven feels good.  We have been baking potatoes, roasting vegetables with meats, and baking squash and pumpkins that had blemishes.  We eat the pumpkin when baked and use any leftover in soups and heat in butter for a second meal.  Pumpkins tend to be more moist than most squash and I have a couple recipes for pumpkin bread and cookies.

'Til Next Week, Judith