In addition to helping out with some research and evaluation of innovative, European weed control equipment, we’ve been busy keeping up with planting and such around here. Our winter squash and pumpkins recently went out into the field (we’re growing a mix of different kinds: butternuts and butter cups, some kabochas and — our favorite — delicata), and we’ve also set out some fennel, beets, zucchini, eggplant and cucumbers. Growth on some crops is really astounding (tomatoes), others are sort of disappointing (spinach and onions). It’s still early in the season, though, and hopefully our soils will warm up and breath some new life into those struggling crops. A lot of our main season CSA crops are growing well and the brassicas (kale, kohlrabi, cabbage, cauliflower and such) are looking really nice. So far, we’ve been able to keep more or less ahead of weeds, too. And we’re harvesting! For now, just limited quantities of salad, radish, turnips and garlic for farmers market, but we’re hoping to reintroduce ourselves to our restaurant customers this weekend.

The start of harvest season is great because, of course, we start to see more money come in, but it’s also a nice reminder that the CSA season will be starting soon. Still kind of early for us to pinpoint an exact start date, but keep your eyes on that first or second week of July. At the May cook out, a shareholder from last year mentioned that she liked how the CSA started a bit of later than other CSAs because that meant that it also ran later into the fall. Well, another benefit is that the shares will be able to start with some veggies that you can really sink your teeth into, not just bags and bags of greens.

Click through to the full post for some pictures of our tomatoes.

This is a “Glacier” tomato taken on May 25th.

The same tomato plant and fruit cluster taken on June 15th, three weeks to-the-day later.

These are “Black Brandywine” heirlooms.

An 18 month old for reference on how tall the plants are getting already. Camera left are “Sungold” cherry tomatoes, camera right are “Taxi” slicing tomatoes. All of that white row cover on the right of the photo is covering 3 more rows of tomatoes (heirlooms, cherries and paste, resp.) which aren’t in the hoophouse. You can also see from the leaves on the ground that we have started to prune our tomatoes.