Wow – the end of May already? This notoriously busy month has been quite the whirlwind of activity, and it marks one of our many seasonal shifts. It’s a month that includes plenty of elements of spring, but this is in combination with lots of time-sensitive preparation for summer. The temperatures have risen and the pace of our work has heated up too. Our work (the tasks and the tempo) is as seasonal as the produce and flowers we grow and harvest!
One big event of May is Mother’s Day week. The flower team harvested and bunched an unfathomable number of stunning mixed bouquets and single variety bunches and since then have had more marathon days.
May is also when we do a lot of transplanting. The greenhouses are starting to empty out and we finished transplanting all three tomato plantings and the second pepper succession. Out in the tomato field, Alfredo’s team has added stakes to the first two plantings, and are now tying the plants to those stakes. You can see videos and read more about staking and tying here and here. They add an additional level of twine every week – it’s a lot of work! The plants are small, but you can already find lots of flowers and some fruit. The cherry tomatoes are the first to ripen and will be here soon, in a few weeks.
While tomatoes, melons, and more are still a ways off, we’ve started harvesting some of the other summer crops: summer squash, basil, stone fruit, and sunflowers. This is also the time of year to harvest and cure onions and garlic. When the onion tops start to flop over, we stop watering them, then we cut the tops (by hand!), cut under the bulbs with a tractor, then gather the bulbs in buckets, add them to burlap sacks, let them dry for about a week in the field, then bring them out of the sun to well-ventilated bins to use during the summer. Curing dries the outer layers and the top of the onions, protecting them from going bad and allowing us to store them. Garlic goes through a similar process, though it skips the time in the bags.
Some spring crops like asparagus are done, while others are starting to wind down. The high temperatures later this week will likely finish off some other spring crops and will stress out all the leafy greens.
Seasons here aren’t neat; there isn’t a sudden, clear end to any one season, but a gradual disappearance of one season’s crops paired with the very exciting gradual appearance of new ones, anchored by the dependable “shoulder season” crops that are reliable staples in our CSA boxes and Farmers Market tables this time of year. Get excited for carrots, potatoes, and cabbage everyone! Between two periods of overwhelming abundance, we can find ourselves in less exciting times. But that’s what eating and working seasonally means: we’re subject to the rules and limitations of nature. While we anxiously await tomatoes and eggplant today, in a few months, we’ll be wistfully thinking of lettuce and carrots!
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
