Into Summer Already?

With the end of this past winter seeming to drag on forever in freezing weather, snow, and sleet, it’s been a shocker to find ourselves in the hot, dry conditions we’ve been experiencing over the past couple of weeks. Early May is when the warm weather crops start to be planted and usually it’s a gamble with the weather in a totally different sense- trying to prevent these plants from being damaged when an unexpected cold snap comes. This year has been the opposite. Even the tomatoes are looking a little stressed out from having to deal with temperatures near 90 degrees so early in the season! Fortunately, things have cooled off a little for the rest of this week, which will be a must appreciated reprieve for both me and the crops!

Newly planted tomato seedlings

Enjoying Summer; Preparing for Fall

As the days stay hot and sunny and it’s finally the season for everyone’s favorite crop- tomatoes- I always have to stop and remind myself to enjoy the warm days of summer for the simple reason that the crops I love to grow the most are the spring and fall items that bracket the season. The first farm I worked for specialized in heirloom varieties of lettuce and I have never really lost my love of growing green vegetables. As much as I love to eat summer crops like tomatoes and peppers, I don’t think the beauty of either compares to that of a head of lettuce growing in the field. Even though lettuce is on a brief hiatus right now given the heat of summer, several trays of lettuce transplants are growing away in the cool shade of my front porch, waiting to be planted in the coming weeks for a fall harvest.

Fall lettuce transplants

The Big Bed Transition

Yesterday, weather forecasts initially called for up to three-quarters of an inch of rain throughout the day, but instead no precipitation showed up until after 7 in the evening! The upside of this is that Maggie (this year’s Home Farm assistant) and I were able to undertake one of the most grueling bed turn-overs of the year: transitioning the spring pea beds into the fall kale and collard beds. The down-side was that we ended up completing this task under scorching sun with temperatures in the mid-nineties and what felt like as close to 100% humidity as you can get without it raining!

This specific bed turnover is one I always dread. Not only does it take place in the hottest part of the year, but it requires not just pulling out the pea plants, but also dismantling the trellises they grew on and pulling the weeds that have gradually accumulated in the beds over the 3+ months since the peas were planted! It is always satisfying, though, to see the final product- a beautifully prepared bed waiting for it’s next crop.

Fall Kale & Collards growing on my front porch.

Spring Goes; Summer Comes

This week, an exciting surprise waited for me on Monday morning- the first of the cherry tomatoes were beginning to ripen! For me, like many people, tomatoes really mean that we’re getting to the height of the summer season, something that it’s hard not to feel with temperatures regularly hitting 95+ degrees.

First cherry tomatoes ripening

With summer underway, asparagus, one of the earliest spring crops, has turned from being harvested for food to being harvested for decorative purposes. Once the spring harvest ends, the asparagus shoots up into beautiful, tall, fern-like plants, the fronds of which I cut to use as filler in our flower bouquets throughout the rest of the season. I cut them sparingly, however, to ensure that the asparagus will continue to grow and photosynthesize and complete everything necessary to produce it’s tasty food crop again next spring!

Asparagus in July

In the Heat of the Summer

This week ushered in not only a new month, but also the hottest weather we’ve seen this year, inconveniently for me because the first week in July is always a big transition period on the farm! Despite the 95-degree heat today, 4 beds were transitioned from spring crops to crops like beans, carrots, and salad mix that will be harvested late in the summer and into the fall. Hot weather also means that more and more summer crops are ready for harvest. Today I picked the first cucumbers of the season, as well as several quarts-full of black raspberries!

Tasty Jade Cucumbers

Goings-on On the Farm

With the strawberries beginning to turn red, it’s time to start paying attention to what will be the next fruit of the season. Today, I netted off the blueberry bushes, already covered with tiny berries, to prevent birds from grabbing this tasty fruit right off the plant as they ripen! The summer crops are happy with today’s warmer weather, with the tomatoes already shooting up plenty of new growth since being transplanted at the beginning of the month. The tomatoes are being grown on a bed covered by black plastic to help keep the plants warm and to suppress the weeds.

Tomato plants in mid-may

Goings-on On the Farm

The first weeks of May are always a busy time. With May 1st as our average last frost date, last week began the yearly marathon of getting all the frost-sensitive crops, from tomatoes and peppers to beans, cucumbers, and squash, into the ground!

While the summer crops are being planted, one of the most exciting spring crops is getting ready to produce: strawberries! The strawberry plants have begun to flower prolifically and I’m looking forward to seeing the first berries in the coming weeks.

Strawberry plants flowering

Another exciting event this week was the sight of the first potato plants popping above the soil. It always takes several weeks from when the tubers are planted to when the first leaves begin to appear- an anxiety-producing time that I am happy is over!

Potato leaves appearing

Dreaming of Tomatoes

With a winter like this one, I can’t help but think of the hot, bountiful days of summer and wonder if they’ll every return! And for most of us, thoughts of summer and of tomatoes go hand-in-hand.

One of the things I find most enthralling about tomatoes is the astonishing number of varieties that exist- small and large; yellow, red, green, and striped; shaped like cherries, grapes, and apples. Because of this, I always like to switch up the tomatoes I grow each year to add some new color, flavor, and excitement to the market table.

This year, I’ll be growing an heirloom variety totally new to me called Mountain Princess. These tomatoes are relatively local- originating in the Monongahela National Forest region of West Virginia. The plants produce small tomatoes similar to those incredibly sweet, on-the-vine tomatoes you can buy in plastic cartons in the grocery store. So imagine how tasty they’ll be fresh off the plant! And unlike most tomatoes, Mountain Princess are a determinate variety that produce their fruit in one large flush rather than gradually over the course of the season. Because of this, I’ll be planting several different successions of this variety to help extend the harvest.

With the ground still layered in several storms’ worth of snow, it’s nice to imagine the sweet-tart burst of flavor from a tomato fresh off the vine in the warm sun of summer!