Category Archives: sweet potatoes

In the Share – Week 20

high tunnel, sweet potatoes

O’HENRY SWEET POTATOES (F/P) Creamy yellow sweet potatoes are sure sweet and thankfully survived the summer heat.

ONIONS (F/P) Spicy red and yellow storage onions out of the barn.

TOMATOES (F/P)  The tomatoes are getting slim, but everyone might get a pint tomorrow.

HAKUREI TURNIPS (F) Welcome back our fine white roots. See Tom’s post for a lemon pickle.

SWEET PEPPERS (F) Mostly our purple peppers. 

CARROTS (P) the last of the storage carrots from the summer harvest.

OKRA OR EGGPLANT (F) We hear that the okra is popular down at the Bad Seed distribution. We wish it was producing better but it has stayed short this year and there isn’t a lot of fruit.

RATTLESNAKE BEANS (F) We are hoping for another week of harvest off of the pole beans. The new fruit looks nice but there may be small bags for only the full shares.

HERB CHOICE (F/P) hot peppers, parsley, thyme, basil or a dried herb.

GARLIC (F/P) Seems everyone we talk to had a bad garlic harvest this summer. We’ll have at least one head for all this week.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms CSA shares

NEXT WEEK: More peppers, eggplant, turnips and tomatoes. Cauliflower and cabbage. Arugula and lettuce.

 FARM REPORT:

On Monday we pulled the plastic on the high tunnel, which turned out to be a bigger job than we expected.  Tom started the day by ascending to the tippy top and attaching the channel that would hold the plastic on the structure.

 
 
After spreading out two 40 x 100 ft. pieces on the ground we all climbed under the plastic and began attaching the plastic to the first side.  

Then, we attached ropes to the plastic and attempted to pull it across the top.  After much tugging and shouting and little progress we realized that we were a bit under-staffed for the job.  With the plastic half on we had no choice but to continue. We added more rope, tugged and shouted some more and by about 1 pm we had managed to finish the job. 

 
With the blower fan installed the two layers of plastic make a firmly inflated roof. Today we formed the beds, added compost and rock powders and then ceremoniously planted the first seed, a spinach seed to be exact.

 

In the Share – Week 22

frost, sweet potatoes
the pepper harvest

SWEET POTATOES (F/P) A good harvest with some real jumbos. Don’t refrigerate your sweets! They don’t like to get below 50 degrees.
SWEET PEPPERS (F/P) The frost threatened so we picked them all. Full shares get 2 lbs, partials 1.5 lbs. Read Tom’s post for some simple ideas for preserving and enjoying them.
GARLIC (F/P) Softneck variety, keeps well.
CHINESE CABBAGE, BOK CHOI OR TAT SOI (F)
ARUGULA, THYME OR GARLIC CHIVES (F/P)
HAKUREI TURNIPS (P)
BROCCOLI OR CAULIFLOWER (F) Just enough for the full shares this week, partial shares are next in line. We are scrambling a bit as the second planting stalled after the deluge 2 weeks ago.
EGGPLANT, GREEN TOMATOES OR HOT PEPPERS (F) Harvested before the frost and the last of the season.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms delivery

NEXT WEEK: More broccoli and cauliflower. Kohlrabi, butternut squash and leeks. Cilantro and dill. Kale, collards and Swiss Chard return.

Saturday morning we awoke to a frost advisory for our area for that night. After the regular CSA harvest morning, the farm crew jumped to the task of harvesting anything that might be damaged. The last of the sweet potatoes came out well. We think all the heat and humidity of this summer led to some extra large sweets. We have several football-sized ones to feed us through the winter. Most of the crop was Beauregard, a standard commercial type with sweet orange flesh. We also planted a short stretch of O’Henry, a white variety that grew very uniformly. Hardly any footballs, but few small ones either. We mashed up some for dinner the other night and they were tender and oh so creamy.

one of many crates of Beauregards now safely stored in the greenhouse



Sweet peppers were the other big harvest on Saturday. We ended up with over 200 lbs. of these last jewels of summer. In the last hours of the day we covered the young lettuces with row cover, picked the remaining eggplant, hot peppers and green tomatoes. The sun set and we rested easy knowing that we had done what we needed to do.

The next morning we awoke to frost on the ground. It was a light and patchy frost. Only the most sensitive plants were hit and only here and there. A bit of frost on the tops of the basil plants and on the tips of the okra. The pepper plants look fine. If the warm weather holds for a few weeks we may even get another harvest.