rainbow swiss chard

It is going to be a delicious season this round. The images show some of the tasty vegetables and fruit that you will see in your shares.

I saw the first tomato yesterday. The plants really took off growing this week. Our newest farmer-in-training, Stephen, spent some hours pruning the plants yesterday, removing the suckers below the first set of flowers and all the branches touching the ground. Now those plants are primed to grow and provide us a bounty of mouth-watering plum tomatoes. I can’t wait!

The blackberry plants are loaded with fruit, exceeding my expectations for this season. This will only be the second harvest from these brambles. Last year we picked about 35 pounds – well, we picked a lot more, but many were eaten right off the vine. Anyway, we had 35 pounds that went to the market and nearly all went to our CSA members; there just weren’t enough to sell at the market. This year it looks like we might harvest 100 pounds ! That’s a lot of cobbler, jam, ice cream sauce, fruit compote!

The potatoes, variety Colorado Rose, are growing very rapidly now. Many of them have flower buds almost ready to open. That means we will soon be able to steal a few baby new potatoes from the plants. Those baby new potatoes won’t make it to the market (we will scarf them down at the farm), but as soon as the new potatoes are ready to harvest, they will be showing up in CSA shares and at the markets.

The red cabbage is heading up – a few will make it to the market tomorrow and Wednesday.

The Rainbow Swiss chard plants have finally taken off. To my eye, this is one of the most beautiful plants we grow.

Okay, I need to get back out into the field. There is still lots to plant and a big harvest to get in before the sun goes down.

We are still planting our summer crops; it is a bit late on some and quite late on others, but we are chugging along. The tomato plants are finally in the ground – went in last week. They survived the high winds of the last few days and look like they will be fine. The variety is Verona, a delicious plum tomato type that we have planted for a few years. They do well in the heat and are prolific producers.

This week we plan to get all the chiles and peppers into the ground, which will free up a lot of space in the hoophouse. The year we will double our planting of corno di toro Italian sweet peppers as well as the small lunchbox peppers. We also have jalapeños, and will be trying two New Mexico chile varieties – Jarales and Sinahuisa. Our poblano seeds germinated very poorly and I haven’t had time to replant, but will do so this week. So the poblanos won’t be ready until late in the season, but they will be ready in time for the chiles en nogada for Mexican Independence Day on September 16.

For two more weeks, we will be continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. If you are not a CSA shareholder, please consider it. The program will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested. Thank you for your consideration.

SouthWinds Farm

Organically grown fruits and vegetables

Farm Update May 21, 2016

Farm Update May 7, 2016