With some help from some volunteers and our hardworking farmers we covered the high tunnel frame with shade cloth Thursday morning. Thank you Elizabeth, John, Dianne, Ian and Steve !! The plants in the high tunnel will be shaded and this should increase their production through the summer. It will be very hot over the next few days, so the shade cloth was installed just in time.
The summer squash are finally producing. We have 3 types of patty pan and classic zucchini plants cranking out the squash right now.
We’ll see you this Sunday at the market and Monday at our Green Valley/Sahuarita CSA drop off.
We had a fairly hot week out here at the farm, but there was a very light shower late Wednesday afternoon – no significant accumulation, but it cooled things down a bit and settled the dust for a few hours. The dry lightning associated with the storms also started some fires around here. To the east we can see the smoke from the Lizard Fire in the daytime and the flames at night. The fire is about 10 miles east of us.
I just received notice that our shade cloth order is waiting for pick up at the shipping terminal in Tucson. So we will be putting the new shade cloth on the high tunnel next week. This will create a cooler environment for all the crops under the high tunnel ñ tomatoes, chiles, peppers, cucumbers and summer squash.
As you can see in the images, the potato plants are blooming; this means the plants are starting to form the tubers. We will be harvesting tasty Kennebec spuds soon!
The zucchini and patty pan squash plants are also blooming, so we will also soon have zukes and patty pan at the market.
And —> the purple bush bean plants are loaded with flowers, so the beans are on the way.
We’ll see you this Sunday at the market and Monday at our Green Valley/Sahuarita CSA drop off.
Thank you for supporting local, sustainable agriculture!
This week we finally removed the shade cloth and the bird netting from the blackberry bed. We will be doing a final weeding and mulching of the bed in preparation for the winter. Our blackberry harvest last summer was a bit disappointing, mostly due to the unseasonable and extremely hot 3 days right at the peak of the bloom. Next year we will use a heavier shadecloth maybe 40% or 50% and will also install an overhead watering line to help lower the temperature and increase the humidity around the blackberry bushes. That should help to substantially increase the yield.
We are also preparing two beds for planting garlic. Our plan is to triple the amount of garlic we plant because it was so popular last summer with our CSA shareholders and in the markets. We will likely plant the cloves next week. This is about as late as we can plant it, but the unseasonably warm temperatures in the long-term forecast should allow the plants to be established before it gets too cold.
If you signed up for a fall/winter CSA share, you will receive an email this weekend with the revised starting dates (starting 13Nov at Rillito and 16Nov at Green Valley) and other pertinent information.
We are still signing up CSA shareholders. If you would like to sign up for the next season, we will continue taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the middle of November and run through the middle of March 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries.
We will have the forms at the markets this weekend, and they are also available on our website, here.
the beets are growing quickly!butternut ready to pick
SouthWinds Farm 