Week 18, I think

We started harvesting a week late this year so although we should be at week 19 we're only at week 18, pretty good though and the shares seem to just be getting better. Thanks to everyone who has returned mid season surveys so far, they are very helpful. In today's share there are two heads of lettuce, we harvested some flashy lightning, blushed butter cos, and blushed icy oak so you'll get one or two of those in your bag. There were enough peppers to go around today and I recommend letting them get a little more color on the kitchen counter before using them. This will sweeten them even more - they are not at all hot, we're not growing hot peppers this year so any pepper you get should be sweet no matter how much it looks like a hot pepper. Some shares got dill and some got cilantro this week. Partly due to member feedback in the surveys we decided to go with bigger bunches of one instead of smaller bunches of both. Cucumbers and summer squash are randomly distributed and continue to produce decently despite a bit of mildew on the plants and the cooler weather. Tomatoes are slowing down but there are lots of unripe fruit so if we get some more sun those will continue in the shares for a few weeks. We put a few onions in the shares this week, the largest from the OSU Organic onion trial that we're taking a small part in. There were just a few of each variety so they're all mixed up now and I couldn't tell you which is which but we'll have some more small ones to give out soon. Some of the shares are getting melons this week. Everyone should be up to half a melon at this point and by next week we hope to have everyone at 3/4 of a melon, which is 1/4 more than we were expecting a few weeks ago. Italian plums are ripe, and plentiful at the farm right now so we've put 4 in each share.

Fall crops are looking good in general, Now that planting season is over we've been able to spend more time weeding and cleaning up around the edges. We're missing a few crops from the original plan but we have a few extras so there should be enough for harvests to go into December, weather permitting. We just picked up cover crop seed so that we can start putting some of the harvested beds into cover crop for the winter. We'll be using rye and vetch which will hold soil against erosion, keep nutrients from leaching and ultimately add nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, as well as improving the tilth of the soil for next season. I'll try to post some photos as the fall cover crops come up and start growing.