Last week we focused on beautifying the farm. Around here, that means weeding, weeding, and more weeding. The rain recently was nice for the crops, but it also triggered a lot of weed growth. Plants appear happier and healthier after a thunderstorm because lightening acts as a natural fertilizer. The heat from lightening breaks down atmospheric nitrogen, which then mixes with the oxygen in the air to form nitrates. The nitrates are then dissolved in the rain water, and arrive to your plants and soil in the form of rain drops. This amount of nitrogen from a thunderstorm is so small compared to the amount plants need to be happy and healthy, but it’s more nitrogen than plants receive from a standard watering. We’ll call that a win! 

It’s important we get rid of the weeds as soon as possible. Not only are they unsightly, they also steal moisture and important nutrients from the crop, and they’re much easier to kill when they are small. 

Thankfully our crew worked extra hard through the heat, and got all the plants back in tip top shape. All the fields have been hoed, the greenhouses have been weeded and pruned, and some fields even got flame weeded. 

The other exciting thing that happened last week was (drum roll please)…. our pack shed addition got walls and a roof! We are so excited to start seeing this expansion really take shape. You can now see where the new cooler will be, and all the extra space the crew will have. On retail and CSA boxing days, the crew is frequently bumping into each other due to tight corners. Soon we will have so much room to spread out. 

Our hope is to use the new cooler to store our cucumbers and zucchini in the summer once they’ve been harvested. These two vegetables are very sensitive to the ethylene gas that other fruits and veggies give off, especially the melons. Having their own space will help to maintain the quality of the vegetables, while offering more space in our main coolers for other vegetables to be stored. We can’t wait to keep sharing construction progress with all of you!

This week, we are reintroducing an exciting veggie, the garlic scape. Garlic scapes grow from the center of the garlic bulb. If you’ve ever opened a bulb of garlic and noticed the hard stem that’s directly in the center of it, that’s where the garlic scape came from. It’s this funny looking little curl that pops up, and would eventually create a flower. If we want our garlic to keep growing big, beautiful bulbs, we have to remove the scape. If it gets left on the plant, the garlic will put a lot of its energy into trying to grow a big flower rather than a big bulb of garlic like we want. These scapes may seem intimidating at first, but I promise you they are delicious. You can chop them up and use them in place of any recipe that calls for garlic. The scapes have slightly milder flavor, so a good ratio would be 3 scapes for every one clove of garlic. I’ve attached some fun recipes down below, so happy scape season and happy cooking!

I love this recipe collection from Heartbeet Kitchen. People usually hear about making pesto with scapes. It’s a delicious idea, but sometimes you want to try something new. This collection lists 11 wonderful recipes (including a pesto) for you to test out the scapes. #11 even includes a parsley butter. Check that one out if you aren’t sure how to use up all the parsley in your box this week.

These rainbow bowls from Love & Lemons are a beautiful way to use this weeks produce. The kale, carrots, and green onions would be wonderful in this bowl. If you still have pac choi or napa cabbage leftover from last week, both of those would be great additions to this. This is an easy recipe to keep throughout the season as it will work well with a lot of vegetables we will be sending you.