Abundant basil and mowing spring crops

The smell of fresh basil is one of the best smells of the summer and basil is one of our favorite summer crops, which is why we are growing lots of it!

We will have lots of the Italian Genovese basil at the Davis and Benicia Farmers Markets, today and tomorrow respectively, along with a little bit of Thai basil. Thai basil has an anise or black licorice flavor and is mainly used in Southeast Asian cuisine in curries, fried rice and many other delicious dishes.

It may be the last week we have sugar snap peas at the market with them not enjoying the heat very much. The same for radishes which we will have some this week but maybe not after.

The past few days it has been getting hotter every day and it was 98 degrees on Tuesday which was not too bad with the wind. Today it might reach 102 and all our spring plants are not going to like it so we have been making sure they are getting enough water. It is supposed to cool down Thursday which will be very nice for the crops and us.

The heat and dryness has also caused a number of fires in the area including one on the hills west of us, which from the farm we can see the area that burned.

Any bed of a crop that we are finished harvesting we made sure to take off its drip tape so it wasn’t getting water it didn’t need and we also mowed those beds over the weekend.

In very exciting news our first cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen and they taste phenomenal! We may have a mixed basket of Sungolds and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes at each market this week with plenty more on the horizon.

Our first and second plantings of tomatoes have been growing rapidly so we had to put another string on them to keep them going upwards on the trellis as they were starting to bush out.

We also have a good amount of flowers on the eggplants and even a few small eggplants forming. So much going on and very excited to enjoy the last little bit of spring crops and the first tastes of summer!