The May Bounty of Veggies
The busyness of April in getting every last spring crop into the ground before it got too hot has been replaced with a race to harvest everything that is ready before it bolts in the heat.
Succession plantings of the same crop that were a few weeks apart are not ready to harvest within days of each other and we have over 25 crops we are harvesting currently.
It is exciting for us to look at our farmers market stand and see so much diversity in veggies on it at this time of the year. All the spring veggies are loving the warm days but they do not like it to be constantly around 90 degrees which it looks like it will be for the foreseeable future.
We brought a taste of basil to both the Davis and Benicia markets last week but we will have lots more this week along with beets, carrots, potatoes and lettuce.
Many of the other summer crops are a little further away but we do have a decent amount of fruit on the tomatoes and the eggplant are starting to flower.
The first planting of tomatoes is growing rapidly in the heat and we had to put another string on it along with the first string on the second planting. Getting the strings on to keep the plants growing upwards will save us so much time when we harvest and keep any tomatoes from touching the soil which causes them to rot quickly.
This time of the year also is when we have a number of beds finishing up and we have been working on cleaning then up and removing the drip tape since they don’t need more water. When we get a chance we will mow the beds which have some flowering veggies left and then let them rest until the fall most likely.
Our last big planting until August will be this upcoming weekend and so we have been busy prepping the ground for the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and leeks. It’s our third planting of tomatoes this year and the second one for peppers and eggplants.
We still have some direct seeding to do in the coming weeks of green beans, cucumbers, okra and winter but that is easier than transplanting thousands of plants.
