Tomatoes, Garlic & Summer Solstice

Everyone has been asking us at the farmers market when we will start having tomatoes and now we have the answer everyone has been looking for.

We will have tomatoes today at market!

Our first Early Girl tomatoes have been ripening over the past week and we will be harvesting them today for this evening’s Davis Farmers Market. We also may have a few cherry tomatoes at market.

There won’t be that many tomatoes at our stand this week as only a small portion of what we hope to harvest off the plant has ripened. There are lots of tomatoes on the plants in all different stages of ripening.

We still look to be a few weeks away from our first heirloom tomatoes but we will keep checking them every time we are out in our tomato field.

Joining our tomatoes at the market will be our first garlic of the season.

The California Early White variety is the only garlic we grow and we planted it mid-October last year. There is some discoloration on the bulbs due to them being exposed to the sun while growing but it doesn’t affect the flavor.

After harvesting all the garlic and putting them in piles it looks and feels like we have a lot which it is at around 5,000 bulbs. We will have to clean all the garlic and sort out the severely damaged ones plus the bulbs we will be keeping back to plant for green garlic early.

Today is also the longest day of the year being summer solstice and marking the beginning of summer. It will be a much different start to summer than last year with the cool weather the past week and the forecast showing it not going up to 90 degrees for another week.

It is starting to feel like summer with the change in what we are harvesting, mainly the tomatoes. But also the cucumbers, eggplant, garlic and basil we have at market.

All three of our varieties of cucumbers are producing some delicious cucumbers while we are only harvesting one variety of our eggplant so far. The other varieties have some tiny fruit on them that should be ready to harvest in a few weeks.

We also started to harvest a few green beans last week and should have lots more in the coming weeks. The plants are looking really good and have lots of flowers on them that we hope turn into beans.