Week 2 Newsletter

Week 2 Newsletter: Week of June 8th

Welcome to Week 2!

Most of this newsletter will be focused on U-Pick updates. Greens U-Pick starts this week, as does garlic U-Pick. Kale and chard are growing really strong. This week you will receive one bunch of either kale or chard in your harvested share (depending on which day you pick up) and we invite you to pick the crop you don’t receive from the U-Pick so you take both home. We estimate that if everyone take a bunch from U-Pick, it’s approximately 2 leaves from each plant. Please space your pickings out, walk through the beds and pick from the middle or end plants, and pick the largest lowest leaves first. There is clearly an area of plants that are significantly smaller (we think due to wetter soil). Don’t pick from those small plants, as they’re still working on becoming established and robust.

We made a variety of changes to the U-Pick from last year, based largely on CSA member feedback as well as our own observations. Before we even knew what crops we were going to plant, or where the beds would be, we knew that we need to change the sizing of beds. Specifically, we widened the paths between all beds, making them significantly wider than our own market garden design beds on the farm in order to make them easier to navigate. We also will be putting woodchips down on the beds. You may have noticed the large pile of woodchips at near the southeast corner of the property. Across the next few weeks, those woodchips will be moved and spread in the walkways to make U-Pick a more pleasant and easier experience. It will end up being more like the children’s garden design.

In our efforts to shift U-Pick areas forward, we opened the full southeast field this spring( the week to the left of the farm store building when you’re looking from the road). Last year, we only planted the back half of the that field with flowers. This year, it is filled with chard, kale, parsley, collards, sugar snap peas and tomatoes, plus a few rotating beds. The majority of U-Pick flowers have moved to the bed behind the two front large greenhouses (where the winter squash was last year). The children’s garden and herb tunnel are in the same place as last year, and there are various other U-Pick beds. Here’s a rough sketch to show you where things are.