Subject: CSA News: "Where are the tomatoes already?!" 08/20/2007 07:45:05 AM PST Dear subscribers: PICK-UP REMINDER: Until the end of the CSA season (sometime in November), unless announced otherwise, veggie share pick-up will be Saturdays, 2-7, at my house: [address deleted]. FARM NEWS: This is some cool cloudy weather we've been having! I've been watching it closely, with an eye towards how the veggies like it / don't like it. The greens love it. (Not just salad greens but also kale, collards, mustard.) Roots like it fine. (Carrots, beets, parsnips.) The beans seem fine. (Harvested ~75 lb. last week!) The zukes are bursting, if a *little* late. The winter squash and pumpkins seem to be moving along on time. Even the corn and melons (both a little tricky this far north) don't seem noticeably behind. The tomatoes, though, are definitely slow. Slow enough that folks are starting to notice, including Greg & Claire, the best tomato farmers I know, who sell at People's Market, and who've had very little to bring this year. The only farmers at market with tomatoes have been Herman & Lydia Obrist who are growing theirs in a greenhouse. The cherry tomatoes that have ripened so far have been a bit flat, flavor-wise, and not all that juicy. So there's been nothing to bring y'all yet! The peppers and eggplants also seem behind to me, but I have very little experience growing either, so I don't really know. I've got 'em in a greenhouse, and the plants are HUGE, but producing very few flowers and fruit. Could be the soil I gave them was *too* rich, could be the weather, could be they're not getting pollinated. I pulled a screen off one of the windows the other day in case we need more bees in there. We'll see. The taters at Try/On Farm also seem behind to me. The plants look a little small and many of them are getting eaten by something. Grasshoppers? Black spider mites? It's unclear. Pulling up a few to check showed tubers, but still small. Perhaps they're just slow. I hope to give them a foliar feeding of some compost tea soon in case what they want is more nutrients. "Foliar feeding" is when you spray the leaves directly. It's an Organic Farming technique for pest control and/or fertilizing. A backpack sprayer has been ordered to help perform this task. We're only just now starting to catch back up from the set-back dealt to the season by The North Plains Fiasco. Essentially, my farming started over in April, with some plots not even located until late June. That's a crazy time to get a CSA going. That's also just how farming goes: it's unpredictable. I'm enjoying myself and I hope everyone else is, too. Thanks! xoxoxo, Your Farmer, Kollibri