News from the Garden plus Likely Harvest for August 15th

Dry. Dry. Dry.

It has still been dry.

This is good for some things. The potatoes and tomatoes can die of blight in a matter of days during a cool wet spell. Right now, the toms and pots are holding steady. Likewise, mature onions can rot if it gets swampy in August. The onions are rock hard. Knock. Knock. I was noticing that there have been no recent flushes of weed germination, which is nice, because during our wet June it seemed like we constantly had new weeds to contend with.

The dry weather, paradoxically, seems to promote powdery mildew, a fungal disease. And we have it bad this year. It has infected the pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, and I have not even looked at the winter squash. We sprayed a preventative organic treatment on the zucchini and cucumbers, but the pumpkins were too extensive, and so our pumpkin patch looks whitish with fungus. This is not good. Hopefully the fruits were far enough along to mature without a healthy plant to connect to.

The dry might be affecting the sweet corn, which I will check this afternoon. Maybe next week we will start harvesting whatever the raccoons have left us.

Last Group of Apprentices for the Summer

This week we hosted Sadie, Eva, and Amal as the last group of the summer. It has been super easy to host them because they have all been coming out to the Land School for a very long time.  Amal has been coming since he was born. I remember him as an infant crawling through the green grass on a Memorial Day work day. Sadie and Eva have been coming for their entire LCS careers, but in the last two years they have stepped up their involvement. Last year, they helped with at least half of the harvests, and they started a "Land School Action Group" in the Junior High. This year they invented a new position of Counselor-In-Training for the E2 Farm Camp. Both Sadie and Eva have graduated, so this will be their last official Land School experiences. Of course, we expect them both to continue to visit and be involved as they invent new roles for LCS recent alumni. Thank you to Sadie and Eva!

Harvest
A lot of green beans.

Mucho zucchini and cucumbers

Fat sweet onions and green-top scallions

Garlic

New Red Potatoes

Kale and Chard

Gorgeous cut flowers

Lettuce mix

Basil (in pesto quantities) plus other herbs

There are a few maybes:

beets, carrots, kohlrabi, peppers, japanese eggplant. Tomatoes????

Recipes

Okay. I really don't use recipes any more, except for baking. We are looking for someone or someones who can look at the likely harvest lists and scour their knowledge and cookbooks for good recipes. Then you send the recipes to Andy and they will be posted on the blog. Tested recipes are best, but if something "looks good" to you, that will work. Note: this will fulfill your work commitment for your working share.

In the meantime, look back at previous years blog posts, there are a lot of good recipes there.