mid-July harvest

Ripe on the Farm this Week (your share may contain):

-head lettuce
-beets
-carrots
-bok choy
-salad mix w/ amaranth
- fresh garlic
- greens (kale or collards)

Notes From the Field

The spring section of the garden is just about finished, with just beets, carrots, and kale left – the rest of it is getting tilled under and planted in cover crops this week. Summer squash and cucumbers are on the verge of ripeness – you may see some in your share this week! We have fresh garlic in the share as well – these are some of the smaller plants. The larger bulbs we are curing to give out later in the season. The bok choy is holey because of our ever persistent competitors, flea beetles – whose small holes do not change the taste of this delicious Asian green, but they certainly make the appearance a bit ragged. Please do not let this deter you from enjoying the bok choy!

Notes on Sugar Ann Peas

You may have been seeing a variety of pea sizes and shapes in the peas that we have been giving out - even though we only grew one variety. It turns out that our seed had indeed contained more than our ordered Sugar Ann variety. Organic pea seed is particularly difficult to produce! Here’s an update from High Mowing Seeds: “There have historically been problems of snap pea lines being crossed or contaminated with snow and shell peas. You have likely seen 30-50% of your crop contains shell or snow peas, rather than snap peas.” I hope you enjoyed the unexpected diversity in our pea crop, maybe we will purposefully include some of the other varieties next spring
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Nutritional value of fruits, veggies is dwindling
Chemicals that speed growth may impair ability to absorb soil's nutrients

By Sarah Burns, source: Prevention, 7/9/2010

While we've been dutifully eating our fruits and vegetables all these years, a strange thing has been happening to our produce. It's losing its nutrients. That's right: Today's conventionally grown produce isn't as healthful as it was 30 years ago — and it's only getting worse. The decline in fruits and vegetables was first reported more than 10 years ago by English researcher Anne-Marie Mayer, PhD, who looked at the dwindling mineral concentrations of 20 UK-based crops from the 1930s to the 1980s.

It's happening to crops in the United States, too. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What's going on? Davis believes it's due to the farming industry's desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce's ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

A different story is playing out with organic produce. "By avoiding synthetic fertilizers, organic farmers put more stress on plants, and when plants experience stress, they protect themselves by producing phytochemicals," explains Alyson Mitchell, PhD, a professor of nutrition science at the University of California, Davis. Her 10-year study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than conventional ones.

Our thoughts on this article:
Vegetables losing their nutrient content is a scary thought! This just adds to our list of reasons not to use synthetic chemicals, pesticides, or fertilizers. Heirloom varieties that we grow (Jenny Lind melons, Brandywine tomatoes, Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, etc.) were established before WWII and the widespread use of artificial fertilizers – and they do just fine without ‘em! Additionally, we focus on building a healthy soil so that our veggies may be full of nutrition for you.