In your box:

• Baby Bok Choy
• Garlic Scapes
• Green Onions
• Head lettuce
• Radishes
• Salad mix
• Spinach
• Summer squash

Farm News

Happy 4th of July! Summer holidays are a little hard to slow down for on a farm. I’ll spend my Independence Day washing salad mix and planting a fall crop of broccoli out in the field, rather than with a parade and fireworks. It does make the holidays of fall and winter all the more special, so I just have to postpone my leisure days for a few more months.

We’ll wrap up the month of June with only about 1.5 inches of rain total, just a fraction of the 4.5 inches we average this month. This is the second straight dry June we’ve had, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. All of our veggies start the season with weak, short roots that can’t dig deep for water yet. I’ve been irrigating nearly around the clock all month, so hopefully July will bring some rain as we flip the calendar. 

This week’s box

Summer squash are off to a strong start, probably out of guilt for producing so poorly last year. Last year’s crop was overrun by cucumber beetles, spreading disease and killing off the plants by mid-July. This year I had netting ready to go in order to protect the crop, but the plants grew so rapidly and flowered so early that I never even got the netting on. I’ve only seen a couple cucumber beetles thus far, and the plants are taking off nicely to start the season.

We grow four different kinds of summer squash, two of which are classified as true zucchini. The others are Summer Crookneck, a short yellow variety, and Zephyr, a green and yellow hybrid squash. All of our squash should be kept in the fridge and store well for up to a week. The seeds on these squash are tender and edible, so there’s no reason to scoop them out. Just wash the skin thoroughly and chop up the whole fruit. We like squash as a pizza topping, in a stir fry, or chopped into lasagna. We received a zoodles maker last year for my birthday, and we’re excited to try making our own squash noodles this year!

Our stir-fry veggie this week is a baby bok choy that I hadn’t grown before. This variety has been bred to produce small, crisp heads that are more tender than its large siblings. This year’s crop started going to seed with the heat this month, so next year I’ll try planting it earlier so it can finish its growth before it begins flowering.

It does look like this will be the last crop of spinach for the spring. Spinach doesn’t handle heat very well, so we won’t have any more spinach until late September. A few of these plants are starting to go to flower, but they still taste fine. Just remove any stalks and peel off the leaves when you use them.

Coming up

Next week, we are expecting bok choy, garlic scapes, head lettuce, green onions, summer squash, cucumbers, turnips, salad mix, and currants.

Recommended Recipes

Sesame Ginger Bok Choy: https://foxandfawnfarm.com/2021/06/28/sesame-ginger-bok-choy/Garlic Scape Pesto: https://foxandfawnfarm.com/2011/07/01/garlic-scape-pesto/