2024 CSA Newsletter #12
I hope my Tompkins Cortland colleagues had a great first week back with students buzzing around campus. I love that fall energy that happens at the start of a new academic year. It's a real pick-me-up as we make our way into the fall portion of our season. It was great to see my interns return for the fall semester and get their assistance in all of those farm tasks. In addition to working with them on the farm, I will get to work with them in other courses as well. I'm excited to be one of their instructors for their Capstone course, where they will be working on an independent food-systems-related project throughout the semester. I look forward to seeing what type of project that they want to accomplish.
As I mentioned, it was great to have the students back working on the farm. They jumped right back in after their brief break between semesters and assisted with last week's CSA harvest and fall farm tasks. It's a multi-week process but we started to prune the lower leaves and harvested fruit clusters of the cherry tomatoes to increase airflow. Disease pressure is very high with tomatoes, and we employ many cultural practices that help: variety selection, drip irrigation, growing in tunnels, and pruning. One disease that we are particularly worried about is late blight. The plants are susceptible to it when they are wet. It is an airborne fungal disease where spores can travel upwards of a mile and can wipe out tomato and/or potato crops in a matter of weeks. We are always looking for productive varieties with resistance and follow the path of the disease throughout the growing season. There have been confirmed reports of late blight in Western New York in the past couple of weeks. We will keep our fingers crossed that we make it through most of the season before we see it here. We also removed the first planting of pickling cukes in the greenhouse. In doing so, we are going to be able to plant a fall/winter crop of greens. To prepare for that, we potted on plants to get them ready to transplant. We also transplanted more lettuce and salad turnips.
Speaking of lettuce. It makes its triumphant return to the CSA share. This week's choice will feature lettuce mix, kale, and rainbow chard. The cherry tomatoes are in full swing, and this is a good week for the heirloom tomatoes. There will also be beefsteak tomatoes and some combination of eggplant, shishito peppers, poblano peppers, sauce tomatoes, and snacking peppers. The snacking peppers seem to have avoided the pest in the hoophouse and should be producing for a few more weeks. Cucumbers are still here with a mix of slicers and boxes of picklers. We will see a brief drop-off in production as we move between plantings but should hopefully have cucumbers through September. There will be a bell and frying pepper mix, as well as Chesnok Red garlic, jalapeno salt, and hot peppers, including two of my favorites: a heatless habanero called Habanada and a superhot called Jamaican Mushroom. Basil is taking the week off to get ready for its final run of the season.
Have a great week!
-Farmer Todd