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Week of june 29 2008 week 5 iowa city The Weekly Harvest Garlic Scapes Kohlrabi Spinach Collards Summer Savory Italian Parsley Broccoli Kale Cabbage Please Note: Due to the impact of the rain, hail and wind on our crops the vegetables in our boxes has not been consistent throughout the week at our various drop sites. I try to put together a general newsletter for the week listing all the vegetables and herbs we expect to have during the week. However, we don’t really know until we start harvesting just how much we will have and consequently one drop site may get one item and another gets something different. I keep notes on what’s going where and then the next week we rotate who gets what so we’ve struggled with having the newsletter reflect exactly what’s in your box. NEWS FROM THE FARM This past week on top of our usual harvesting, planting and weeding tasks we added preparing for a farmer field day which we held at our farm on Sunday the 29th. The weather was great and we had a very nice turnout including several families who came from 2-3 hours away. We shared ideas and our challenges with this growing season. This year I applied for and received a farmer researcher grant from SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education). As many of you know there is a growing demand for locally grown food, especially vegetables. We do not have enough farmers to meet this demand so the goal of our project is for experienced vegetable farmers to lead networking groups and provide one-on-one support for new and inexperienced farmers interested in vegetable production for local and regional markets. My field day was a kick-off event to bring together these prospective growers and begin the process of developing these networking groups. We were excited by the number of prospective new growers who attended our event and look forward to working with them!
vEGGIE INFO AND COOKING TIPS Garlic scapes! Toss into stir fries, dice and add to eggs, tacos, pasta. Make sure you completely remove the tough stem end. So what is a garlic scape? Scapes are the flower stalks found on members of the Allium family (onions, leeks, chives, and garlic). Garlic scapes, which only appear on the finest hardneck garlic varieties, curl upward as they grow, ultimately straighten, and then grow little seed-like bulbs. When the garlic scapes are still in full curl, they are tender and delicious. We remove them about three weeks before we harvest the garlic, sending more energy to making a bigger bulb of garlic. In most gardens they are a totally underutilized part of the garlic. Most people only use the bulbs and throw away the tops. We were doing that until about 10 years ago when I saw them selling for $16 a pound at a DC market.
Garlic scapes can be used to make pesto. There are recipes at dakotagarlic.com. Other ideas -- grind the scapes and freezing them in ice cube trays for convenient use in cooking later. Another idea from one of our CSA members…..Prepare the same way as fresh asparagus. Cut into segments (5-6" works well) and steam or cook in simmering water until tender. Drain and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Summer Savory is an annual herb that blooms from July – September. The subtle tastes are often used to enhance the flavor of sausage. Bulgarian food is well known for the use of Summer Savory. Similar to winter savory it goes with both beans and meats, very often lighter meats such as chicken or turkey, and can be used in stuffing. It has a strong flavor while uncooked but loses much of its flavor under prolonged cooking. Collards are smooth, broad, dark green leaves. Collard stalks are tough so remove before using. Collard greens are usually eaten cooked. They have a hearty, chewy texture and an “assertive” flavor that mellows with long cooking.
INTERN STORY This past Thursday, we learned how to cage tomatoes. It was a long and involved process, but in the end it turned out to be very satisfying to see all that we had accomplished. Many steps were required, including laying drip tape to irrigate the plants, rolling out tarps, mulching with hay, and setting up posts and the wire cages that the tomato vines will eventually climb with the coming months. Luckily the weather was cool and cloudy. By the end of the day, we had transformed the landscape of the fields. We will be able to use what we have constructed as pathways for transporting the harvest for the rest of the summer. We continued to plant new rows of tomatoes into the weekend. On Sunday, we showed off our work to many visitors on Field Day, where we were able to network with many other local farmers, CSA shareholders, and interested community members. The event was a big success. Visitors were able to enjoy our famous kale pesto with homemade bread and pasta salad. We look forward to another full week of harvesting, weeding, cooking, and distributing. KATE’S KORNER A balancing act We've had so much water this spring! Besides inundating plants and keeping us in the mud, too much water affects the nutrients our veggies need for healthy growth. Susan was noticing lots of yellow leaves on our greens. Turns out they have a nitrogen deficiency. According to wikipedia, "Nitrogen is essential for many biological processes and is crucial for any life here on Earth. It is in all amino acids, is incorporated into proteins, and is present in the bases that make up nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA. In plants, much of the nitrogen is used in chlorophyll molecules which are essential for photosynthesis and further growth.[1]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle Nitrogen is water soluble, which means when it's loose in the ground or air, water can wash it away. It can be 'fixed', for example with beans and peas (legumes) whose roots grab onto nitrogen in the ground and make it available to plants. You've probably heard concerns about nitrogen fertilizers running off into water sources, or maybe about the dead zone in the gulf at the end of the Mississippi River. Too much nitrogen in water causes algae growth that crowds out oxygen and thus strangles other plants and animals. Too much nitrogen causes other problems too: acid rain, depletion of ozone, and in drinking water, interferes with young children's absorption of oxygen (blue baby syndrome). Excess nitrogen comes from fertilizers, legume production (makes nitrogen biologically available), concentration of animals and animal wastes, and burning fossil fuels. But too little nitrogen results in poor plant growth and yellowing of plant leaves, showing the lack of chlorophyll. All of this rain has washed the available nitrogen out of our garden soils. We don't want to contribute to the overproduction of nitrogen by applying conventional fertilizer. So we use well composted animal waste instead. This is another blow to corn production this year. Many corn seeds rotted from the cold or floated away in the rain, or never got planted because the fields were too wet. Now, since corn is a nitrogen hungry plant, any seed actually planted and growing will require extra fertilization. That's expensive for the farmer and not good for the waterways either!
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