Ghosts of Harvests Past and Future

A spinach crop from a few years back. Mmmmmm!

The month of March is often when we start to dream just a bit harder about the crops we hope to have success with in the coming year.  It's too early to harvest now - especially when we had a rougher Winter that did terminate the majority of our high tunnel crops we were attempting to over-Winter.  Nope, the rosemary did not make it this time around.  We might have somewhere from 50 to 80 lettuce plants remaining of the 1000 or so we planted late last Fall to over-Winter.  The spinach we seeded late last Fall is just now germinating and the tatsoi and komatsuna have poked a few scout seedlings out of the ground.

But, we have pictures of prior year harvests that show us what we could be looking at again as we progress through the growing season.

We're getting the onions and some of the earlier greens planted into trays right now.  Soon, the trays are going to expand so that they will require much more space than they are taking now.  We can tell you that once you get a whole bunch of trays that look good like the ones at the left, it can bring about a whole lot of optimism for their future!

If you look at this picture carefully, you'll see there is plenty of green grass and green leaves in the background.  So, clearly, this picture is later in the season (probably May).  That might seem oh so far away to you if you are getting anxious to see warmer weather.  But, believe us when we tell you - this is NOT so far away.  This is especially true for those of us who are growers.  It is amazing how quickly you can go from 'being on schedule' to 'being hopelessly behind.'

One of the earlier long season crops that comes out of the ground is the garlic.  We call them a long season crop because we actually plant them the prior Fall and then harvest in mid-July.  In fact, we usually harvest the scapes starting in early June.

The big deal about harvesting garlic is that it is one of those crops where you go from having lots of plants in the ground to having empty beds after harvest.  The visual change can be jarring, to say the least.  After all, we usually have been seeing green in those beds since April and there was straw mulch indicating where we planted the garlic since late October or early November.

Normally, the garlic harvest is a full day with four to five people working on the project.  We pull the garlic plants and stack the good heads in bundles of 25.  The questionable heads go into separate piles.  Once the field is cleared of garlic plants, they are brought in to be bundled and hung in one of our buildings to be cured.  We then clean the beds up that the garlic was planted in so we can put in a cover crop or late flowers of some sort.  It's a very busy day, but the satisfaction levels at the end are usually very high at the farm.


The early cucumbers usually appear in early July.  We could push the season a bit earlier if we spent some high tunnel space on them.  But, frankly, the demand isn't what it needs to be for us to do that.  And, usually our field cucumbers over-produce for what we typically need.  The good news about cucumber over-production?  The chickens and turkeys LIKE cucumbers and the farmers and farm-workers enjoy throwing some of the culls and excess to the birds.  So, here's to another year where we get as much as we need out of our cucumber crop and then some!

The White Wing onions start sizing up in July and we can start pulling them for our CSA and other customers as that month progresses.  The yellow and red onions won't normally be ready for us until mid to late August (and sometimes later depending on planting dates), so we ride the white onions for quite a while.  Frankly, this is not a hardship since the white onions have a nice, mildly sweet flavor.  The size of these onions can vary a fair amount, but that seems to fit our customers well enough.

Oh... wait.  We don't grow THOSE do we?

The zucchini get going - sometimes as early as late June.  Rob kind of likes the zucchini harvest because you usually have some level of reward every time you go out to pick.  Along with the cucumbers, zucchini and summer squash provide a little 'bulk' to the produce that is usually dominated by lettuce and other leafy veggies up to this point.  We also tend to see zucchini as a sign that 'grilling season' is truly begun!

We often see cucumbers, green beans and zucchini as the harbingers of Summer.  But, most people probably equate a nice red tomato with the warmer months of the year.  We certainly will not argue if you tell us you enjoy a nice, vine ripened heirloom tomato from our farm in the month of August.  After all, WE like a nice, vine ripened heirloom tomato from our farm in August as well.  We hereby designate that period of time as Sandwich Season because sandwiches become so much more interesting (and tasty) when you add heirloom lettuce, tomatoes, peppers to whatever else you like between two pieces of bread.  Lunches never tasted so good.

As you get deeper into the year, the melons and watermelons make their appearance (usually August into September).  We celebrate by digging into the first Minnesota Midget out of one of our high tunnels.  Sorry folks, this is one of those times where we do NOT let our customers get the first pick.  That first ripe melon is OURS.  But, never fear, there are usually a few dozen more right behind that first harvest.  So, usually, we only get a sneak peak by a day or two.

Sadly, the watermelon harvests are much less reliable than some crops on our farm.  But, when they are good, they are very good and we have plenty of photographic evidence that successful watermelon crops are not foreign to our farm.  Typically, the issue has to do with priorities.  Watermelons take up more space than many crops, so we don't plant as many of them as we might like.  The other issue is that the more valuable (to us) crops get priority when it comes to farm labor.  If conditions prevent us from getting everything done, it is the watermelons that often lose out.

So, if you want to have a measurement for how well your farmers are staying on top of things at the farm - look at how many watermelons show up when deliveries are made.  Our best watermelon year was 2012, which was the year we also harvested a nice batch of sweet corn.  That was also the season that we had a spray plane fly over the Western half of our farm - so maybe that isn't such a good measurement?  Oh well.

Many think of winter squash as the end of the season, but that misses all of the late root crops and greens that are still growing even into November (and sometimes later).  The farmers, however, find hayracks covered with squash to be highly rewarding.  Squash harvest has some similarities to the garlic harvest in that we typically pull all of the quality fruit at one time.  The difference is that we usually don't clean out the vines at the same time.

Here's to a good growing season where we can make the photo records of the past be recreated once again.  And, if we're lucky, perhaps we can replace many of these pictures with new ones!