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THIS WEEK’S FRUIT
Kettleman Apricots
Frog Hollow Farm, Brentwood, CA
Named after the California town near where this apricot variety was bred and tested, the Kettleman has a hint of tartness that apricot fans love along with a beautiful aroma. It is smooth-textured and delightfully sweet.
Valencia Oranges
Pleasant Valley Ranch, Springville, CA
Valencia Oranges are a late season orange known for their very sweet tasting and brightly colored juice. They are one of the most popular varieties used for bottled juices because of this. Their sweet, bright flavor and minimal seed content (1-6 per orange) make them perfect for out of hand eating too. Store out of sunlight for 2-4 days on the counter or up to two weeks in the fridge.
Hass Avocado
Tomorrow’s Organic,Monterey,CA
Creamy in texture, nutty in flavor, with a small to medium seed. The Hass skin is easy to peel and darkens from green to purplish-black as it ripens. Store on the counter out of direct sunlight.
Ruby Grapefruit
Sundance Natural, Oceanside, CA
The Grapefruit is said to cross between the Jamaican sweet orange and the Indonesian pomelo, first documented in 1750. Ruby grapefruit was an accidental discovery of a red fruit growing on a pink grapefruit tree. Store out of sunlight for 2-4 days on the coun- ter or up to two weeks in the fridge.
Albion Strawberries
Yerena Farms, Watsonville, CA
The Albion is a newer variety strawberry developed at UC Davis. It is ever bearing and usually produces fruit June – October in the Bay Area. The sweet flavor and firm flesh makes the Albion an excellent dessert or preserving berry.
Minneolas
Sundance Natural, Oceanside, CA
Minneolas are a cross between a grapefruit and a mandarin. The shape slightly resem- bles a bell with a round body and pronounced neck. Minnoelas have a juicy, sweet flavor with a hint of tartness harkening to their grapefruit parentage. Store out of sunlight for 2-4 days on the counter or up to two weeks in the fridge.
A NOTE FROM FARMER AL
Dear CSA Members,
Waging War with The Earwig
We’ve never seen a year like this. It’ll go down in the annals of Frog Hollow Farm history as the “Year of the Earwig.”
They specialize in night-time invasion, crawling up the branches literally in armies and mangling individual fruits with deep gouges, rendering them scarred and misshapen! It’s DEVASTATING!
So we have two strategies to deal with these slithery, shiny, stealthy little armored critters. One is to physically capture and kill by burning. To do this we put down 10” pieces of drip tubing, which is a black plastic hose about 3⁄4” in diameter. The earwigs, upon descending back down the tree at dawn, will seek the warmth and shelter of these black cylinders. My ground crew will then walk from tree to tree, carrying the ubiquitous 5 gallon buckets, stoop- ing down to carefully pick up the tube and empty the earwigs into the bucket. After a few hours of doing this, acre by acre, I inspect the buckets. The bot- toms of each bucket are covered in a 1⁄2 inch thick layer of the nasty critters; a quivering mass of legs and antennae, all to be dumped into a metal container and burned in a bath of gasoline.
The other method is to spray the trees at night, when the earwigs are up there, feeding. We use “Entrust,” which is an organic insecticide containing naturally occurring soil bacterium called “spinosad.” This is yet another way organic farmers are using bacteria as our allies.
