Dear CSA family,
The summer solstice marks the true beginning of summer, and we are cer- tainly feeling it here. All sorts of fruits are ripening, and the extreme heat we had early last week caused even more to ripen at once than usual. Both pack- ing sheds are working non-stop, sorting, packing, and loading up fruit that is destined for your kitchen, supermarkets, and restaurants.
Out in the vegetable patch, the tomatoes are growing like crazy. Last year
we only used cages to support the tomatoes, but this year we are also trying
to weave our tomatoes in a trellis system. We are using a system called the Florida weave, which I learned at the farm I worked on in Oregon. It is very important to keep your tomatoes pruned to only a few leaders when using this trellising method, otherwise the plants will be too big and heavy to be sup- ported.
Within each row of tomatoes we put in steel t-posts at approximately 8 foot intervals. Using tomato twine, we weave around each tomato, going in front of the first plant, behind the next, and so on. Once you finish a row, you come back and weave along the other side of the plant so that you create a (very long) figure eight pattern that holds the plants in place. It is also very impor- tant that at each t-post you make a special knot to hold the string in place, which keeps the string taut and also keeps the whole line from falling apart
if an animal decides to chew through a segment! You continue to make this weaving pattern every 8 inches or so up the t-posts.
Kristin and I have had some enthusiastic help now that school is out: Farmer Al’s daughter Millie has been helping us out in the garden and learning to prune tomatoes and Sarah’s daughter Annalise has been keeping a close eye on the chickens in the heat. I think we might have some farmers in the making!
Happy solstice,
Marlene