Beausol Gardens 2009 CSA newsletter #20

Greetings, Beausol locavores:

Here at Beausol Gardens, things continue to progress and the cast of characters continues to change. There are many more different butterflies supping at our flowers: fritillaries and sulphurs and others joining the swallowtails and hawk moths. The silverspotted skippers have made way for other strange and beautiful skippers. Weirdly beautiful caterpillars are fat and sluggish, looking for a place to pupate.

Titmice are joining their cousin chickadees dining at our feeders. Hawks are circling and calling... are they staking winter hunting territories or summoning mates (or both)?

I am finding green tree frogs in the strangest places: on the okra, in the flower garden. More leaves are coloring non-green. Even the weeds are changing guard: the grasses and "summer" weeds are being joined by "winter" weeds, like henbit and others.

We planted and transplanted spring flowers this weekend so they will overwinter properly for next year's CSA bouquets. The first 2010 seed catalog arrived. We are often planning ahead. Soon we will be planting onions, garlic and strawberry plants for next year.

I ordered a "hoophouse" (unheated greenhouse) last week. Hopefully it will arrive and we can erect it and plant into it quickly for the winter CSA. With the addition of this resource, we should be able to provide more tender crops earlier in the season. Once we have developed a new "greenhouse growing skill set" we may be able to expand our "summer CSA" further into the spring and fall... vacations may be becoming scarce.

It is probably appropriate to remind us all of some of the aspects of CSA:
In addition to building a community of mutual benefit, producing safer and healthier food and fresher flowers, supporting farmers, and improving our environment, farmers and members share the risk inherent in agriculture. The words "member" and "share" are carefully chosen. CSA members are participants, buying a portion of the season's production: a share of the farm.

Typically, we have hundreds of tuberose stems to include in bouquets during this time. This year we even purchased and planted an additional 1000 tuberose bulbs to join the hundreds we saved from last year. The plants are beautiful and healthy. They are not blooming. The bouquets in late summer should be heavenly scented with several tuberose stems. Sadly, instead of hundreds, we have cut only a couple dozen stems with very few more in sight. Last year at this time we were still having 90 degree days and had excess snap beans, peppers AND tuberoses we could take to the farmers' market after filling the shares.

So all this brings me to an apology for the "skimpy" bouquets that we will have for the remainder of the season. We are working on a couple of options to assure you have some type of bouquet for the last four weeks (including this week - the last (23rd) delivery will be on Oct. 6 and 8) of the CSA.

I can't say I am missing last September's 90 degree weather, but this beautiful cooler weather is definitely slowing things down.

So, this week we will have more peppers. We should also have some hot variety jalapeño peppers this week, I think. There may be some snap beans. And eggplant, okra, herbs and few more cherry tomatoes. The bouquets will have zinnias, gomphrena, celosia, sunflowers, ornamental grasses, solidago, ageratum and verbena.

See you soon,
Harry