Friday, June 4, 2010

Rousedale Farm CSA Week 3....plus the broccoli and cauliflower quandry

Hi Everyone!

Your boxes for week three will include:

Cauliflower (more on that in a moment)
Strawberries
Spinach
Sugar Snap Peas
Snow Peas
Romaine Lettuce
Iceberg Lettuce
Mild Mix
Spicy Mix
Spring Onions
Radishes
Red Russian Kale


A quick note on Broccoli and Cauliflower.....

It is very tough to grow these two vegetable in the Spring in our area of Maryland. Many growers have thrown in the towel and given up on springtime B&C. The problem is, it gets so hot so fast, these two cole crops don't perform well in the heat. The fall crops of these two are usually wonderful. That's why many have decided to just go for the Fall crops instead of Spring and Fall. We keep trying. Last year we threw it all out. It looked great, but tasted extremely bitter. Last week we picked all of our broccoli, as it got so hot, and threw half of it out. We taste tested all of it and felt the broccoli you received last week was OK, not fall like, but not bad. That brings us to the Cauliflower this week...I harvested all the cauliflower this week as the extreme heat was killing it. It doesn't look beautiful, but we cooked some up and it tastes fine. We would suggest cooking it instead of eating it raw. Raw, a bit of the bitterness comes through.

This Fall you will see a huge difference in these two crops.

So, will we try again next Spring for Broccoli and Cauliflower? Vicky says no, I say let me try one more year planting it under row covers so we can get in the ground a week earlier and see what happens. Really that's all we're talking here is a week or two that could make all the difference in the world.....maybe.

Steve

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