It was so nice to be dry for a few days in a row last week! I keep thinking that this time, it will stay dry but we’re back to rainy weather most days out here. It’s really unbelievable. Despite the rain and even as it was raining, we harvested about half of the winter squash. It’s up in the barn with fans blowing on it. It will cure for a couple of weeks to sweeten up and then, if it all hasn’t rotted, you’ll be getting it in your boxes by the end of August. We have 6 more beds of winter squash in a different field still out there. After last year’s crop failure, we decided to separate the plantings to give them slightly different growing conditions and so disease couldn’t just rip through the whole patch. It seems to have worked, at least partially. That section is not as diseased and we’re more optimistic about the prospects of acorn, carnival, red kuri, and kabocha squashes.
It’s a really up and down time for us, emotionally here. Last week we’re were really cruising; planting away, working up fairly dry fields, etc. This week we’re back to swampy ground with more diseases popping up on more types of plants. Our cukes and summer squash succumbed to downey mildew last week, seemly over night. Even the interns were aghast. But we have some good looking asian cukes growing in the high tunnel now and will do our best to keep them healthy. We have hoed the fall green patch once and are working on several beds of beets and carrots, all of which came up nicely. There are more things to plants out and sow, broccoli, napa cabbage, more beets, more lettuce, a last round of sunflowers, but we are again waiting for a break in the rain.
