CSA #19

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will include Malabar Spinach, Radishes (last round for a few weeks), Hot Peppers Mix, Listada Eggplant, Romaine, Mixed Tomatoes, Green Beans, and Tulsi Basil. Custom orders should be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at: https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

This coming week promises to be a really hot one and we are already intending to take some precautions to protect our employees from the extreme midday heat. That also means it’s going to be really hot for our plants, which is unfortunate, but kind of par-for-the-course in August. If you’ve been following the water-line replacement saga, you will be happy to hear that the new line is live and is so far working very well, though we are still chasing down some issues with the recycled frost-free pipes in individual tunnels. With luck that will all be resolved by the extreme heat of Monday.
August and September are challenging months in Kentucky. Summer vegetables are beginning to lose steam and fall ones are not yet big enough to harvest. Historically this has been a real challenge for the farm, but this year we feel we are better prepared. This is partially due to Patrick and Hannah’s efforts to chase down the details and perform the tedious calculations involved with midseason nutrition management for our solanaceous crops. Essentially, crops that grow and produce for many months like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers begin to use up the soil amendments they were originally given. Using precisely mixed amount of organic liquid fertilizers applied via our water conserving drip irrigation, the plants can be given the boost they need to keep growing delicious vegetables.
This week’s highlighted vegetable is the pepper. We’re growing a wide assortment of peppers this year. We have 3 different sweet peppers, a full bell, a baby bell, and a long horn-shaped Italian heirloom called ‘Corno di Toro’. For hot peppers, we have a hot Jalapeno (green), a Poblano (dark green), and a Slavic heirloom called ‘Czech Black’ which is nearly black. Of those, Jalapenos are the hottest, with the Czech Black and Poblano being less hot respectively. Due to getting a late start on peppers, most will come to you this week tender and green, but as the season goes on, you’ll start to see more color, particularly with the sweet peppers. We hope you enjoy our selection, and we’d really like to hear your input on our pepper varieties at some point. There are so many types of peppers, we’d love to get some customer feedback on which ones you want to see us grow in the future.
As always, we thank you for your dedication and support to our farm. We’re so happy to be a part of your community.
Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team