12th Week of the Spring CSA season: Week of May 22nd

Written By Evening Song Farm
looking down on dark green tomato plants in beds surrounded by carrot tops

tomato row with carrot seedings alongside them, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have garlic, yellow potatoes, red radishes, bok choi, mini red and green head lettuce, mini romaine heads, cilantro, mesclun mix, spicy greens mix, spinach, baby lettuce, rhubarb, and some early plant starts for your garden*.

*If you order a bag for delivery, take note that the onions, leeks, sage, and cucumbers are are all labeled as “plants” and are for planting.

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag to Ludlow or Rutland
small green plants in rows on black landscape fabric with a large plastic tunnel, daffodil patch, forythia in bloom, and a barn all in the background

strawberry patch above the tunnels, photo by Adam Ford

close up of 3-inch tall green bean plants with one set of leave still unfurling with their seed hull attached

green bean plants, photo by Adam Ford

close up of small butternut squash plants with one cotyledon that still has its seed hull attached

butternut babies, photo by Adam Ford

Farm News

What a week around here! The team transplanted the next round of tomatoes in the tunnel, as well as all the tunnel sweet peppers. Two tunnels were mulched for the bulk of this season’s weed control. (Hopefully.) Many outdoor beds were prepped for future transplants, and many edges of fields were managed to prevent encroaching grasses. The team got an excellent jump on pruning and trellising the first round of tomatoes that we planted about a month ago. Ryan mixed up a few batches of compost we will use later in the season, and I wrapped my brain around all the plant orders that go out at the end of the month.

Bust time of year to write much more, but enjoy the photo tour of what’s going on around here these days, and have a great week!

-ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, K2, Cindy, Galen, Katie, Taylor, Vanessa, Bryan, and Evan (and Sky and Soraya)

Rhubarb Crisp
A person uses a yellow hose to spray down vegetables on an outdoor wooden table in the background, with wooden pallets and upside down drying red and gray vegetable storage bins drying in the foreground, all in front of blooming yellow forsythias

Katie spraying scallions, photo by Galen

smiling farmer with a large white apron, spraying scallions with a yellow hose

look how happy scallions make us, photo by Galen

garden rows in a high tunnel with piles of dark brown compost mulch

to prep a bed, first we mow down the previous crop, then we dump wheelbarrow loads of compost mulch onto the beds, photo by Ryan

those same garden beds, now with tomato plants down the center of each row, with 2 lines of black tubing on either side of the plants

and then we plant into those beds and lay drip irrigation lines down, photo by Ryan

tall wooden stakes every 5 feet down rows of tiny pea plants that are about 2 inches high, with fully mulched beds

beautiful rows of well mulched pea beds with their stakes pounded in, photo by Adam Ford

rows of little strawberry plants full of white blossoms with yellow centers on black landscape fabric and dew on the leaves

field of strawberry blossoms… or future June afternoons of strawberry shortcake, photo by Adam Ford

close up looking don on green clover plants growing among dead, dry, light brown plant debris

clover cover crop under last year’s pepper plants overwintered well for us to see what crops grow best in that undercover this year, photo by Adam Ford

looking down on two young, green milkweed plants next two several baby carrot plants with short green leaves

if you have been with us for awhile, you know that there are some weeds we leave alone and let grow among the cash crops, milkweed is one of those, photo by Adam Ford

farmer awkwardly smiling while holding a long, messy ream of plastic plant tags outside a greenhouse

look at all the plastic tags! That is the smile of a person covering up their discomfort about the volume of plastic we haven’t eradicated from this operation yet… photo by Katie Stickney

ground level view between two rows of tomato plants about 2 feet high

tomato rows right before we trellised them, photo by Adam Ford

table full of seedlings with plastic tags and the farm logo printed on them

so many plants almost ready to go! photo by Adam Ford

close up of pink peach blossoms on the tip of a branch

peach blossoms, photo by Adam Ford

same garden rows in a high tunnel, now with that mulch piles raked out evenly to cover the beds

then we rake that mulch layer out to about a 2-inch thick cover on the beds, with an ash bark mulch cover between the beds, photo by Ryan

2 bending over farmers using full black wheelbarrows of mulch to fill the pathways between garden beds that have tiny plants in them

Galen, Katie, and Vane mulching the pathways of planted beds, photo by Ryan

and then the trellis set up on the stakes… we are hoping this is the year of peas! photo by Ryan

close up of two garden rows, one of bright green scallions, one of small baby red and green lettuce heads, with black sandbags down the middle

sand bags in between rows to hold down row cover, photo by Adam Ford

looking at the rows of dry, dead plant debris in a field of green clover

we are knocking down the pepper debris, putting down a thin strip of compost mulch, and planting right into that cover crop, photo by Adam Ford

a side bonus of the seed saving we are doing with some of our winter brassicas is that the flowers are a great source of early season food for the resident pollinators, photo by Ryan

tall plastic structure with plastic roof on top covering a wood chipped area with a weight bench and several circular weights to add to the bar

Bryan set up a nice outdoor gym for all our before work strength training needs… farm work is physical, but often not in ways that help us build and maintain strong bodies, photo by Adam Ford

small light green baby zucchini plant coming out of a hole in black landscape fabric

first round of zucchini and summer squash are looking good outside under row cover, photo by Adam

close up of a daffodil with 6 outer white petals and a light coral trumpet petal layer and yellow inside

this is such an elegant daffodil, photo by Adam Ford

ground level view between two rows of garlic, green leaves above 1 foot high on a straw mulch with a tiny black and red bird in between the rows

robin in the garlic, photo by Adam Ford

Evening Song Farm
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