whiteplum farm: Harvest Review

I have strayed from this blog by not contributing to it, by banking on nobody reading it, and all-in-all forgetting that I even started it. Since it started with a focus on urban farming, I’ll return to that topic and just give a run down on the summer of 2009. At this moment the temperature outside is hovering at around zero degrees Fahrenheit, so thinking about summer should be therapeutic.

The summer of 2009 gave us more precipitation than that of 2008, which was a great gift. Temperatures never rose as high as 100°, and as I recall only exceeded 90° a handful of times. Consequently, tomatoes and peppers were slow to ripen, but we had exceedingly great raspberries, strawberries, and corn. Potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, cucumbers, tomatillos, cabbages, beans, peas and kale were great. I planted some old packs of shell-beans in a space vacated by beets on the 4th of July. I am not exaggerating when I say the beans were at least 15 years old, and they were of 2 or 3 types. In about 15 linear feet of beans I harvested about 2/3 of a gallon of shell beans. Our sweet potatoes were a bust, maybe because of the heat issue. Our grapes were also not as prolific as usual, possibly due to the heat, or maybe an overly late pruning job. Next time I'll say what produce we preserved for later use. Next year I resolved to plant more potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots.