Tomatoes Begin….

Its the first tomato this week. Its been a late year for this crop but there is quite a bit of fruit on the plants so it looks like we should have a good season now that we are underway. One factor that has slowed us down a bit has been the crows. We have an active colony of ebony pranksters that frequent this part of Brunswick, making trouble and living high on the hog between the farms and wednesday trash pick-up.

With the exception of our upic cherry tomatoes, all of our tom plants are raised inside our field greenhouse tunnels. This protects the plants from disease and temperature fluctuations but when we open them every day for ventilation, they aren’t protected from the crows. They walk up and down the outsides of the houses looking for the perfect tomato, just ripe and they peck it a few times and move on. The few peck on many fruits are the insult added to the injury as one bird will destroy many tomatoes  instead of eating just one completely. We have this same problem with our melons as well and in years past have had big losses in our strawberries too. What can we do about this? Well short of spending a lot of time hunting them, which we don’t do, our only tools are to try and scare them off. In our experience the most effective protection for crops is flash tape. This is a mylar tape with bright red and silver foil on either side. Its light and strong and by stringing it from posts above the crop the wind and sun make a glittering flash factory like a daytime disco. The crows generally find this light show too stimulating to bother the crop below but sometimes they just dance under it as they enjoy lunch.

Chinese Cabbage Hearts

Think of romaine but with a little more flavor. These can be shredded into a salad, quick slaw or stir fry…

What’s Coming…

Eggplant, cantaloupe and peppers will be here soon!

What’s In Upic?

Green Beans

Flowers

Herbs

What’s In  The Share This Week?

Summer Squash/Cucumbers

Sweet Onions

Carrots

Chinese Cabbage Hearts

Tomato

Arugula

Tatsoi/mustard