Seeding Tomatoes for Fall
August 4th, 2021
We’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about tomatoes so you’ll be happy to know that we’ve started the seeds for our fall succession of tomatoes in the greenhouse! Though tomatoes tend to be synonymous with summer, they are more of a spring and fall crop in our growing zone as the summer temperatures in July and August can be brutal. Once high temperatures are consistently above 90 degrees, tomato plants stop setting fruit and regular highs in the upper 90’s lead to poor textured fruit. We planted a mix of slicers and cherries including Sungold, Grand Marshall, Mountain Princess, and Neptune.
We spotted the first luffa fruit on the trellis! They produce much larger blooms than our cucumbers which our pollinators are loving. Though luffa can be harvested and eaten when young, our plan is to allow them to fully ripen and dry out on the vine. Once they reach this stage, we’ll be able to easily peel away the skin to expose the fibrous “skeleton” which can then be used as a natural sponge.
New to the harvesting lineup this week is our Striped Armenian cucumbers (we featured them last week) and Padrón peppers. Named after the town in Spain where they originated, these light green peppers are mild when harvested small and become spicier the more they are left to grow and mature on the plant. We’ve noticed when taste testing our peppers that they tend to be more on the spicy side, most likely due to weather-related stress they’ve endured. You’ll be able to purchase these peppers at our farm stand on Saturday from 10am-noon!
