Tomatoes Setting Fruit and Snap Peas Blooming
March 17th, 2021
Our tomatoes are beginning to grow up the trellis, set blooms, and we’ve even spotted the first fruits! Tomato flowers are self-pollinating which means they contain both male and female parts. While the flowers are capable of self-pollination, factors like wind and insects can help the process along. Now that we’re starting to see the first fruits, we’ll be eagerly watching their progress as they swell and eventually mature. The first to mature (and thus be harvested) will be our smaller varieties like Sun Gold (an orange cherry tomato) and Candyland Red (a red currant tomato).
In addition to our tomatoes, our snap peas are beginning to flower. Snap peas have a very short window of time between blooming and harvesting. Typically the pods will be ready for harvesting within five to seven days after the flower blooms. Once the plants hit their stride and begin to bloom regularly, we’ll be harvesting almost every other day to keep up. Like snow peas, the entire pod of the snap pea is edible and can be enjoyed raw or cooked. It’s possible we’ll have the first harvest as early as next weekend so we will make sure to keep you posted!
Spring planting continued this week with cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant. We decided to interplant our Rosa Bianca eggplant with marigolds in a continuing effort to incorporate more flowers on the farm and maximize the use of our growing space. As for the rest of our crops, we’ll have a couple of different vegetables coming into season this week and next, namely our rainbow chard that has recovered beautifully from the freeze and baby arugula.
If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, we delivered iceberg lettuce to Chef Justin Yu at Better Luck Tomorrow and frisée and beets to Chef Kaitlin Steets of Littlefoot, a pop-up concept with a French tasting menu.
