Week 3 CSA basket

The spinach is bolting, the garlics are scaping and some more sunny days will bring us the shelling peas.

Garlic scapes

Spinach is a "long day" plant, which means it wants to flower once the days are long (12+ of daylight) - that's why you only get spinach in the spring and fall: by mid-June, all the plants want to "go to seed." And this late winter gave spinach a slower-than-usual start, so we are operating on the shortest window yet to grow spinach out in the fields. Lettuce is also a long day plant, but ours is still looking full and beautiful and you'll get plenty of it this week.

courtesy of C. Kaye Photography

Meanwhile, garlic has been in the ground since October of last year (because it requires the longest growing season of all of our crops). Around this time it sends up a "scape," which would eventually turn into a flower. If a garlic plant (or onion, or shallot plant) flowers, then the energy of the plant is spent making a healthy flower full of seeds, as opposed to being spent forming a nice, big bulb that we know and love. So we break the garlic scapes off and enjoy eating them for their mild garlic flavor and leave the garlic head to grow in the ground.

Finally, our peas are puffing out. I tasted some sweet shelling peas today, and if we get some sun, we'll have them next week for you. The sugar snap peas are also climbing high at nearly 5 feet now, starting to flower and grow their sweet, crisp pods.

Expect the following in your baskets this week:

Lettuce, kale, collards, bok choy, tatsoi cabbage, radishes, garlic scapes, arugula, spinach.

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Chop up your garlic scapes into your salad! Chop it all up into your salad! This is the time to eat fresh, fresh, fresh after a looooong winter and spring gap of vegetables.