In another field, Javier and Misael took advantage of the warm, sunny day to transplant our first sweet peppers into plastic covered beds. (Like many of the crops we grow in the spring, the air temperatures are usually warm enough for summer plants, but the soil is still cooler than they like.  The plastic warms the soil and protects it from wind).  By midday, I was wishing it was cool and cloudy.  The peppers planted in the early morning were already wilting.  Although established, well-rooted pepper plants love heat, their tender seedlings are sensitive to both slight chills and moderate sun.   While we had already installed drip irrigation under the plastic, it would have taken about 12 hours adequately wet the soil that way.  Instead, we used the tried and true method of running irrigation water straight down the level furrows.  It took more water, but the entire field was soaking wet within an hour and the plants perked right back up.

In our quickly growing tomato field, Eduardo and Dolores explored the ability of humans to alter the natural environment, running lines of baling twine down the rows of stakes driven in over the weekend, one 7 foot-high stake for every 6 tomato plants.   As they trellis the growing plants over the next six weeks, adding another layer of twine every six inches or so up the stake, they will turn a flat and two-dimensional field into a maze of 6 foot high vegetation.  By July, our trellis will support tens of thousands of pounds of tomato plants and provide a shady windbreak for the tons of fruit they produce.

Pablito celebrated Earth Day by engaging in the ancient rite of sowing living seeds, of (green) beans and (summer) squash, into the moist earth itself.  Every gardener is vaguely aware of the enormous faith that this act first required of human beings — to take actual, edible food and push it into the ground. To defer immediate gratification for the promise of increasing your bounty tenfold.  And to trust that Mother Earth will not swallow up your precious seed, feed it to insects or other creatures, but rather allow it to sprout and raise its leaves once again into the air.  What amazes me continuously is how the slightest differences in soil texture and moisture — too wet, too dry, too cloddy, too fine — can affect the process.  Ideally, you want the seed as shallow as possible, yet it needs to be firmly placed into full moisture.  Seeded one day too soon, and the seeds will rot.  One day too late, and soil will be moist enough to soften the seeds but not sprout them, and bugs will eat them instead.  So it seems difficult to me that the earliest farmers would have gotten it right the first time.  Why did they keep trying?  Why not just go back to hunting and gathering?
 

TRANSGENDER FROGS AND YOUR LAWN... What do they have in common?  Well, it seems that the most widely used weedkiller on America’s lawns causes male frogs to develop female reproductive organs, or both.  Even in tiny amounts — much less, say, than would be found in an average stream running through a suburban neighborhood — the herbicide atrazine was found to dramatically affect amphibian sex development.  The study was actually commissioned by the company that makes the chemical, although it was eventually expanded to an independent project.  What’s the big deal?  Well, the study is direct proof of the power of minute amounts of herbicides to disrupt hormone production, in this case causing males to produce estrogen instead of testosterone.  Herbicides are the most widely used chemicals both in agriculture and lawn care, but have received less attention over the years than more (acutely) toxic insecticides.  And as suburbs continue to surround landscaping with non-permeable asphalt, larger and larger amounts of weedkillers will be running off directly into our streams and rivers.  If your hire a lawncare company or use store bought products, check to see what  you’re exposing your family (and local frogs) to...

 

IN YOUR BOXES
 Surprise Strawberries make this week’s box heavy in the fruit department, since we already had the Kiwis and Red Grapefruit harvested and ready.  I know I said you’d get English (shelling) peas this week, but instead it’s a second week of Snap Peas.  Shellers will come in the medium boxes next week.  
 Asparagus will be taking a breather next week for it’s annual mid-season cultivation to knock down the weeds, and an irrigation to keep it growing.  Then it will be back in another week or two.  In its place will come our first Fava Beans.  

 I’m sure most of the strawberries we send out this week won’t last long in your homes, but just in case:  Remember to cover them up before refrigerating, preferably in a plastic bag.  Our berries are a soft, old-time variety with a short shelf life.  They will dry out in the fridge after 2-3 days, even when properly stored.  As usual, the first strawberries of the season are never the tastiest of the  year; we hope they are big improvement over the supermarket  variety and promise they will get better.

This time of year the volume and weight of your CSA box shrinks dramatically, as the number of time- and labor-intensive but relatively light crops swells.  Strawberries, salad mix, asparagus, and peas don’t weigh much — and it may not take much time to eat them.  But it takes much longer to harvest a pound of them than say, potatoes and broccoli.   In an hour, one TFF worker can harvest about 100 lbs of broccoli.  In comparison, the same person can pick about 15 pounds of peas in that much time.  Strawberries are a little better, but not much.  So the TLC content of our April boxes more than makes up for their slender weight.

Thanks,            Pablito