Summer going out, Fall coming in

Hi Folks, Max writing.  As the weather finally begins to cool off here, our summer crops are winding down.  Siobhan and Declan enjoyed picking some of the last tomatoes from the vines in front of our house, and we are saving the best ones to sell, and making tomato sauce out of the rest of them.  We're also picking the last of our eggplant and basil, and it looks like the zucchini will hang on for a bit longer.  We did a much later planting of zucchini -- it was a gamble, but it has stayed warm enough and it is paying off now!

One big change for us going into the fall is that for the first time, we are having a wholesale nursery 40 minutes down the road start our fall/winter crops for us.  Up until now, we have grown all our own transplant starts ourselves, with varying levels of success.  Even when all goes well, it is one more thing to do around the farm, and we are delighted to be paying the nursery $13 per flat of plants, and they show up to our farm in perfect condition.  I no longer have to drive out to farm 2x per day including weekends (plants don't stop needing water on the weekend!) just to water the transplants.  I simply supply the seeds to the nursery, and then leave them in the hands of professionals, who have the perfect greenhouse setup, and then I pick them up when they are ready.  It's been a huge time saver for us, AND we now have increased yields because of high transplant quality.

About a month ago, we transplanted out romaine lettuce, butter lettuce, salanova lettuce for salad mix, spinach, kale, and green onions.  We are now harvesting large amounts of all those crops!  We are so excited to have fresh greens again, other than arugula, which grows quite well through our hot 100+ degree summers.