Hello Friends!
It’s starting to feel like spring around here! Ryan set up the delivery date in late April for more strawberries and asparagus plants. Six thousand strawberry plants will go in the field around May 1. They won’t produce strawberries until 2023 and 2024. The strawberries you eat from us in 2022 (hopefully!) were planted in 2020. Our matted row strawberries are a three-year crop with harvests of berries in the second and third years.
The 3000 asparagus roots will go in the field in late April. They won’t be ready for a full harvest until 2024 or 2025! Sometimes farming is a long-term proposition. For contrast, radishes planted outside at the same time would be ready to eat in 35 days.
Field Work
| We had some nice cold days last week that Ryan thought would be perfect to spend the day outside! Ryan was out on the tractor prepping beds for spring planting. |
| This land was in vegetables and soybeans last fall. Back in October it was disked, bedded, and seeded with a cover crop of rye and oats and harrowed. The disk stirs up the soil and cuts old plant residue. The bedder creates a big fluffy row that is easy to plant in. The harrow gets the rye and oats seed covered with a small amount of soil. Next, we wait all winter while the rye grows; the oats grew and died last fall. Next a pass with the big 6 ft rototiller on the tractor. Next a pass with the bedder to form a rough bed and install 2 or 3 lines of drip tape to irrigate the crop. |
| FINALLY, a last pass with the bedder to refine and smooth the bed. If all goes right, we have a flat smooth surface with three marks on it to plant seeds or set plants. The moral of the story — it took 7 passes with a tractor to get a bed ready for planting. Oh, and, it was so windy on the day of final bed shaping that coffee was literally blown out of Ryan’s mouth while he was trying to get a drink to warm up! |
Weekly Vegetable Subscription
| Did you know that in a typical year, there are more 30 different vegetables in the Pekarek’s Produce Vegetable Subscription? This includes tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli, butternut squash, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, red & golden beets, green beans, green onions, jalapeños, kohlrabi, onions, potatoes, radishes, salad mix, snow & sugar snap peas, spaghetti squash, spinach, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, cherry & roma tomatoes, turnips, cantaloupe, yellow squash, and zucchini! Be sure to check out the weekly vegetable subscription at pekareksproduce.com/csa and share with your friends. Sign up by May 17. |
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please text or call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, and Grace