Did you know you can add vegetables to your bag each week? Simply go to pekareksproduce.com/shop and purchase what you want to add to your weekly vegetable subscription before 5:30 am each Wednesday, and we will add the produce to your bag for that day.

There’s so much to plant on the farm this time of year.  Photo on the left: Katie and Rebecca transplanting lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, and more.  Center photo: The view from Ryan’s seat while seeding carrots, beets, and radish.  Photo on the right: Grace, Jacob, Amy, and Ryan transplanting flowers.

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

Hello friends!  As we gear up for another fun produce season, we’d like to bring you a farm update.  We will again be sending out email updates, so be sure to forward to a friend or encourage them to sign up.  We hope to remember how to use facebook/instagram/twitter – so watch for fun pictures.  We’ve also been making updates to our online ordering page and we are in the beginning stages of signups for the Weekly Vegetable Subscription!  We can’t wait to see you all soon.

Pekarek’s Produce Farm Update

Ryan is getting the itch.  The weather has finally turned.  Radishes, lettuce, spinach, turnips, carrots, beets are all up in the tunnels and look good.  The greenhouse is about half full of little plants that will find another home in a couple weeks.  These plants include tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cucumbers, chives, sage, rosemary, thyme.  Ryan is dealing with a fertilizer issue—many years of college and still he makes a goof every once in a while. 

Spring maintenance is being done.  Over the winter, bolts rattle out of greenhouse frames.  The wind is tough in Nebraska!  Nothing a little time with a wrench can’t fix.  Spring maintenance also means oil and filters and checking tires and such.  We have close to a dozen machines that all need vital fluids changed and little check ups every spring!  Each of these machines makes our life easier on the farm.

Field Work

It’s dry in the field, but we didn’t have to push any snow, yet.  Later this week, we will start working ground to get ready to plant in the field.  Early plantings include beets, carrots, peas, radishes, lettuce, spinach, dill, and probably something forgotten.  Anything that can handle the cold can go out pretty quick.  Often these early plantings get snowed on, but it generally doesn’t hurt.  It’s just solid moisture.

Cutting raspberries and burning asparagus are two of the first things that happen in the field.  Cutting raspberries involves hands, knees, pruners, and thorns.  The thorns are bad, but they let you know they are there.  In the summer, the raspberries make up for the thorns with their red fruit, but its just prickles in the winter.  When the weather dampens a bit, we will burn off our asparagus patch.  Last year’s ferny growth helps to catch snow and insulate the crowns from cold weather.  Now they must go to make way for this year’s growth.  They are dry as kindling, about head high, and make a great fire.  Ryan enjoys burning!

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