Rain, Rain

We have had a substantial amount of rain in the past couple weeks, as I’m sure you all know. Rain is an interesting thing for strawberry plants. Yes, they need water like every other plant, but too much water can make the berries rot or hurt their shelf life once picked. Plus, rain brings in lots of moisture and temperature differences which could breed disease.

Luckily, we are coming up on the end of the season, so disease is not a threat. By the time the disease has had time to progress, the strawberries will be done producing. There are still plenty out in the field and the weather looks like it’s starting to turn back to sunny and warm. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, now is the time! We should have them for another few weeks but then it will be time to move on to the other garden goodies.

Speaking of which, we have lots of other things going on in the garden. Everything has been planted and we should start to see some harvest coming out of the tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and okra. We already picked our first harvest of early green beans from the greenhouse!

Last year, we didn’t have much luck with watermelons. We planted the seed directly into the ground and only a few decided to grow. The seeded watermelon seemed to fair better than the seedless. This year, we are fixing that. We planted our watermelon seed into small planting cups like you would see at a nursery and put them in the warm greenhouse to grow. When they get big enough, we will transplant them into the field. So far so good, lots of young sprouts coming up! It should be a good year for watermelon!

This week’s Farm Fresh Ventures box will be 100% Piedmont Produce grown fruits and veggies! Prime season is finally here! If you haven’t subscribed to our weekly produce box yet, don’t worry! You can still sign up at our store or heading over to FarmFreshVentures.com. Since it is already three weeks into the subscription, we will happily subtract the three boxes you missed from the subscription price. You don’t want to miss out on the freshest local produce available… Sign up now!