Now that summer has arrived, the team at Mother Earth Farm is fully entrenched in “main season” work. With the primary season comes the opportunity for us to grow as much food and variety as possible. Now that the soil has warmed, our beautiful bounty of vegetables is soaking up nutrients before we harvest and distribute to our community. Depending on the duration of our summer, we have approximately 3-4 months of ideal growing conditions (mid-June through September). To meet our distribution needs, our team is harvesting about 50 percent of the time we are on the farm. This percentage only increases as we are able to harvest more of our crops.

We also work daily to weed these crops, which has been particularly hard this year due to the late spring/early summer rain. We are grateful to our staff and farm volunteers for managing this hard work! It’s a never-ending task, but it can be a deciding factor in the health of our plants, and the nourishment they provide to our hungry neighbors.

A main focus of this season is successional plantings in our fields. We have always planted successional crops like lettuce, carrots, and beets in order to have a constant supply, but this year, we are adding in a second succession of long-season crops like kale, collards, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. This growing plan will ensure that we have a slightly younger and less harvested sequence of these veggies as we enter the fall. These crops will have a bit more stamina and stay with us through the winter and into next spring.

With this in mind, here are some of the fabulous things that we are currently sharing out along with projected crops for late summer into late fall: 

Currently harvesting – chard, cabbage, kale & collards, summer squash/zucchini, garlic, lettuce, kohlrabi

On the harvest radar – carrots, beets, cucumbers, fennel, tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant, bush beans, peppers, plums

Late summer into fall – Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, winter squash, celery, parsnips, fall lettuce, leeks, apples, pears, grapes