We have been having some beautiful summer weather here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and with that comes questions on when our tomato harvest will begin. Well, it is hard to know exactly when, as plants have a mind of their own and changes in weather can throw off the general calculations that we make in the winter when we do all our crop planning. But we expect our cherry tomatoes to start ripening first and they look to be on track for the start of harvest to be around Independence Day.
Even though we got big tomato plants out in the field it is not too late to get tomatoes transplanted into your garden. Heck, we haven’t gotten our second succession of tomatoes in the ground yet (fingers crossed for transplanting next week). Our greenhouse is still well stocked with a large variety of cherry and heirloom tomato seedlings. This week we also have lots of other seedlings including peppers, beans, melons, basil, marigolds, zinnias, pumpkins, winter squash, okra, and more; check out our online shop to see the full selection.
Most years we like to experiment with a new crop. This season we have decided to give peanuts a try. We started two varieties, Fastigiata Pinstriped and Tennessee Red in the greenhouse in small seedling trays that we then potted up to 3″ pots. They have been growing quite well in the greenhouse. Since they are tropical plants that love heat like sweet potatoes we decided to plant them out in the field along with the sweet potato slips. So this past week we transplanted the peanut seedlings in one bed and planted our sweet potato slips right next to them. Then we covered all of them with bird netting to keep the deer and rabbits away from them, as they find their leaves delicious. Peanuts take a long time to grow and we expect to harvest them in the fall around the same time we dig sweet potatoes.
This week we still have some garlic scapes to harvest so we will be whipping up another batch of Garlic Scape Pesto! Our fresh garlic scape pesto is made from our garlic scapes, olive oil, parmesan cheese, spinach, walnuts, and kosher salt; that’s it no fillers. It is just down right delicious, if you like pesto you will love our garlic scape pesto. Our pesto goes perfectly with pasta, sandwiches, pizza, seafood, poultry, or whatever needs a garlicky punch. No preservatives are used, so it must be kept refrigerated or frozen. The garlic scape pesto is available in three sizes: half pint (8oz), pint (16oz), and quart (32oz). To make sure you don’t miss out we highly recommend you order ahead of time through our online shop. Because our garlic scape harvest is coming to an end we anticipate that this will be our last batch of pesto for the season.
This Saturday at the Easton Farmers’ Market our special will be our Steak Taco, sliced steak sauteed with onions served on a warm corn tortilla and garnished with pico de gallo. We hope you can swing by our booth to grab a taco, pick up a pint of pesto, check out our seedlings, or just say hi!