In the CSA this Week:

• Shallots
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli - the last of the season
• Bunched Spinach
• Cebollitas - (the tender green tops from our onion seedlings, trimmed to help our onion starts girth up, and tasty like chives!)
• Hakurei turnips
• Purple daikon - the last of the winter stash, peel to reveal the inner beauty and sweet flavor
• Red Beets
• Red Potatoes
• Tetsukabuto Winter Squash - the last winter squash you'll see until October, so don't let it rot on your counter! :)
• Artichokes galore - this is the peak!

Winter Cover Crops Feeding the Farm...

As CSA members, you get to enjoy the seasonal abundance of cash crops that spill out of Valley Flora's fields all year long - everything from artichokes to zucchini. But underpinning all those tasty fruits and vegetables are our winter cover crops. We seed our fields to a mix of cereal rye, common vetch, red clover, and flowering phacelia every October. That diverse mix of cold-hardy plants - and often some volunteer favas - grow slowly through the winter months, protecting our soil from erosion and weathering. As the days lengthen the cover crop shoots skyward, and by April it's a tangled, flowering mass of lush fodder and habitat for all kinds of creatures: bees, frogs, field mice, and more. But just as importantly, it's food for our soil. 

Once the fields are dry enough we mow our cover crops down with a flail mower, chopping all that biomass into little pieces so it can decompose faster. It then gets incorporated into the soil with our spader, a specialed tillage tool from Italy that is designed to do as little damage to soil structure as possible. All that organic matter from the cover crops boosts nitrogen levels, feeds soil biology, and improves tilth. It's the foundation of soil health and fertility at Valley Flora, and a fundamental building block of your vegetables.

I'm always sad to see the cover crops go, even though it's exciting to make way for all the good things we humans will be eating this season. I love noticing the bumblebees emerge on a sunny spring day and binge clumsily on a field of purple Phacelia or aromatic white fava blossoms, all of it planted 6 months ago just for them, for this very fleeting moment of spring.

Bumblebees gorging on sweet fava nectar

Phacelia in full bloom on the farm