Farm Life Vegetables and Berries

35 Degrees Celsius

Calendula

At 33 degrees Celsius in our fields and 37 degrees Celsius in our greenhouses, this heat wave is sparing no one, particularly on the vegetable front. If it’s a harbinger what’s still to come, we’ll have to steel ourselves and revise our seasonal litany of prayers. I may move to incantations, or consider reciting a poem or two – something along the lines of Théophile Gautier’s Pluie, for example. Fortunately, even as I write this, the sky is darkening and the wind is turning. Come what may – rain or hail – it will be welcome. We need a bit of H2O, and fast. Indeed, as you may already have surmised, we irrigated quite a bit this past week — our pond has never been so low so early in the season.

That said, our veggies have stocked up on sunshine over the past week. The lettuce is succulent, the strawberries are ripe. The zucchini plants have begun to bloom, we should see our first zucchinis in a couple of weeks. This week’s offering includes garlic scapes and kohlrabi. Some will venture that the garlic scape trumps its other, less subtle, half – the garlic bulb – but I refuse to take sides in this debate. Insofar as kohlrabi (the German version of chou rave, which carries over into English) is concerned, it is best eaten fresh, sliced in sticks with a dip of your liking, or served up as a slaw.

Fleur de courgette 2016 Zucchini Flower