It is already July!  I can’t believe half of 2026 has passed! But it doesn’t mean half of our vegetable season has passed.  There are still lots to come to the market.  Summer vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are still growing.  We have abundance of lettuce.  Kales and collards suffered from aphids a little but it seems it’s under control, so we hope we can continue to bring some to the market.  We are having a little setback on Komatsuna.  We were sowing them directly and it was successful until, I think, heat wave hit.  They stopped germinating and even if they do, it was very sporadic.  Now since two weeks ago we have started sowing them in seedling trays in the greenhouse and transplanting them while they are fairly small (if mustard family plants left in the tray too long and stressed, they tend to bolt right after transplanted outside, so we have to pay attention to how they feel in the seedling tray).  We hope we can soon resume bringing them to the market.

Some people asked us how Shungiku flowers look like.  Here is a photo.  They are tiny compared to ornamental large chrysanthemums.

We tell them not to flower before we pick their tasty leaves but they do so anyway…. 

We are happy to report that there are lots of bees at our farm this year.  They love all brassica flowers.  There are also lots of dragonfly, tiny wasps (we believe they eat aphids, so love them) and mysterious black and yellow zebra textured small caterpillar eating away leaves of tall really invasive plants with yellow flowers.  Insects world is vast.  

We planted cucumbers both in the greenhouse and outside. Looks like those outside needs more heat! They are pale in colour and have not grown much since transplanted. We are afraid that soil temperature is not warm enough even with straw mulch. In the meantime, eggplant seems to like raw wool mulch. They need to grow taller before producing fruits but look happy.

This week to the market, we will bring salad mix, romaine and red leaf lettuce, Mizuma, collard green, kale, and of course, delicious wholegrain sourdough bread.

Our market schedule is as follows

• Island Roots Farmers’ Market: Beban Park, 2300 Bowen Road, Nanaimo, 3 – 6pm on Wednesday
• AGI Market: AGI Hall, Gabriola, 10am – 2pm on Saturday

Thank you for reading our weekly newsletter. Have a warm summer week!