A few weeks ago, I was sowing lettuce seeds in trays and realized it will be the end of summer when I harvest these lettuces.  Growing season goes so fast and it is still very difficult for me to make a crop plan properly so that we have sufficient supply throughout the season.  In spring, plants grow so slow. Every single year in the past I ended up having lettuce bed traffic jam – seedlings started in early spring grow so slow and took time before I could harvest while the subsequent batches in the trays caught up and did not have a bed to be transplanted… some of them even ended up in compost pile by waiting too long. In late summer, I had lettuce shortage – the ones planted early season went bolting all at once and the subsequent batches were not ready because they were transplanted late due to spring traffic jam.  It is a joy and desperation of the farming.

Remember our experiment of different kinds of mulches? The winner seems to be raw wool!

As you see, eggplants with wool mulch are taller and more vigorous than those with straw mulch.  We harvested the first fruits for the market last week.  No mulch ones are even smaller.  All of them grew a lot last few weeks with hot days.  I am not sure what benefit the wool much gave to the plants, maybe more heat retention or moisture, but I will plan for more of them for next season.  Store bought black plastic tarps may be easier to apply (there are even ones with pre-made holes for transplanting), but we prefer using natural materials whenever we can, and we are lucky to have access to wool (thanks to our friend), which may otherwise end up in the landfill!  

Our Suyo Long cucumbers continue to grow.  Some of them have grown as tall as I could barely reach the top while standing. For those ones I pinched the growing tip of the main stem to encourage growth of side shoots so that we can harvest more fruits from a single plant.  I mulched them with straw (or re-purposed duck bedding) and it seems it helps retaining moisture in the soil.  We will continue to harvest and bring our cucumbers to the market throughout the summer.

I have been very busy and have not been able to make any seasonal special bread this year so far. I will make some trial rosemary & walnut bread using our Classic Boule dough and bring to the market soon, while we can harvest rosemary from our garden. It will be slightly salty and moist bread sprinkled with sea salt and olive oil. I hope it will be a good companion to your summer barbecue dishes.

I was checking my August schedule on my day planner (old-timer paper-based!), which I bought in Japan.  I knew July 20th was a national holiday in Japan called “Day of ocean”, but realized August 11th is also a national holiday called “Day of mountain”!  Like people love either dog or cat, there are ocean lovers and mountain lovers (I am a mountain lover), and I think if there is a day of ocean, its just fair to have a day of mountain.  In fact, the civic movement of creating day of mountain started in Toyama prefecture back in 1961 by a group of mountain climbers.  The movement received a political push by non-partisan members of parliament in 2013 and finally made the day a national holiday.  It is a day people celebrate and show gratitude to various benefit that mountain and forest provide to people.  While I appreciate the beauty of ocean surrounding Gabriola, I miss the grandeur of mountains, too!

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 an amazing summer week!