Next Week’s Harvest?

One of the most challenging aspects of growing for CSA is that you’ve already sold a product that does not yet exist.  Unlike farmer’s markets, where you can bring whatever you have, CSA customers are expecting a diverse bounty every week.  In principle, CSA customers agree to take some of the risk and weather a bad harvest now and then.   If this happens too often, however, many of your customers will not return next year.

So, as each week of harvests goes by, I find myself with a bit of anxiety over next week’s harvest.  To deal with this, I hold myself to a very regular pattern of succession planting.  I plant broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and spinach every week.  Every two weeks, I plant snap beans, cilantro/dill/arugula, radish/salad turnip.  Every three weeks it’s carrots, beets, peas, cabbage.  I plant summer squash and cucumbers twice in the season, and I plant one big planting of onions, potatoes, winter squash, brussels sprouts, garlic, and strawberries each year.

So every time I get a bit nervous about next week, I just think about all the successions growing in the field.

Here are pictures of this week’s CSA harvest:

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