Most of the delicata squash has now been harvested into crates and stored in the lower level of the barn where temperatures are somewhat moderate.  The remainder will be harvested on Monday.  Then the  drip tape will be removed from the field and the vines from the squash plants will be chopped so they can start to decompose in the field.  It looks like the spaghetti squash is ready so it will be harvested next.  The pumpkins are also ready so we are considering getting them out of the field and dipping them in an organically approved solution of hydrogen peroxide so they will hopefully store until later in September.  Greenhouse #1 is nearly ready for the crates of butternut squash that will be harvested soon.  Tables were removed from one side of the  greenhouse and wood flooring was placed on the ground so we can move the crates of squash around with a pallet jack.  It looks like the yield from  the butternut will be similar to last year’s harvest, which amounted to several thousand pounds, so we will again offer good pricing on  the butternut squash to our customers.  Another of our fall crops is potatoes and it looks like they are sizing up.   Last week we dug several hills of potatoes and they averaged about 10 to 15 tubers per hill.  Many are at the size of a golf ball now and we expect that  they will more than double in size over the next couple of weeks.  Potatoes at this stage need a lot of water so we are hoping for rain this week.  We also dug up some of the sweet potatoes and they were quite big already with a lot of tubers under each plant.  The sweet potatoes need to be dug before a frost so we will be watching the temperature forecasts.  A couple of salsify plants were dug to see how they are doing and it seems that the roots are already ¾ inch in diameter.  Salsify still has a couple of months to go before it needs to come out of the ground so it should  size up considerably more before then.  Onions should be ready for sale this week and there is plenty of garlic still available.  We have started the planning process for next year’s  bedding plants.  We will be ordering some supplies soon and sourcing seeds for next year.  We were pleased to hear that we should be able to get seed for our most popular tomato varieties – the sun sugar and sun gold tomatoes.  Some of our  customers requested that we grow strawberry plants and we had a lot of requests last year for poblano peppers so we will grow those for next spring.   

 George Kohn, West Star Farm