Left Bower Farm

In January, farmers and gardeners get a second Christmas. The UPS man brings daily deliveries of small and large boxes, each making the shush-shush maraca sound of seeds. After pouring over seed catalogs all December, these boxes hold our collective hopes for the upcoming season. This year will be the year that we can finally grow a solid crop of carrots or eggplant. This year will be the year that we’re giving away boxes of tomatoes to the neighbors because we just can’t handle the bounty. This year will be the year that we beat the cucumber beetle. January is all about high hopes. Reality can wait for July.

That said, I’ve hedged my bets a little more this year against reality. In the past, I’ve purchased seeds based primarily on how good the veggies looked in the catalog and what I had helped grow on Blackberry Meadows Farm when Mandy and I interned there for a season. A lot of these were heirloom varieties that delivered amazing flavor when conditions were right, but were also extremely sensitive to weather and water fluctuations, blights and bugs. After being hit hard last year by the cucumber beetle and a mild, wet late summer (lousy for tomatoes), I made the conscious decision this year to seek out hardy, high-yielding varieties that have been time-tested against the very pests that pestered me the most last season.

One that I’m very excited about is the Diva cucumber from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. My cucumbers succumbed quickly last season to a bacterial wilt spread by the cucumber beetle. The Diva variety is not only a highly attractive, thin-skinned cuke with few seeds, but it’s parthenogenetic, meaning it can bear fruit without pollination. In the past, I would have to remove the protective row cover from my cucumber plants when they began to flower so the bees could do their business. Unfortunately, this also left my cukes naked to the ravaging cucumber beetles. With Diva, I can grow the plants all season under protective cover. At least that’s the January dream!

At the end of each season I send out an online survey to CSA members asking what worked and what didn’t. I pay particular attention to the crops that were favorites, those that flopped and what members would like to see (and eat) more of. In this year’s suggestions, I hear more lettuce, more onions, more potatoes, some traditional pumpkins, and fewer spicy peppers. I also made the executive decision to drop kohlrabi. It’s a beautiful and bizarre looking plant that’s relatively easy to grow, but I felt very limited as to what I could do with it in the kitchen, and I feel like most members agree. I’m also doubling down on a few of last year’s biggest successes: sweet corn and watermelon. While I daydream of hot-buttered summer corn, peruse the full seed order list for this year and have some garden fantasies of your own.