Reflecting on 2023 and Looking Forward to the 2024 Growing Season

It's currently the OFF season (sort of) for us. Right now, we're growing Microgreens & Lettuce. We are planning to have pop-ups through the winter and spring and we will increase our offerings as more produce becomes available during the cold season.

Reflecting on the 2023 growing season, I can sum it up with just one word: CRAZY!
It started out great and we had our earliest set of tomatoes ever in the high tunnel. We even had ripe tomatoes before the end of June; but right after that temperatures skyrocketed for weeks without rain. All of our plants suffered due to the heat even though we have shade cloth and drip irrigation and we mulch. Most plants just don't do great with consecutive WEEKS of 100+ degree temperatures.  We lost more tomato plants than we ever have.

It's not all complaints and bad news, though. After the heat died back (and after Farmer's Market Season was over) we had the hugest harvests of tomatoes that we've ever had. I learned how to make some really incredible recipes with the glut of green tomatoes at the end of the season. And we had a ton of ripe tomatoes for our freezer & also dehydrated lots for the pantry. OH my...if you've never had dehydrated tomatoes on your sandwich in the middle of winter, you are missing out. They plump right up once in contact with mustard or mayo (or moisture from lettuce, etc.) .  Blew my mind, they are SOOOO good.

The crazy weather also served as a teacher to help me select what I believe will be more hardy varieties for this coming year. While we won't be growing 75 different varieties of tomatoes for plant starts this year, there will still be A LOT of amazing varieties to choose from--the best of last year and some new ones we want to trial this year. There will also be new several fabulous, exciting new additions to our plant start offerings for: cucumbers, squash, peppers, herbs, and flowers.

As for the summer growing season, stay tuned for our adventures in 2024. We are really excited about the possibilities. We hope you'll have fun growing with us. 🌼