Slow ripening fruits explained by Jack.

Hello, this is Jack from Featherstone Farm.

It is the middle of August and I'm going to take a moment and talk about fruiting crops in our CSA program and for wholesale. It's all the same crops we grow in the field. In the middle of August, things like tomatoes, melons, bell peppers, things that require warm season and in particular warm nights to ripen up.

I like to say that if you don't have the air conditioner on at night, if you're not sweating at night, the melons are not ripening. And guess what? On top of a wet spring, delayed season all through early summer, now we have a period of prolonged cool days and cool nights in the low 50s. And this has put the brakes on a lot of important crops that we normally have expected to see in CSA boxes by now. I'm talking about watermelons, bell peppers, tomatoes. These things are delayed and it's more difficult to pick them more dependably with these cool nights.

So, I'll just give a couple of examples. In the box this week, we have smaller eggplants. They're not ripening up. They don't get fat like the normal globe eggplants when it's cool at night. Bell peppers, we're not even offering in boxes this week because they're not fattening up. They're not beginning to turn. Often by the middle of August, we have red and gold ripe bell peppers. Not this year, folks, because of the delayed spring and now on top of that, cool nights. Tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and outdoor grown heirloom tomatoes, normally very strong. These things need warmth at night. So, we have a problem of disease in the field, carryover from wet spring. I've talked a lot about foliar disease, especially in tomatoes, causing sometimes blotching and deformities on fruits and delays because of slow ripening. Final, final thing, too, watermelons. It's hard to pick watermelons, folks. You'll hear me talk about it in the normal video. But judging when a watermelon is ripe is really difficult. It's slightly easier when we have average, normal, warm nights and ripening in a natural way. But with cool nights, more difficult than ever, it's on us, folks. We're doing our very, very best to produce all these crops despite the odds. But please be patient. When it warms up, we have tons of these things in the pipeline, ripe bell peppers, lots more basil, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes. They're all in the field. Let's hope for a warm couple of nights and we'll have them in your boxes soon.

Thanks.