Rapid ripening of figs and other summer veggies

Two weeks ago there were the first glimpses of the figs starting to change color and ripen.

Now the figs are ripening much faster and we will have lots of them at the farmers market this week.

There is one Black Mission fig tree on the farm and it is massive. We haven’t measured it but we estimate it to be near 20 feet tall and 30 feet wide.

Many of the first figs ripen right at the the top of the tree which we cannot reach even with a ladder. Luckily some of the lower ones are ripening and we were able to pick the first ones last Friday for the farmers market.

The Black Mission figs are one of the first to ripen and have a delicious sweet flavor to them when fully ripe. They should be eaten soon after harvest as we pick them as ripe as we can.

Two crops of figs are produces every year from the Black Mission figs and they are very different. The ones we are harvesting now are called the breba crop and they are very large. The main crop later in the season are much smaller.

While we are harvesting the breba crop we can already see the figs forming for the main crop later in the season.

In addition to the figs we are also harvesting lots more tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and shishito peppers this week.

With the harvesting of all these summer crops it is starting to truly feel like summer is here but we are still waiting on some important crops to be ready.

The melons are growing really well with their vines spreading out over the field and melons appearing all over the field.

It will still be a little bit for us to start harvesting melons as they need more time to size up and ripen.

There are a number of successions we planted to get a more consistent harvest throughout the season although weather will determine how even the harvest is.

We’ve added a little bit more variety with our melons but are mostly staying with the ones we grew last year that performed well and were very delicious.

All this warm weather has meant that we are watering the plants a lot which also leads to weeds growing even faster. Luckily now that the summer crops are much larger they are shading out some of the area so the weeds don’t get the sunlight needed to grow.

The smaller plants are having to compete more with the weeds and put their energy into that instead of growing so we have been spending a lot of time weeding and will continue until the plants have outcompeted the weeds.

It is not fun to harvest in weedy crops and there is a dramatic loss in yield so we are working to prevent that from happening.