I sometimes feel like a doctor making rounds, standing at the lettuce’s bedside and saying, “Hmm. Could be stress. Try drinking more water.”
It’s not bad advice. Plants (and people) need water. Don’t worry, I don’t charge the lettuce $300 for that advice…they have good insurance.
But water is also just one of many possible diagnoses.
Could be timing..pests…fertility. Could be something we did two weeks ago that’s only just showing up now.
A lot of things look the same at first glance. Most of the job is figuring out which one it actually is—so you can do less, not more.
An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. Miss a weeding window and the task easily triples in time and difficulty. Skip the right field prep or soil support, and you’re playing catch-up and putting on band-aids the rest of the season.
The saying that resonates even more is: a farmer’s shadow is the best fertilizer.
Attention is the best prevention.
And this time of year, there’s a lot to pay attention to. Pests waking up in force. Everything speeding up whether you’re ready or not. A few dry weeks and suddenly irrigation matters a lot more than it did a month ago.
That attention adds up over time.
And it shows up in what CSA members and customers get each week.
What ends up in your CSA box isn’t random. It’s the result of all those small decisions- the diagnosing, the timing, the adjustments- that lead to vegetables that are fresh, consistent, nutritious, and actually worth eating.
By the time it ends up in your CSA box, that work is already done. All that’s left is to bring it into your kitchen and take your medicine.
Farmer’s orders.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go tend to my patients… or should I say my plantients.
No, no I shouldn’t.
