Pawpaw Preview
Greetings!
We’ve had a fantastic week of work, filled with transplanting the final successions of summer flower seedlings, seeding cover crop, and harvesting. Yesterday we hosted our first farm tour since the pandemic began! In June we began gathering once a month with fellow Baltimore-area farmers to host farm tours and share a meal. It’s a great opportunity to see how other farmers do things, share knowledge, and spend time with friends. It was such a treat to show everyone around the farm and share a meal together.
As we head into August, we’re starting to think about what September, the busiest month of our season, will look like. In addition to an onslaught of autumn weddings, September means pawpaw season! We always look forward to sharing pawpaws with our longtime customers and newfound pawpaw enthusiasts. Our trees are absolutely loaded with fruit this year. Last year’s harvest was relatively small, and so we’re thrilled to see such a heavy fruit set this time around. The combination of good tree maintenance and no horribly cold late frosts worked out well for us this year!
We’ll once again be doing pawpaw pop-ups at the Dupont Circle and Takoma Park farmers markets, and of course, we’ll have them available to purchase at our regular market. We’ll also be sure to let you know about online ordering opportunities and pre-orders.
To those who have never tried pawpaws before, I like to describe them as having the flavor of a cross between a mango and a banana, with a custard texture. They’re native to North America, growing from southern Louisiana all the way up to Ontario. The trees are beautiful, with a slender trunk and long, large leaves. They’re pollinated by flies and beetles, and are the host plant to the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly. The flavor of pawpaws can be polarizing (you either love them or you hate them), but I think most people agree that they’re gorgeous trees!
Sunday, August 25th, 8:00 am - 11:00 am: Johnny’s
We’ll be back at the market this weekend with arugula, basil, beets, cucumbers, spring mix, shishito peppers, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.
We’ll have loads of bouquets, in addition to bunches of dahlias, lisianthus, gladiolus, and cosmos.
Enjoy the weekend,
Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots Farm crew
It’s tomato time! We’re finally starting to harvest a good amount of tomatoes, which means tomato sandwich season has arrived!