Peppers, eggplant and okra are all looking great and early tomatoes have made an appearance at every distribution.  We look forward to their increased production as summer rolls along!  But sadly, we observed more damage in our summer squash and zucchini planting last week.  We ended up removing almost the entire second planting due to damage and plant disease caused by aphids.  We began spraying Safer brand soap, hoping to knock down the aphid population found in our cucurbit field.  Undoubtedly, we will see a gap in squash and zucchini at the distribution over the following week or two as our next planting is not ready for picking yet.  
 
If you've spent time looking for beans over the last week or two, I'm sure you recognized the brown, skeletonized plants in the PYO area.  This damage is caused by Mexican bean beetles, which usually arrive in our fields by early July.  This is not a new problem for us and those of you who have been share holders for a few years probably recognize their characteristic damage and those spiky, little, yellow larvae.  For the second year now, we are enlisting parasitic wasps to help control the Mexican bean beetle population.  The adult wasps lay their eggs in the beetle larvae and in turn, the wasp larvae feed on (and kill) the beetle larvae.  If all goes well over time, wasp numbers go up and the beetle numbers go down.  Thankfully for us, the wasps have no interest in stinging people! Although there are approved pesticides available for use on organic farms, we use them only as a last resort.  We'd much rather let nature do the work for us!  Good timing and a little luck with the weather can make all the difference as well.