Weekend tasks...

First let me say it was a beautiful weekend! The weather was SO nice, unfortunately, this farmer did not get to enjoy much of it. It is still to wet to get into the fields, and honestly, just a bit early to plant much. If the weather holds till the middle of next week we will put our first seeds in the ground on some hills left over from last year. We are eager to try our new seeder!

This weekend was dedicated to seed starting and transplanting, as the next couple will be as well. Hubby worked on building a new propagation rack so we can expand our space for seed starting from 2ft by 8 ft to 2 ft by 24 ft! At 360 plants on each 1 ft wide tray that means our capacity to start is expanded from 2880 seeds to 8640! That is HUGE when we are starting some things that take a while to germinate like our peppers and eggplants which were started last weekend and are just now popping (8 days).

Meanwhile I worked on starting seeds and transplanting seeds that we have already started including transplanting 288 basil plants, 30 Mexican sour gherkins, and 72 eggplants. We also started 144 lettuce plants, 144 cabbage plants, 360 broccoli, and 1,800 tomato plants. This coming week I will start more seeds as I am able to begin transplanting the 1,440 pepper plants, 600 eggplants, 360 cauliflower, and 300 celeriac seeds which were started last weekend.

We start our seed by using a soil block maker which compresses a fine mix into little 3/4"X 3/4" blocks, 20 at a time. We put these on cookie sheets and the cookie sheets on the heat mat to germinate. As soon as they pop (within one or two days) they need to be carefully moved to trays, so their roots have more room to grow. Using this method means an extra step, but space on our heat mat is so precious it is worth it for us. Doing this lets us start up to 2,880 seeds on one 2X8 ft mat instead of just 288, which is all the room you have using the trays they end up in.

When more stuff is up and transplanted I'll take some pictures. All of these are currently hanging out under a 1000watt grow light in our basement, where it will stay until our hoop house is up in a couple weeks. But that is why I spent much of this wonderful weekend in our basement, listening to my iPod and carefully putting seed in tiny little blocks!

Other weekend tasks included finally ordering our seed potatoes and onion starts, taking some time and evaluating our fields and space needs for this year, and some basic cleanup around the farm (which hubby did while I was planting tomatoes.)

Also, as some of you have asked, we think that our bee hives have survived this winter! At least their were bees working at our hives today and coming and going! On Tuesday, if the weather holds, hubby will open up the hives and check that the queen is their and the remaining bees are doing good.

Seeds seeds everywhere....

Imagine being a kid at Christmas and you are able to actually BUY anything you want. It would not be long until you would be sitting in a room of toys...

Some years, around now I feel that way. We spent the dark days of December and January paging through seed catalogs, making selections, being by the end rather selective. Then the seeds start coming, and coming, and coming! And there are always surprises... I thought we bought more of that! Or WHY did we buy a pound of that turnip seed?!! The answers are always there, the 1000 seeds of the one we should have gotten more of cost $22 while the pound of turnip seed was only $3! 1000 seeds may should like a lot, if it is something that is direct seeded it may not go very far at all... But that's OK, because as I look around at the bags and bags of seeds we have, there should be no problem in variety this year!

None at all...

Seeds ordered!

All of our seed is finally ordered! Yeah!

Now we just need to order our potatoes and onions and we will be done.

There is also a nice new seeder in our future, and we have just purchased a small hoop house and delivery van (which was a huge deal!) So this has been the week to spend money!

That is why CSAs are so nice for the farmer, because our members pay their deposits up front to help pay for things like our $1,000 seed bill in February when we are months from having anything to sell...

So thanks to all our CSA members! This will be a great year...

Ark of Taste: Tennis Ball lettuce...

Another addition to our "Ark Garden" is Tennis Ball Lettuce.

A favorite of Jefferson at Monticello. Jefferson noted that "it does not require so much care and attention" as other types.

It became a favorite in the late 1800s and is the predecessor to Boston types. By 1904 116 seed houses were offering it. Today there are just a couple speciality suppliers.

I think I will skip a traditional preparation (mentioned in Heirloom Vegetable Gardening by William Woys Weaver) which is to pickle it in a salt brine...

Ark of Taste: Beaver Dam Pepper

Here is another of the Ark of Taste items we plan on growing this year...

From Slow Foods website: The Beaver Dam Pepper is a Hungarian heirloom pepper that was brought to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin in 1929 by the Joe Hussli family. The pepper’s first fruits mature 80 days after transplanting, at which point they ripen from lime-green to red. The crunchy fruits are mildly hot and when seeded, they hold an excellent flavor. Rated as 3 on a heat scale of 1-5, the Beaver Dam is great for making fresh batches of cool and tangy salsas.
This product is available from just a handful of mail order seed companies in the US and Canada, and its future is largely in the hands of these seed saving companies.

"Mildly hot" and "crunchy" sounds amazing! I wonder how think the skin is? Maybe they are a stuffing possibility... Hum. August will tell...

We are also trying to get our hands on a couple varieties off the Italian Ark of Taste list! It's just hard to verify they are the same when we do not speak the language!