Plants, plants, everywhere and not a thing to eat!

This time of year is a time of great hope and greater impatience. Since our CSA does not start until mid June we do not push our early season to hard (this will change in coming years with hoophouses and other improvements.) But with a lot of items in the ground, and thousands waiting in the hoophouse we are just waiting for the first truly edible items (probably radishes, greens, and garlic scapes) in about a month.

So far this season our major completed tasks have included:

• Planting about 2,400 row feet of potatoes
• Planting about 1/4 acre of onions (sets and transplants)
• First spring seeding (about 5,500 row feet of every thing from carrots and beets, to peas and hearty greens.
• Transplanted 200+ broccoli plants, 200+ kale plants, 1000+ cabbage plants, a few hundred feet of lettuce, and 100 feet of scallions.
• First weeding of the year, including getting the garlic cultivated and fertilized.
• Started a couple hundred trays of everthing from peppers and eggplant to lettuce and kohlrabi.
• Of course we also got our hoophouse up and heat in it.
• Made tables for the hoophouse.
• Lots of field work, including plowing and tilling new land, and of course prepping the acre plus which is already in.
• One gardening class.
• Participated in EarthFest.
• Fixed the tractor.
• Built a row marker.
• Built a prehiller.
• Answered a couple thousand emails.
• And a million other small tasks of the type which comes up every day.

The photos are both from the same day. We still have some starts in our basement and are daily moving them to the hoophouse. Problem is we are still starting seeds, so the basement is not getting less crowded, while the hoophouse is getting more crowded! Thankfully, we have started to transplant so we should be OK for a while.

More hoop house

There is more time goes into one of these then you might think!

They say they are a "kit" but you have to drill every hole, cut every piece, and assemble a stack of metal and fittings into a building. You definatly neeed tools, a metal chop saw and a hammer drill at the minimum!

Tomorrow we will frame in the openings for the rear door, vents, heater, etc.

If we are lucky we may be sheeting it this weekend, but we will need VERY CALM weather days for that. The top of our hill is windy. The ladder blew over a couple times, and it was not that windy today, well not anywhere but on our farm!

Here's hoping it does not blow away!

Early Spring...

With our basement threathing to overflow with starts in the very near future the wonderdul weather of this week was a great oppurtunity to work on the first big project of this big year.

Our heated hoophouse! The frame is up. Hopefully we will be able to add the baseboards and get the endwalls built so we will be able to get it heated, because we all know that the weather will turn cold again.

You do know that right? March is a bit early to expect the mid 60s as our everyday temps...

Spring is here!

It is SO beautiful this evening! I got home and hubby was on the tractor, a sure sign of spring on the farm. After I changed I went to say "Hi!" and marvel at how well the ground was turning over...

We are so blessed to have good soil here, at our old farm we fought with a high water table and heavy clay. The two together mean MUD! At the old house there is still water in the yard, here we plowed today, and tomorrow will till...

Granted, it was not dry enough to turn everything, but we got enough turned to give us a good start at the early spring crops (remember it is still spring!) so if the weather holds (18% chance of rain in next 24 hours) we will be able to start some turnips, radishes, and spinach in the ground. We have 1800 onion starts and 1800 leek starts which need to go in as well, and we have a few hundred beet starts ready to go in a week or so (a new experiment.) We also have Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, lettuce, and a few other starts which will be ready to go in within a week or two...

We have a market to stock on May 31 (first CSA pickup is mid-June) and right now the only thing in the ground is Kale! We will start this years season as we ended last years, with LOTS of Kale! :)

Our hoophouse is here, but putting it up needs to wait, when you can turn the soil, that takes priority! In any case we have thousands of starts under grow lights in our basement. I need to remind myself, they always seem to grow slow at first, but they have 4-5 weeks before we'd even consider transplanting peppers, eggplant, or tomatoes. Our average last frost day may be early may, but that means that half the years see later frosts... So we will wait for the relative safety of late May, with the assurance of a warm 10 day forecast...

The season is going! Wish us luck, and good weather.

1588 pounds...

Our hoophouse shipped yesterday! We should see it on Monday morning, all 1588 pounds of it, which we are responsible for offloading from the truck. One pallet alone is 1,200 pounds! So we paid a little more so they will send a truck with a lift gate to help us unload it. They are also sending it in a stubby truck, so hopefully it can get up our driveway...

It will be good to have, as soon as we get it set up. I have hundrends of lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage starts in my basement which would be fine in a less heated space... The tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and basil still need a little more heat... It did come with a propane heater, but we will need to wait and see if we actually need to set that up this year, it may be late enough we don't have to...