Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

A satisfying planting day: all of the onion sets (around 2,500) and 300 lbs (136kb) of potatoes are in. For the onions, Raechelle (first day in the field), Lynn, Jamie (a new CSA member), Shannon (here for a month), and I made quick work of the onions: Stuttgarter yellow cooking and yellow Spanish. It’s amazing how much fun people working together in a garden can be, there’s a positive, happy, energy that I think comes from sharing time in the dirt (maybe that’s just the tiny farming romantic in me, but I think not… :). Plus, potentially tedious tasks are done in no time! For an encore, Shannon and I polished off the potatoes, finishing just as the sun set and another chilly evening set in. This year, I used the furrower attachment on the Horse walking rototiller to plow what turned out to be excellent trenches, in ground that had been tilled up about a week ago. Varieties are Yukon Gold, Chieftan (red), and Kennebec. This time around, all varieties were about chicken egg-sized, so, no cutting into pieces required. In-row spacing is 12″ (30cm), between row is 24″ (60cm), with a bit wider path every two rows. We covered them by hand-raking. In all, 40 x 50′ (15m) rows, which is about 2000 plants. Every year, I’ve tried a different potato approach—last year, I made much shallower trenches with a hoe: as far as set-up, this time around was the best yet. The onions are in a bit later than usual, I’ve had them done as early as mid-April, but no worries, potatoes are around the usual timing. For a market garden, I grow a relatively small quantity of both of these crops, they always sell out, and they feel like a good fit for CSA and farmers’ market from the middle of summer on, so having them at the absolutely earliest date isn’t that important at this stage. And what would tiny farming be without always lots of room to improve?! :)

Bed preparation and first seeding continue. Today, Lynn’s tiny farming experience broadened to include rakes, and using them to spread compost. Moderately hard work in the heat, but it was a fairly small area. Overall, things are generally on schedule, but at least a week behind last year for the earliest stuff (and first peas were in last year on April 3rd!). Also, after the lingering snow, conditions changed practically overnight, but with the extremely hot, dry week, despite some watering in, the crops seeded so far are slower to germinate (we need rain!), and may come up a little thin when they do. So far, peas, spinach, beets, radish, all-lettuce mesclun and green onions have gone in over the last few days, and everything but the peas got one watering… I should have direct-seeded leek and parsnips in, but I’m kind of waiting for some rain. Also coming up in the next day or two, carrots and Swiss chard. And there’s a mountain of onion sets and seedlings ready to go, plus a few other transplants. And potatoes arrived today…

It’s like we’ve gone directly from winter to summer. Less than a WEEK since the ground dried out enough to walk on it and till it, I’m actually out there WATERING… This is really odd. I’m sure we’ve had unseasonably hot Aprils before, where watering in newly seeded crops was necessary, still, it’s only common sense to chalk this up as another of the consistently bizarre weather events we’ve been having in the last three years or so… In other words: global warming, I guess. “Normally,” April is a good month once it warms up, because our rather heavy clay-loam soil holds moisture well, and just post-snow, it’s wet enough that you don’t have to water in what you’ve seeded. A spring bonus! Instead, what’s going on here is, in a handful of days, the top inch or more of the ground has dried out completely in the unusual heat. That means shallowly-sown seed, like spinach, lettuce, radish, beets, and chard, is sitting in perfectly dry soil. I put in peas at around 1.5″ (4.25cm), and they were just barely in nice, moist earth. But these other guys, what can I do? I considered setting the seeder deeper, but that could just bury them too far for good, quick germination (I’ve messed around with too deep before…). Or, out with the sprinkler. I don’t like using sprinklers, I don’t have water to waste, but here, it’s much the more reasonable alternative to hand-watering a 50′x100′ area, when there’s so much else to do. The pond irrigation isn’t yet set up, so the water’s coming from the barn well, where there’s such low pressure that only the cheapest, most lightweight garden sprinkler will oscillate, where better quality, heavier duty ones shoot a stream of water straight ahead and won’t budge. Irrigation comes early, and cheap gear is every once in a while…good!

Left to the last possible harvest in the fall, brassicas like kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower (above), were eventually winter-killed and now have to be cleaned up—one of the first field-readying jobs of spring! Today, I started. (EVERY day is a field day from here on in, through November at least, or the first heavy snow that sticks.) A day of tiny farming fieldwork is really just a whole lotta gardening… Now that the ground has dried out enough to be tillable (that could’ve been yesterday, but…errands and CHICKENS), and warmed up enough to direct seed the crops that germinate in cooler soil, it’s a whole new world of things to do…and think about doing. There are two basic ways to ponder the progress of the season’s garden: by timing and by area, each useful in its own way. Timing is mainly about the plants: when to seed, when to water, when to harvest. Area is about where to locate particular plantings, which in my case doesn’t mean absolutely running out of space, since there’s lots more field to expand the garden into if I wanted to (which I don’t), but more like where to position stuff efficiently, so you’re maintaining crop rotation, but not having to, say, drag hoses all the way down the garden to a couple of newly seeded beds that need daily watering in (although there’s a field production plan made up, there are lots of adjustments on the way—where to put stuff will come up again and again!). So, the start of the season is mainly about area, because you have to prep beds and get veggies in in a rough order—cool soil seed, then cool weather transplant, then warm soil seed and transplants—and the timing is a constant: it’s all right away! One way I keep overall track of this garden is by counting sections: it’s about 2.5 acres, divided into 40 50′x50′ squares (each fits 10-16 beds, depending on width). At some point in the next six weeks or so, almost all SHOULD be planted out, nearly 40/40. Today, I started seeding in one…

Tilled and untilled: Partially composted cow manure was spread and incorporated in the fall. Now, a light rototilling to prepare for seeding is all that’s needed. Today, I used the tiller on the Kubota compact tractor.

Rock beats tiller: There are lots of stones in this field, they work their way up continually, and even a fist-sized rock, caught in the right way, can stall out the 48″ rototiller on the Kubota (it’s a tiny tractor!). No problem: remove and restart.

Getting set to seed: I work mostly one or two sections at a time, prepping an area with the tiller, marking the beds, then seeding (or transplanting). This way, I can get the crops that need to be started in as quickly as possible. Here’s the cart towed by the riding mower, loaded with assorted seeding gear (and some transplants being ferried to the greenhouse).

Making beds: Oh, there’s A LOT of tiny farm history behind my bed marking methods. :) I’m still working on the most efficient way to set up beds. Right now, it’s fairly streamlined, involving a 100′ tape measure, stakes, and pacing off distances. This year, I’m planting in 3′, 4′, and 5′ beds (that’s path included), depending on the crop.

Customizing the Rake: Every season, I re-ink faded measurement markings on a couple of hand tools I use the most. Here’s a convenient mark for 42″ from the top of the handle (that’s the planting area width for a 5′ bed. There are other marks further up the handle, and the whole rake is exactly 5′. It’s convenient for quick checks, especially on the favorite rake that I use for touching up beds right before seeding. And so, off we go…!

The end-of-March scene in the greenhouse is a lot different than last year, when the growing area was neatly filled with early lettuce. This time around, the early effort has turned into a much more spotty affair. The lettuce started WAY early at the end of January, and held back because of extreme cold earlier in the month, grew and REALLY stretched in the trays, and I only put about half in the ground, just to see what’ll happen. Filling in, there are a couple of beds of direct-seeded, all-lettuce mesclun. The idea of making it to the first market day (this year, it’s Saturday, May 3) is fine if everything else is humming along, but given the slow-leaving winter this year, chances are I’d rather be in the field or doing some other outdoor stuff on the farm at that point than spending a good part of a May day at market with a small quantity of greens, just for show. With this year’s early lettuce and the weather, I’m no longer in such a rush!

Hannah dropped by today to check things out. She’d gotten in touch through the farm web site, wanted to volunteer for a day or two every week through the season, to learn about small-scale farming and how to grow stuff. No garden experience. We spoke briefly on the phone, but the only way to see is to meet in the field and get hands dirty! It’s amazing how easily people can take to tiny farming when given the chance to dive in. So, a quick tour, and then, to work. She weeded, forked and raked a bed in the greenhouse, transplanted a couple of dozen lettuce, seeded a bed of all-lettuce mesclun using the Earthway seeder (tightly spaced rows), tried out the mini-cultivator (a rototiller attachment on a heavy duty weed eater), drove the Kubota compact tractor and worked the bucket on a big snow bank, trimmed a couple of trays of onion seedlings, checked out the production standards and paperwork for organic certification, and seemed fine with my mildly intense stream of background info and general microfarming explanation. All in three hours. Everything for the first time. She did great, no problem! Just as important, at least for this tiny farm, she seemed to have FUN, had a cool energy, and didn’t make me WONDER when handling machinery, tools and plants! After last year’s great crew, standards are pretty high. Will this season of people in the field go as well or even better? There’s no real advertising or recruiting plan, I’m trusting that, through general word of mouth (and maybe, good karmic energy!), things will…pleasantly unfold. We shall see!

Taking advantage of the cloudy weather, I moved all of the lettuce out to the greenhouse for some rapid hardening off, and started prepping more ground for transplanting. At the edges, there’s lots of dead grass, and I’ve already pulled out a fair tangle of well-established live grass runners. The grass grows in from outside; the runners are incredibly busy and invasive, and can build up underground and, from what I’ve seen, seem able to noticeably sap resources from the plants above, even when the grass itself hasn’t broken through. This is an observation in progress (more on this later as I prep the field with its grassy paths). For now, I’m slicing deep with an edger right by the boards (if I get the chance sometime during the year, I’ll clear a grass-free strip around the outside of the hoophouse). Anyhow, lettuce will soon be in!

Can’t speak for everyone, for me, heading into the field is the best walk to work I’ve known… The arugula transplants a couple of days ago started this season’s almost ritual morning garden tour. This is an often mildly adrenaline-fueled stroll at the start of every day, from mid-March through early June, and then, mid-September into November, to see what happened with the overnight temperature. Frost-watch, if you like, but actual visible frost you don’t see that often, it’s mostly checking the effect of really cold air on crops in different parts of the garden. Right now, there’s only the bit of arugula to check out (the unheated greenhouse gets as cold as outside once the sun is gone). We’ve kept a path clear to the east side door, where there’s less snow build-up, as the wind usually comes from the west (the greenhouse is laid out east-west, with doors at both ends). Today, all’s well!

As far as winter irrigation in the greenhouse goes, melting snow in big barrels is the next best thing to a really long hose, a well and an electric pump. Fill ‘em up, cover with clear plastic, wait a day (even on a dull, cloudy day, it gets up to 60°F in the hoophouse). Repeat a couple of times, and you have 50 gallons of rainwater in a barrel! The alternative is dragging 200′ of hose through deep snow from the barn to the greenhouse, then reeling it in and draining it, every couple of days. The weather has put the kibosh on the early-March, barely heated greenhouse plan, the happy prospect until March actually came around. The nights have been regularly plunging to 10°F (-12°C), so it’s really not worthwhile to heat things up by 25°F. No worries. Adjusting expectations and schedules more or less by the day is all part of the fun… It’s never boring!