The weather’s been fine, no big frost worries, and the harvest is nice. For the sake of a list, in no particular order, we have: spinach, onion, garlic, carrots, bok choi, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, kale, hot and sweet peppers, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, green beans, beets, and…eggplant! I think I got ’em all. The set-up on a strip of canvas is for a newsletter photo–the lighting is an overcast sun, the studio is the field!
Fieldwork
Veggies appear
Veggies are starting to size up! Pretty good germination for this spinach. And the weeds.
Early look at a new season
An unusual absence of snow in this early look at the field. The end of the compost pile poking into the photo is color-coordinated with the spring browns of all the dead vegetation. Center and right, a good amount of the market garden area is pretilled—clear and near set to go. In the mid distance, the little greenhouse is still standing, while the big guy is still bare, having had its plastic savagely ripped open by unusually high winds. That white object is a round bale of straw, sheathed in protective plastic, ready to use as mulch. It’s the broad canvas for another new growing season!
When to cover
Some crops need to be covered and some crops don’t. It would be excellent if all the vegetables in the garden could bask in the sun together, like a picture-perfect postcard. Which would be possible if it weren’t for pests, and the special conditions some need to germinate. Trusty floating row cover is used here to keep flea beetles chewing holes in the brassica mix—flat-leaf kale, mizuna, mustard, bok choi, and their close cousin arugula, to be harvested as baby leaves for salad. Wee tiny carrot seeds need cover to retain the constant moisture in the ground they need to germinate—I’ve been using black landscape fabric, watering through it as need, for about a week. And some veggies, like green beans and beets, haven’t had insect problems, so they don’t need cover. It all depends!
Fieldwork, tiny farm style
A simple snapshot of hand-weeding brassicas, and yet, a wealth of clues to how tiny farming is done in this market garden. Upfront, can see the weeding before-and-after: give them a few short days, and those weeds would easily catch up to the seedlings. The pulled weeds go around the plants or on the paths, where they do their bit in mulching, that helps keep new weeds from germinating. (Unfortunately, weeds often get bigger: more work, with the smaller tradeoff that they do a much better job as mulch.) Behind Casey, row cover, held down by big rocks that are carefully hoarded for just this use. Without the cover, flea beetles would have already gone to town, perforating the leaves with tiny holes. Further on, a critical water line, a 3/4″ hose off a 1″ pipe from the dug well pump. These are far from from a Big Ag diameters—they don’t deliver a firehose amount of water, but they do get the job done. Besides, there isn’t that much water in this well. The hose is lying on a trodden path, measured out at the beginning of the season to divide the field up into five-foot wide (1.5m), wide enough to take two rows of the bigger plants, like these broccoli and a cauliflower. The tradeoff is, comfortable hand-weeding is often done from both sides, to avoid lots of reaching across, while being a little less…efficient. And then there are open beds, with the clean look of fresh rototilling, ready for more seeding or transplanting. Casy’s fashion choices for fieldwear wouldn’t be mine: too much skin exposed to sun, insects, and spiky thistles—I gave up even shorts ages ago, for long sleeves and jeans—but to each their own. It’s all in the details!
Cutting greens
Harvesting salad greens: bin, harvest knife, hands. This has never been one of my favorite things to do—doubled over one 50′ bed after another. A while back, we made a seat on wheels that straddled the bed so you could sit, pushing yourself back with your feet. It worked pretty well, but it became one extra thing to lug around and faded out of service. The greens—lettuces, arugula, mustard, mizuna, other brassicas—at this time are maybe the best of the season, growing before full summer heat. In the background, the goldenrod, native residents of the field, are thriving, towering over all the crops. I don’t think of them as weeds, because they don’t
Winter farming in a nutshell
Winter farming in a nutshell: Sundown, New Year’s Day 2017, checking up on the greenhouse after a rattler of a windy night. The snowdrifts, the low-riding, fast-falling sun captured by plastic over hoops of steel – it’s all still here! :)