The spring seedling starting days are rapidly winding up. Moved about half of the remaining trays from the Milkhouse to the greenhouse, including most of the experimentally late-started tomatoes. Based on the marginally useful long-range weather forecast, I’m aiming to begin the main field transplants around the end of this week…
Greenhouse
The basic tiny farming greenhouse is a steel-ribbed, plastic covered hoophouse, the bigger, the better for season extension.
Greenhouse filling up
The seedling side of the greenhouse is already almost full. All of the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers in 3″pots (around 700) are out there, which is only almost a quarter of everything that’s going. I’m gonna have to make some space! There are many things to do. Last frost date is approaching and the long-range weather forecast, not worth a lot but still worth looking at, predicts temperatures steadily rising—planting out to the field will likely happen “on schedule” around the 20th. The farmers’ market is also starting, and I need to do some carpentry to finish up the new stand. Two-thirds of the potatoes still have to go in. There’s a whole list of seedlings that need to be started indoors. There are the flowers and herbs to tend to, separate areas on their own. The grass is jumping and the paths need a first mowing now! And so on. If you’re into a little higher pressure gardening, around here, this is the time of year for you!
Lettuce gone wild…
The early lettuce has company. Several other varieties of lettuce, self-seeded from last year’s crop that was left to flower, just took off. Somehow, there’s tasty arugula mixed in as well. To munch on and to fill in where the voles had their fun, I let it all grow. This year’s lettuce is in there, doing fine, and should be ready not for the first day of the farmers’ market, which is this Saturday, but probably for next week. It’s all…good!
Ah, the weather
It looks a lot different than it did yesterday! This overnight dusting of snow didn’t stick around for long (the ground’s still warm enough to melt it off), but the zero days and way-below-freezing nights for the next week or so, and nearly as cold temperatures forecast well towards the end of April, aren’t the greatest. Totally unlike the warm and workable Aprils of the last four years. Is this latest extreme another result of global warming, or simply…the weather (after all, cold Aprils aren’t anything new)? The lifelong farmers I’ve asked all agree that the consistently wild swings of the last three-four years is something they have never before seen. For me, going into only my fifth year of farming (my fifth year of paying real attention to the weather), extreme weather is all I’ve known! It’s…normal!
Lettuce transplanted
Five weeks after seeding in plugsheets under lights, around 180 little lettuces are in the ground. Especially without a hardening off stage, they’ll have a bit of struggle in the greenhouse-hot days and subzero nights ahead, but that’s the gamble for extra early harvest. Luckily, lettuce has been good to me. I have faith. And row cover.
Heading for the sun
A first tray of early lettuce, set out in the unheated greenhouse yesterday afternoon, survived the around-zero night no problem. Lettuce is quite forgiving, and I’m forgoing the usual hardening off, going straight from the grow racks to the greenhouse ground. Although the sun feels great (it just came out now), hopefully it will only appear in breaks over the next couple of days, or the lettuce will be toast. The soaker hoses running up and down were on yesterday for a few hours to get ready for transplanting (without watering, inside the greenhouse, the ground obviously gets very dry).
Valuable stuff!
A tableful of useful gear, arrayed for further sorting after the greenhouse clean-up a couple of days ago. If you see this collection as probable junk, the remains of an uninspiring yard sale, anything less than EXCITING, then it may be hard to convey how much small farming involves an intimate, practically passionate, relationship with little tools and devices. At least, for me it does! I’m not into miracle gadgets, but I’ll try anything that looks cleverly useful, time-saving, labor-saving. Many don’t work out (at times because they’re scaled to TOO tiny a garden), but staying in a tight budget avoids much waste. Of course, first and foremost, there are basic tools that simply do what they’re intended to, work well, and don’t break, which is not that common. Each time you find one of those, it’s almost like falling in love! :)