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

New lumber turns into new grow rack. This adds a fourth to the set, a measure of tiny farm growth. I started with two in Year 1, built another one last year (Year 5). It’s not like the focus here is on rapid expansion…this is the speed of staying tiny! ;) Although I don’t build these often, it seems to get quicker every time. Well under a hundred dollars of wood, wheels, screws, bolts, brackets, hooks and chains, plus a chop saw, a drill and a couple of hours, and there it is! Light fixtures are extra. In the pic, the shelves still have to go on. Lying across the middle supports is one of the four old fluorescent fixtures, given to me instead of being tossed in the trash. Not only free, they’re BETTER: the tubes are spaced further apart than in the standard shop lights I’ve been using, the light will spread more evenly over a larger area—for the seedlings, a lot less leaning and stretching…

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!

The first harvested dish of the year here usually comes from early lettuce, but not usually from lettuce still in plug sheets. With my ambitious timing, and the way colder than hoped for weather, transplanting to the greenhouse was delayed by a couple of weeks, and the lettuce seedlings stayed in trays and went crazy. Today, I started thinning them heavily for the move, and ended up with a healthy portion of baby leaf salad! This is a mix of Simpson Elite, Granada, and Two Stars. The colors are still indoors pale, the taste and texture delicate. With a simple olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper dressing…delicious! And still a couple more bowls to go…

Last night, the greenhouse low was a chilly 5°F (-15°C): the arugula, spending nights under 3-4 layers of floating row cover, still seems to be doing fine. Especially with more extreme transplants like this—a long time in the plug sheet, then an abrupt jump to the harsh greenhouse conditions—there’s a critical period of a few days, waiting for the stressed little plants to settle in. Cover at night, uncover in the morning, till the weather warms up…

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!

Went through the lumber delivered yesterday, selecting the straightest pieces for a new grow rack. There’s all kinds of scrap wood around the farm, except, there are never enough 2×4s and plywood… I order construction grade for most things, quite inexpensive but the boards have to be hand-picked if you don’t want a lot of warped wood. For rough carpentry, this works fine: the savings add up, and rough edges add character! There’s the grow rack, a double screen door for the Milkhouse, the composting toilet-ice fishing hut conversion, the chickenhouse reno, new tables and trays for the farm and market stands, more… All needed pretty soon. Spring building starts now!

Transplanted the arugula from the end of January into as small a corner of the greenhouse as seemed to make sense, two plants to a plug, about 6″ (15cm) apart. There’s no space to waste, and these guys, already a long time in trays, will likely be ready too early for market (first Saturday in May). So, another experiment in early planting, but leave room for others! The arugula has been out there in the plug sheet for a couple of nights, surviving 10°F (-12°C) nights under a few layers of row cover (an extreme rapid hardening off!; as you can see in the tray, a few much smaller seedlings, started in mid-Feb, didn’t do so well, most of ‘em got toasted the first night). And now, the survivors are in the ground, free at last, in full sun during the day, and recovered at night. It felt great to put hands in the soil, first time this year. Mmmm…

It’s funny how almost random objects can become practically indispensable tools. Like this rigid gray tray, given to me a while back, just the one, amongst a mixed bunch of plastic flower pots from bedding plants, passed along by a local gardener. For four seasons, I’ve used it to water the seedlings (all parsley in the pic): in goes a plug sheet in its webbed tray, sit for 10-15 minutes, then out to drain for a bit over the sink, and it’s back to the grow racks, good for another few days. I’ll keep this up until the seedlings are well-established, three weeks or more, depending on the crop. Perfect, except, at one point I’ll have maybe 50 plug sheets going at once, which means a lot of moving trays and tracking soak time. Not too efficient. I’ve been meaning to build a bigger watering tray, that can handle four or six plug sheets at a time. But I haven’t yet. As odd as it sounds, I’ve grown…attached to the one-at-a-time approach, and this particular, perfectly sized, always reliable gray tray! Every planting gets its own bit of focus each time it’s watered, developing its own little story on the way to the field. It’s part of the fun. Doing batches will be much quicker overall; the attention to what’s in each tray will be slightly less. Not a bad thing, there’s always lots to do with any extra time—continually improving by increments is also a main part tiny farming. With more seedlng starts this year than ever, I suppose I will build that bigger tray… Progress… ;)

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!