Picked up some herb seedlings from local growers at the farmers’ market yesterday. From the bottom left: peppermint, lovage, spearmint, rosemary (started here from cuttings), and tarragon (peeking in from the corner). I generally grow everything possible from seed, so the ones from the market are a bit of an instant treat. I’ll buy a couple of seedlings and multiply them myself to production quantities, which in this case means next year, at least, for the lovage and tarragon. Last frost date was May 18, the 15-day forecast is well above zero C, so it’s now time to get all of the seedlings in. It’s also time to direct seed the flowers. Lots to do…
Year: 2007
Spinach grows up
What a difference 21 days or so makes…to spinach. Spinach, mesclun and radishes all have a shot at sizing up as first field crops to harvest, for next Saturday’s market. Today was satisfyingly busy, with lots of new seeding, on-time weeding, and manual irrigation of recently seeded beds (aka watering in with a hose and fan spray nozzle)… Compared to previous years, there’s an incredible amount of stuff on the go already. Extreme gardening?!
Fieldwork!
Towards the end of the day, Conall waters in newly transplanted eggplant and peppers. Over the last week, focus has moved almost entirely to the open field. The seedling room is empty, the last of the seedlings are now in the greenhouse, and the push is on to get things in the ground as quickly as we can. My juggling of HELP is on-going. Word-of-mouth recruiting has gone surprisingly well, there’s quite a list of willing workers, and it’s tempting to call in a whole crew to transplant all at once. On the practical side, having to explain and coordinate takes a lot of time, I don’t yet have a System that works for several people in the garden at once, so I’m going along more carefully, working with Conall and at most one or two others per day. And one can’t forget the budget. In any case, everything should be in over the next 10 days. Think fast, take it slow!
Cucurbits germinate!
The heat-loving squash-melon-cucumber family are the last of the seedlings to be started. They’re coming up now and headed for the field as soon as they’ve fully emerged, no waiting for true leaves. Depending on the crop, each pot has 2, 3 or 4 seedlings to be transplanted together, with extra space between pots. This replaces single planting and spacing, which saves transplanting time and makes early cultivation easier.
Tomatoes to the field
Go team… Set out another 400 tomatoes today: add a fistful of compost, bury to topmost leaves, water in. Along with the peppers and eggplant transplanted yesterday, most of the early seedlings are now in. There is still a lot to go, but it’s all coming along…!
Farm stand to go…
Just on the other side of the greenhouse and the spring planting action, there’s the Farm Stand. A work in progress. It’s been a frame without a roof for some time now, extra lumber lying around gets in the way of mowing the grass, a bit of a picture of neglect, enhanced by rampant dandelions. There’s lots of work to do in the next couple of weeks to have it ready by the time the first field crops start coming in.
Found onions
There still wasn’t much to take to the farmers’ market today, mesclun and radishes both weren’t ready, so it was baby spinach, the last harvest of early lettuce, and this surprise crop, volunteer green onions sprouted from a few dozen of last year’s cooking onions that had been overlooked in the field. I made a last minute decision to harvest them at 6:30 am, just as we were about to leave. I pulled them up—no time to dig—and filled a bushel bin in just a few minutes. At the market, I explained how they were grown and that they’re stronger tasting than regular bunching onions grown from seed. They were snapped up in no time. One of the great things about taking fresh veggies that you’ve grown yourself to market is that you’re not forced to conform to standardized tastes and sizes and appearances. So long as quality and freshness are consistent, unusual offerings provide a cool extra bit of variety and freedom all around!