Month: May 2009 - Page 2 - Tiny Farm Blog

Sprouts!

6 Dec 20189 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Sprouts—the tinier tiny farming! After two Saturdays of buying them by the bag at the farmers’ market, I’m totally hooked! I want to grow sprouts, the nutritional claims are quite amazing, most of all, I really love the taste and crunch of EATING them (mostly, by the handful).

Until our first harvest, we’re dropping by our market to stroll around, chat, and buy food. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I already have a routine with favorite stops, including one to get salad greens (first time in a few years that in-season salads aren’t homegrown), and one for SPROUTS!

I get the megamix, with a little of everything. Can’t even remember the whole list, but there’s something spicy, tastes like mustard, pea, kale, broccoli, I think, lots more.

Sprouts aren’t new to me. As a kid, I remember my mother growing a jar of bean sprouts for a regular Asian-style stir fry-type dish she made, and I’ve bought usually alfalfa sprouts for sandwiches, but I never really NOTICED sprouts till now. They’re great. So, it’s figuring out the simplest way to grow a wide variety for a steady personal supply…

Allie’s photo gallery II

19 Apr 202210 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Michelle, back for her first farm day this year, sorted out seedlings while daughters Allie (7) and Violet (3) checked out the new farm. Clearly, kids take well to…activities, so, to follow up her first successful camera mission last summer, I gave Allie my camera, and off she went off on a photo shoot. Little sis Violet, camera-ready and joyful, turned out to be the subject du jour… (Photos by Allie)

Hardening off continues

3 Apr 201611 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Ferrying 60 trays of seedlings in and out of the seedling room continues. When you focus up close on a lush green tomato leaf, decked out in droplets after a gentle hand watering, everything seems peaceful and orderly on the tiny farm. This is not untrue, but it’s also pretty crazy around here with the MANY THINGS TO DO. One more rainy stretch in the next few days, then heat and sun are in the longer range forecast—looks like our big gift for spring, free irrigation via regular rain, will soon run out, so WATER in the field is next on the gotta-get-it-running list. As May rapidly unfolds, it’s all about the To-Do-Now!

Compost spreading: another way…

19 Apr 202213 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

When there’s a whole small section to cover, spreading compost with the Kubota compact tractor bucket is a lot faster and more efficient than the painstaking bed-by-bed method. This has been my usual approach for spot spreading, usually for 50’x50′ squares. Covered in reverse: the roughly distributed compost is quickly raked out (looks like a lot of work, but only takes 5-10 minutes!), before being rototilled in.

The real trick is backing up while dumping, rotating the bucket up and down. As long as the compost is flowing and not too clumped, this works great, gets a lot of the job done.

After a little experimentation, we came up with a simple debagging method, Lynn demonstrates: slit the bag in the bucket, then quickly flip it, pull up, and give it a couple of shakes. This compost is quite heavy (35% moisture, the label says?! expensive certified organic water…), so it quite easily tumbles out… And there we go, tiny methods for the tiny farm!

Happy signs of veggie life

3 Apr 201613 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Snap peas (above) are still the crop to watch for pleasing signs of veggie life in the fields. Mild concern over the chopped sod content continues, so each new bit of healthy growth, while expected, is still a happy event! The soil itself is nice, I’m comfortable with the fair degree of clay content (water-holding is good!), I’m pretty sure we’re developing a good working relationship. And there is a lot of other stuff to see. Three successive seedings of Sugar Ann snap peas are doing well—the first two are below, and in the distance, two seedings of spinach, broccoli and cauliflower under cover, radish, beets,… And there’s lots more. With tiny farming and Mother Nature, trust is good, but seeing is believing!

Map day!

16 Nov 202314 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Finally, the first production map for this new market garden! Usually, it’s a good idea to get a detailed map done early in the winter, before making up the main seed orders (or, if that’s where you’re at, before taking inventory of your vast store of saved seed!). Here, with our hasty start-up in late November, and piecemeal plowing of sections over the last month, it’s been hard to tell how much area would be ready when. This morning, Peter down the road disked the final large area, and as the sun set, I walked around staking out sections with fluorescent marking tape, then sketched out the first production map. Each square is 50′ x 50′ (15m x 15m). To be filled in…

Filling the fields continues

19 Apr 202215 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

More slow but steady planting out. Flat-leaf and curly parsley, started so long ago, finally hit the field by the hands of Libby and Lynn. Later in the afternoon, we started one section of potatoes. The timing this spring is…unusual. We’re still tilling and retilling sections to further break up sod, planting the same crop in two or three different spots, and staggering planting dates by waiting as long as possible, to get as much variation in conditions as we can. It’s hedging bets in a new market garden…