Cheap! To truly appreciate tiny farming, you have to embrace the humble tools that make it all possible, like these cheap ($6) plastic lawn sprinklers that work with the well pump’s low pressure (maybe 20% of normal urban tap psi), where better quality models are too well-built (heavy) to move. On the hunt for more replacements, I picked up a couple of versions at a second stop, after a failed attempt in the sprawling garden center of a giant hardware store, where they’d stopped carrying the cheap stuff. Overhead irrigation is inefficient at any scale, what with evaporation and water being blown off target, but at this small scale, it’s still an effective time-saver for watering in newly seeded beds…
Month: May 2016
More Planet Jr. action!
The Planet Jr. rides again. Clara learns the way of the antique seeder, having just laid down three rows of Kestrel beets. This old seeder continues to serve well!
Greens, protected!
Floating row cover, weighed down and made semi-transparent by water, is all that stands between fine young brassica greens and the scourge of the flea beetle. The cover is placed right after seeding, weighed down by rocks every 12.5′ feet, briefly rolled back for weeding, and progressively loosened as the greens grow—we use 14′ wide sheets on 10′ wide beds. This medium-weight cover has worked as a good all-round solution, offering a few degrees of frost protection, and more durable than a lighter, insect-only weight, which would allow better light transmission (this medium weight one is 85%) and better air circulation, but also be more likely to tear.
First salad greens of the outdoor season
The season’s first field planting of salad greens, making a brief public appearance from under row cover, where they’re in flea beetle protection – we’re weeding today. Mustards, bok choi, arugula (a brassica relative), mizunas and more. So perfectly tasty, plucked straight from the ground, with a little dirt garnish for good measure…
Lettuce landscape
A tiny landscape of lettuces: Especially with the hot, dry weather we’ve been having, you can’t go wrong with a few trays of leaf lettuce seedlings, lending support to the baby greens in the field! Transplanted at 8-10″ spacing, lettuces in a variety of colors and shapes—oakleafs, salad bowls, lollos—can be picked at least a couple of times as leaves for a bigger-leaf greens mix, or thinned as they start to really fill out, with two or three varieties bundled and the rest left to grow all the way. Lettuce options!