One person’s low-interest bin of unidentified golden-brownish stuff, is another’s stash of pelletized alfalfa goodness. This is plain old alfalfa, the plant in the pasture that cows especially love, dried and compressed into pellets. No additives, nothing but dry plant pills. They’re a great fertilizer in the veg patch. One season, I counted on mostly pelletized alfalfa, instead of the usual cow manure, as the main plant food and it worked out fine. It’s also quite inexpensive, compact, easy to store and spread. Nowadays, I use it to top up beds over the season, after the main composted manure spreading. At one point, I had all the numbers – how many pounds/kilos per bed, cost per acre – and nutritional details, in front of mind. Now, using it as a top-up, all that has receded and I eyeball it. Just scatter.
Farm lab (research!)
Simple system
Nothing like improving a way to keep organized! This may look like some sort of craft-y looking set-up, when in fact it’s my new, state-of-the-art seedling tracking system. For years, I’d print the variety and seeding the on these tiny plastic stakes with a trusted Sharpie fine point, and stick them in the plug sheets. You can see the old approach on some of the stakes I’m reusing (old-fashioned recycling). Recently, I started instead to use a number code, writing the variety, date, and notes on a form I printed up. Why the change? Who knows, it just suddenly seemed like the thing to do.
It’s so much better! With only a number to read, the stakes can be half the height and don’t stick up and get in the way. It’s also a lot easier to see what’s going on overall by looking at the sheet. I always kept a list anyway, but now I’m doing half the printing and labeling work. I can also reuse the numbers season to season. The biggest advantage is psychological: I find that, when doing repetitive manual work, like seeding a few plug sheets, the less steps, the smoother the process, and less mental resistance. Rather than find a clean stake, print the info, pierce the plastic covering the plug sheet to stick it in, and rewrite the info on paper, I just insert the next number at almost soil level (no holes in the plastic wrap covering) and fill out the form! If this doesn’t resonate with you with a feeling of simple satisfaction, well, I guess you never had to keep track of a bunch of seedlings! :)
Won’t give in to the cold
Lettuce, under a hoop-supported layer of medium weight row cover in the unheated greenhouse, is crisp, colorful, and fresh as daisies. This lettuce mix was planted in October, and some of it cut once in December, and now it’s waiting out the winter. Outside low so far: not bad, around -22°C. Kind of the same picture every time – dead or alive – but still always exciting when you’re there… (:
Seedlings in January!
The earliest ever tomatoes experiment begins… Parts of the plan include a proven super-early variety, multiple seedling start dates, and the unheated greenhouse!
In the greenhouse: bok choi vs flea beetle
Everyone loves the greenhouse! The warmth, the wind break…crops, weeds, all plants love it in here. Now it seems flea beetles have acquired the taste as well. For whatever reason, the FBs usually stayed out of the (much smaller) little greenhouse, but here in the new big house—munch, munch, munch—bok choi is under attack. Hoped for a free pass on FBs in here as well, instead, it’s row cover. Learning as we go…
The light on the lettuce
The low-riding late afternoon sun shines through lettuce leaves, creating quite the vivid show of color. (This is also great light for revealing carpets of the tiniest emerging weeds that are otherwise easy to overlook or conveniently ignore—seeing so clearly what’s to come really motivates you to get weeding early.)
Making salad mix
Adding a pinch (5g) of fairly pricey Rushmore (a beautifully deep-red oakleaf) to a batch of salad mix. This is the basic all-lettuce summer blend: seven varieties, selected mainly for color (greens to reds), texture (flat to frilly), and to some degree, seed cost (the price range of lettuce varieties is quite extreme). This inexpensive digital gram scale makes it easy to add relatively small quantities of certain varieties, and keep each batch consistent. Weigh out, shake up in bottle, ready to go. Here: 100g – that’s a lot of little lettuce!