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… (:
Greenhouse
The basic tiny farming greenhouse is a steel-ribbed, plastic covered hoophouse, the bigger, the better for season extension.
Winter farming in a nutshell
Winter farming in a nutshell: Sundown, New Year’s Day 2017, checking up on the greenhouse after a rattler of a windy night. The snowdrifts, the low-riding, fast-falling sun captured by plastic over hoops of steel – it’s all still here! :)
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…
Greenhouse lettuce, growing
After a couple of early spring weeks in the greenhouse, transplanted lettuces and totally uninvited weeds are all doing exceptionally well! The sun climbs and the growing picks up speed…
Transplanting…never twice the same!
Today’s transplants: Still steadily plugging in seedlings in the greenhouse, waiting for more ground to dry out. This round, lettuces (above) and bok choi (elsewhere). All this transplanting is pretty straightforward—taking the photo, I might wonder, “What’s the difference between these seedlings stuck in the ground, and any others…why bother posting the same thing over and over?” Well, I don’t literally ask myself that, but I can see how some folks may think that. There’s no good answer, it really is in the eye of the beholder.
On a tiny farm, where weather runs everything, you never know how little decisions will turn out, and how critically they may affect things. Decisions like, let’s put up this greenhouse in this wet-in-spring field that’s also slow to dry, and see what happens (because the alternatives are too expensive), and fix or work around any problems we may run into. In that greenhouse, THIS lettuce planting, in mucky ground, in all-new conditions that may also in a few days get infernally hot and downright lettuce-unfriendly if we don’t finish the end-wall windows for ventilation before the temperature shoots up, is entirely different from every other lettuce transplanting. New story, ending unknown, let’s see how it turns out! It’s always something different… :)
Transplanting: tiny sections
Transplanting lettuce into the unheated greenhouse, filling it out in small sections to work around wetter areas. The seedlings, waiting for drier conditions, stayed a couple of weeks longer in trays than ideal—now they’re a little floppy and stretched, but I’m confident they’ll figure it out. This first spring, seeing how the ground dries in the new hoophouse is part of the learning curve. Tiny farming!
Seedlings in the sun
Lettuce seedlings get their first taste of full-on springtime sunshine. Next stop, into the ground in the greenhouse. I wouldn’t call this hardening off, some of these are being transplanted later today—tomorrow’s cloudy forecast should give them all the post-transplant adjustment break they need, then bring on the sun! (Starring in this pic, always reliable Black Seeded Simpson.)