Checking in with the early lettuce. The seedlings are developing their first true leaves. Fluorescent lighting is inexpensive and does the trick, but it still bothers me how seedlings stretch and strain toward the available light, when what they really want is the Sun.
Veggies
A beautiful day
A beautiful day in the snowy field, looking back at the outbuildings from the greenhouse. I used the Kubota (the trusty compact tractor) to clear the path, more to take it out of the shed and give it a little run than because the snow’s too high to trudge through. The temperature’s around zero C, the sun is getting higher in the sky and warmer as she climbs, snow is melting at the edges and through the thin spots wherever you go… Is spring in the air? Sure feels like it!
Lettuce overnight
The first lettuce pushed up overnight! Here, lovely red Granada, an Oakleaf-type leaf lettuce that intensifies into a deep burgundy as it matures. Also in trays, Sierra, Simpson Elite, Two Stars and Red Salad Bowl. Now, how early will they be ready for market (the farmers’ market kicks off the first Saturday in May…)?
Lettuce begins
This is what lettuce looks like when it’s just getting started. It’s the standard seed starting mix in action! Yet another off-season image from the microfarm. :)
Rosemary revival
A little experiment in vegetative propagation—replicating rosemary from tiny, stressed cuttings. Most of the potted rosemary taken up from the herb garden last season got toasted after too many -20°C nights in the unheated greenhouse (a bit of a random how-cold-can-they-go experiment). These tiny cuttings came from one that was taken indoors earlier. They’re kinda frail and stretched from relatively low light (etiolated is the typically uncommon technical term). They’ve already been three days in the tray, let’s see how they do. (Fast forward to…results!)
As winter as it gets…
This is, I guess, the new look of winter. The barrels in the field are barely half covered, compared to the three or four feet of snow that accumulated by this time only a few years ago.
Seed starts here…
This is where everything but the bulky seed goes, and the season starts here. It’s just a big plastic tool chest, with a ziploc bag full of seed packets for each crop. But it’s REALLY the heart and soul of the entire farm, and more so, because there are dozens of small packets of “gotta try this sometime” varieties and specialty crops on top of staple varieties in larger quantities. There’s a whole lotta seed in there. Bigger seed, like corn, beans, peas, and bulk stuff, like buckwheat and clover, have their own plastic jugs.