Last of the big machine work! Bob using the spreader to drop off a pile of compost for distribution by shovel (shot two days ago). There is something really satisfying in this crazy world about technology that is straightforward, like a giant fan-blade device for tossing manure far and wide! Today, I finished rototilling the new section, ending the main tractor work. From here, most of the fieldwork is done by hand—the biggest machine is the little Kubota. Later on in the day, it rained, only 5mm but enough to save hours of watering-in newly seeded beds. Time to start keeping track of the rain…
Tools
Equipment for large-scale agriculture is too big or too expensive, and many home gardening tools don’t work efficiently on larger jobs or break easily. Tiny farming on plots up to two or three acres requires its own special gear…
Greens machine!
Surprise! I feel like a kid with a new go-kart. I plan to learn how to weld this year, and I’d been discussing with Bob this specialized harvest cart as a first project. Well, he went ahead and whipped up his own interpretation, using parts that were hanging about. Voila! The cart sits over a bed of mesclun, spinach or other low greens, wheels in the paths, you lean forward to cut, and move it a foot or two at a time with your feet. The minute I sat on it, the improvement from crouching or straddling the bed and bending over was clear. Cutting in comfort, and it’s supposed to near double your speed. It moves easily even in pretty wet soil, and the height seems right, but it’s still a prototype, to be harvest-tested and refined. Over the season, I cut TONS of greens (maybe not literally, but feels like it), so I’m excited!
Breaking new ground
Added a new section to the garden plot today, with a helping hand from Bob, his tractor and a moldboard plow. The moldboard turns the top few inches almost completely over. It’s very effective for breaking up sod, and it’s also sort of an old school approach. Apparently, some farms moldboard once or twice a season, but as a regular practice, it’s not great for the soil and has somewhat fallen from favor in recent years. Here, it’s a one-time plowing that gets the job done!
Horse back in action…
The Troy-Bilt Horse walking rototiller is back in action for the first day of tilling in the field. I prepped a 50’x50′ section for snap peas. The Horse is noisy and uses a fair (though not unreasonable) share of gas, but it’s also a very handy machine for larger areas (in fact, I would’ve used the rototiller on the tractor, but the ground is still too wet to take the weight). All things in moderation on the way to becoming a fully-rounded, taking-it-slow, hand-laboring farmer! (Gear note: This Horse is c. 1995, from the original Troy-Bilt line, before the company was gobbled up by a bigger one and the construction got more lightweight. I bought it used, at half the price of new, and in near mint condition. It should last a long, long time—in my first farming year, I borrowed a rusty 30-year-old Horse that did just fine.)
Plug sheet action
Plastic cling wrap is everywhere. I tried it out last year as a replacement for clear tray covers and it seems to work fine. The method so far: fill the plug sheets with seedling mix, place tray in water so mix is soaked from the bottom up, drop in 2-3 seeds per cell, cover lightly with more mix, soak surface with spray, apply plastic wrap (it sticks nicely to the wet edges of the plug sheet), fill out label marker with variety/date and plunge through plastic (those labels are all that stand between you and variety chaos!), then it’s off to the racks. Now, the trays don’t have to be watered for a week, the mix retains more heat, and you can check moisture by looking at the condensation on the plastic. At first, I wondered about adequate air circulation and whether the fairly closed conditions would encourage algae, but the seedlings emerge on time with no unusual algae problems. As soon as the first couple of seedlings appear, it’s off with the plastic. I re-use the plastic as well, over the 4-5 weeks of seed starting, and the bit of waste in the end, well, I think it’s moderation in everything that counts. (In the top right of the pic, the Vittoria eggplant is tenting its cover, having pushed up vigorously in just six or seven hours overnight. It’s a feisty one!)
Seed starting tools
It doesn’t take much to get seed started indoors. Fingers, mainly. The Seedmaster is a bit of a gadget from last year, not liked much at first, but rising on the tiny tool chart. You roll the yellow wheel, which clicks and causes the tool to vibrate, shaking seed down and over those little ridges (speed bumps) near the tip. At first, the wheel was stiff and the whole process seemed slow, but this year, it’s loosened up and once you get used to holding it at the right tilt for each type of seed, it definitely works faster for me than finger-pinching tiny seed. It came with four yellow inserts, with different sizes of cutout at the base to further slow down different sizes of seed, but I keep it fitted with the largest. The stainless steel transplanter tool acts like a shoehorn, and works great for popping out plugs when potting up (it’s all in that little bit of a curve!). The permanent marker and plastic plant labels are of course indispensable (DON’T GET MIXED UP!). The green dibber (dibbler, pointy tool, whatever) is nice in principle: it comes in handy for poking little dents and holes, but fingers often work faster.
Grow racks at night
Plant racks, light stands…I usually call ’em grow racks. They’re filling up now.
Pushed to capacity, the three racks can hold a total of 36 trays, 12 each, or four trays per shelf. So, depending on the size of the plug sheet—I use 38s, 72s, 128s, 200s—I can start between 1,368 and 7,200 seedlings.
Sounds super-efficient. HOWEVER, it comes down to the light. With four trays per double fluorescent fixture, the light is pretty stretched, and a lot of rotating is in order.
Also, most of the fixtures are the old standard T-12 type, where the light is stronger towards the middle of the tube. You can clearly see the difference in growth if you leave trays in the same position for a few days. The newer T-8 type lights more evenly from end to end and uses less power, but I don’t feel like replacing all the fixtures (a couple in there are already T-8).
It’s an ongoing experiment to see which size plug sheet to best start in for each crop, given the light situation. That in turn determines if or how often I need to pot up to larger quarters before it’s time to transplant into the field.
All in all, I’ll get around 2,500 seedlings off the racks this year.