In the last week, warm, sunny days, a field dry enough to start working, and the first round of seed is in the ground. Today’s sudden little blizzard, as full-on winter wonderland as it looked coming down, hardly got in the way—quick as it arrived, only six hours later, and all trace had vanished (helped along by a little rain). The weather: never anything less than exciting!
Weather
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… :)
Stack of lettuce
Friday harvest and the main green going right now is LETTUCE, appearing as small leaf salad mix. We’re waiting to do new greenhouse seeding – it’s still way wet in there – but a bunch of lettuce transplants are already in, some bok choi, too. So the season’s ramping up and the weekly look around to see what the weather has delivered for market…begins!
It’s white again
Overnight snow turned our muddy browns of spring back to white, and after a spell of welcome warmth, it’s cold days and freezing nights again for most of the next week or two, if forecasts turn out to be right. Waiting for the field to dry out enough to work, which in recent erratic-weather years has been anywhere from early April to late May, makes it hard to plan things in general, but this is not unexpected, it’s just what it is. And spring weather has been known to suddenly and dramatically change from one day to the next. Surprise!
Looking for leaves
The snow’s gone, replaced by puddles and mud. You can still see the road through the trees—the only aerial green so far is evergreen. An overall browned-out scene, but what’s not in the pic is the vigorous twittering of birds, the tantalizing hint of real warmth in the still chilly air, the slightly musty dampness of winter earth waking up, as the outdoors steadily gets ready to…explode!
Spring begins with the weather!
There’s official calendar Spring, and then there’s spring in the field, that ignores exact dates and goes by the weather, marking winter as over whenever the freezing temperatures end. If today’s two-week weather forecast is anything to go by—it is, in this case, when being off by ±5-10°C (14-23°F) either way isn’t a big concern—market garden spring starts now. For the moment, I’m mainly concerned about overnight lows in the unheated greenhouse, and whether row cover is necessary. If it stays above -15-20°C, my safe-with-no-cover cutoff, it should be fine to pull back the covers and let the sun shine in (prepared, of course, to put it right back if there’s a sudden severe dip, which we hope doesn’t happen). Nothing complicated, just a little of the gambling that’s called working with the seasons!
Today’s weather
Spring, soon! So far, though, still chilly and winterish. The photo describes it perfectly: not much snow, but cold enough for the thin layer to stick around (-10°C/14°F at night). And no signs of fresh new green growth just yet… It’s good to know, because it’s happened before, that it could suddenly turn into a startlingly warm T-shirt-optional March. Weather!