Finally, a bit of a change in the weather: several degrees above freezing and steady on-and-off light rain. Although the air has been cold for the last couple of weeks, the sun has been doing its thing, heating up any patches of open ground and slowly melting the snow away from underneath. So, just a little extra help, and we see ground in no time. This drawn-out melt-off means water is puddling everywhere, freezing and thawing overnights, gradually seeping in. I think this is a good thing: our clayey (clay-loam) soil, with its high water-holding capacity, will be saturated to the max, and hold water longer, well into spring, a good break for the first seeds in. This is my theory… Y’know, there’s an upside to almost everything!
snow
Inside and out…
Inside, in the increasingly GREEN Milkhouse, this year’s artificial sun set-up is done. It’s about fitting in as much area-under-lights as possible, while making sure all of the trays are easily reachable, for watering, rotation, thinning. So, there are the four grow racks, and the lightbox (that’s leek, onions and parsley under there), with its second level (why waste a flat surface that comes with chains?!). For now, this extra space is the new spot for the rescued-and-passed-along decorative plants (the heather was too dried out and didn’t make it, the wintergreen are doing fine, and the orchids seem OK…), but they’ll eventually be crowded out and moved somewhere else. The shelves are filling up fast… MEANWHILE, outside, it’s snowing and snowing, again. That’s a lot of snow. Around here, we’re definitely off to a later start this year than at least the last couple, but I’m still not particularly put off, not just yet. Although, it’s not supposed to warm up for another week, maybe two…
This is today’s peaceful but uninspiring view of the garden from the north-facing Milkhouse window…
Spring begins
“Spring begins” is what it says on my calendar. In the field, there’s a foot or two of snow everywhere that’s flat, with piled high snow banks and deep drifts wherever possible. The sun is getting higher and hotter by the day, but the air’s stayed cold to freezing. Today looked a lot different than this time last year, but not so far off from late March 2006. Nothing a couple of warm days and some rain won’t fix. Predictions are for a drawn out wind down to winter around here, but I’m expecting anything and imagining a warm and sunny early spring…starting any day now. As usual, we shall see!
Walk to work
Can’t speak for everyone, for me, heading into the field is the best walk to work I’ve known… The arugula transplants a couple of days ago started this season’s almost ritual morning garden tour. This is an often mildly adrenaline-fueled stroll at the start of every day, from mid-March through early June, and then, mid-September into November, to see what happened with the overnight temperature. Frost-watch, if you like, but actual visible frost you don’t see that often, it’s mostly checking the effect of really cold air on crops in different parts of the garden. Right now, there’s only the bit of arugula to check out (the unheated greenhouse gets as cold as outside once the sun is gone). We’ve kept a path clear to the east side door, where there’s less snow build-up, as the wind usually comes from the west (the greenhouse is laid out east-west, with doors at both ends). Today, all’s well!
Making water
As far as winter irrigation in the greenhouse goes, melting snow in big barrels is the next best thing to a really long hose, a well and an electric pump. Fill ’em up, cover with clear plastic, wait a day (even on a dull, cloudy day, it gets up to 60°F in the hoophouse). Repeat a couple of times, and you have 50 gallons of rainwater in a barrel! The alternative is dragging 200′ of hose through deep snow from the barn to the greenhouse, then reeling it in and draining it, every couple of days. The weather has put the kibosh on the early-March, barely heated greenhouse plan, the happy prospect until March actually came around. The nights have been regularly plunging to 10°F (-12°C), so it’s really not worthwhile to heat things up by 25°F. No worries. Adjusting expectations and schedules more or less by the day is all part of the fun… It’s never boring!
Back to the field!
Last seen planting garlic in November as we headed into winter, Lynn is BACK IN THE FIELD, getting a head start on spring. It was great to see her again and…continue! We headed out to the greenhouse and spent three hours or so, bagging the last of the grass mulch, pulling weeds, forking beds, chatting and basking in the sunshiny, 25°C (80°F) greenhouse weather! I also brought out a tray of arugula, couldn’t resist posing it in the snow… It felt excellent to get started out there. Fun!
Slightly snowbound
Another snowstorm, come and gone. It snowed steadily all of yesterday, with pretty high winds, but most of the accumulation seemed to be overnight. Today, azure skies, brilliant sun, tons of snow in drifts piled high. Looks like we’re one more heavy fall away from all-time records. I heard there’ve been over a dozen school snow days, compared to three or four a season in recent years. Here on the farm, no extreme hardship so far (knock on wood!). In the barnyard, we’re running out of room around the edges to pile up more snow, and in the field, it’s a couple of feet deep, but snow has kept off the Milkhouse roof, and the main worry, a flattened hoophouse, hasn’t come close to happening. The wind built up the drift on the south side (both photos), and just to be safe (and for the first time ever), I scooped off the new stuff, down to the harder-packed, more permanent base. Luckily, the side walls are inflated (a fan on a looong extension cord continually blows air between two layers of plastic), so the surface is quite taut and doesn’t sag or hold snow easily. And that’s it. Back to waiting for the snow to go…