Fall spinach is finally ready to pick! The first five beds are pretty sparse—really poor germination in the dry heat of August—but what’s there is looking…succulent. The scattered new plantings of spinach, radish, mesclun and spicy brassica greens make parts of the field look like a whole new season…
spinach
Team harvest!
Today was the first team harvest of the season and for this tiny farm… I’ve certainly had harvest and packing help in the past, but this time, it’s with a regular crew who will hopefully be around for the season. The BIG difference is the size of the harvest, which is at least double what I’ve done before. This was more of a runthrough, with Jo and Erin harvesting spinach, giving it a water bath to cool off, spinning it in the Maytag, and packing a few 400g bags to try out…bagging. Conall and I finished up through the evening. In the harvest this week: radishes (French Breakfast, Rebel), mesclun, bok choi, lettuce, spinach (Bloomsdale, Spargo), green onions. Not bad for the beginning of June.
After the rain…
After a rain, it’s easy to see exactly how much work is ahead in the organic field! The dark wet soil and the flat light of a cloudy day make every detail stand out: weeds exploding, dense rows that’ll need thinning (thanks to the generous Earthway seeder), rocks to get in the way of hoes and tiller both. But it’s usually better than it looks. Here, the Horse tiller can be walked up each path in about a minute. Thinning the beets (first two beds on the right) is actually a harvest of excellent beet greens. The rocks, well, the bigger ones just have to be picked. The worst is in-row weeding, for stuff right in with the crops. This has to be done mostly by hand, but if you get the worst spots, the veggies soon grow to where they can more or less fend for themselves, shading out new weed growth. Or the crop is soon finished (like spinach, on the left) and the whole bed can be tilled up. With a little thoughtfully directed labor, it all works out! (We got 15mm (3/5″) of rain… Not bad.)
Spinach grows up
What a difference 21 days or so makes…to spinach. Spinach, mesclun and radishes all have a shot at sizing up as first field crops to harvest, for next Saturday’s market. Today was satisfyingly busy, with lots of new seeding, on-time weeding, and manual irrigation of recently seeded beds (aka watering in with a hose and fan spray nozzle)… Compared to previous years, there’s an incredible amount of stuff on the go already. Extreme gardening?!
Spot the spinach
Can you see them? The first thin green lines of the season are emerging. Always exciting! Here, part of the first four beds (650′) of Bloomsdale and Spargo spinach. It’s coming along…
O, the luxury!
No sooner fixed than in the field! This combo of little riding mower and old snowmobile trailer is possibly my favorite tiny farming tool, a decadent* alternative to walking up and down the garden plot.
Around here, you can walk miles in a day, especially if you forget things and have to go back—although, walking around, taking different routes each time to check stuff out, is one of the big pleasures, too… What a simple life. :)
Anyhow, after trying a couple of different garden utility belts, overalls with 50 pockets, and a pull-along garden cart, nothing has come close to being able to toss all the stuff you need onto the trailer and go.
I use it whenever there’s too much to carry. Here, I’ve just finished the second seeding of mesclun and spinach, four beds each (on the trailer: Earthway seeders with plates in the coffee can, my most used rake, measuring tape and stakes for marking new beds, a pail for rocks, and seed in the green trug; the empty trays just happen to be there).
Up until I took this pic, it was a gloriously sunny day, after three days or so of cloud and drizzle (which added up to 20cm of rain). Little luxuries.
*The mower is actually pretty energy efficient: it uses maybe 30 gallons (114 l) of gas in an entire season, and that includes mowing paths and hauling harvests.
Gardener of all I survey…
The View from the top of the gangway that leads into the upper level of the barn. Once things get growing, I go up here every day to survey the scene. Today, it pretty much sums up the spring so far, mainly damp, grey and gloomy (see Mar.16, Feb.18). Without sun, the grass has hardly started to green up. You can just make out the yellow markers in the very first section on the left where yesterday I got in beds of spinach (Bloomsdale, Spargo), beets (Scarlet Supreme, Detroit Dark Red) and radish (Rebel, French Breakfast). That felt good!