Harvesting salad greens: bin, harvest knife, hands. This has never been one of my favorite things to do—doubled over one 50′ bed after another. A while back, we made a seat on wheels that straddled the bed so you could sit, pushing yourself back with your feet. It worked pretty well, but it became one extra thing to lug around and faded out of service. The greens—lettuces, arugula, mustard, mizuna, other brassicas—at this time are maybe the best of the season, growing before full summer heat. In the background, the goldenrod, native residents of the field, are thriving, towering over all the crops. I don’t think of them as weeds, because they don’t
Spring
It’s a snake eats toad world
Spring is here, the air is mild, birds are madly chirping, and the intricate interplay of life at ground level is back in full swing. Exhibit A: a snake eating a toad! It takes a long while, could be hours, for the toad to get swallowed alive and eventually die by suffocation. Seems extremely unpleasant for the toad, but in Nature’s grand scheme of things, a snake has got to eat like the rest of us! We humans do the same with oysters, minus the big swallowing challenge.
Greenhouse lettuce, growing
After a couple of early spring weeks in the greenhouse, transplanted lettuces and totally uninvited weeds are all doing exceptionally well! The sun climbs and the growing picks up speed…
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!
Transplanting: tiny sections
Transplanting lettuce into the unheated greenhouse, filling it out in small sections to work around wetter areas. The seedlings, waiting for drier conditions, stayed a couple of weeks longer in trays than ideal—now they’re a little floppy and stretched, but I’m confident they’ll figure it out. This first spring, seeing how the ground dries in the new hoophouse is part of the learning curve. Tiny farming!
Seedlings in the sun
Lettuce seedlings get their first taste of full-on springtime sunshine. Next stop, into the ground in the greenhouse. I wouldn’t call this hardening off, some of these are being transplanted later today—tomorrow’s cloudy forecast should give them all the post-transplant adjustment break they need, then bring on the sun! (Starring in this pic, always reliable Black Seeded Simpson.)
First winter harvest
Yesterday’s harvest that went to today’s farmers’ market, my earliest market start by almost two months! From the unheated greenhouse: kale, green and red mustard, and lettuce mix times two. Harvest conditions: -2°C outside, a perfect-working-weather 10°C inside. At the end, the sun came out and it started to get sweatingly hot under a T-shirt, shirt and fleece. But, already done! No rinsing, just covered and into a cool room for a 6 a.m. pick-up this morning. It felt a little odd, starting the year’s Saturday markets so early, and indoors—this fall, if all goes as intended, weekly market will cease to end for winter and become instead a fully year-round thing…