The heat-loving squash-melon-cucumber family are the last of the seedlings to be started. They’re coming up now and headed for the field as soon as they’ve fully emerged, no waiting for true leaves. Depending on the crop, each pot has 2, 3 or 4 seedlings to be transplanted together, with extra space between pots. This replaces single planting and spacing, which saves transplanting time and makes early cultivation easier.
Spring
Fieldwork!
Towards the end of the day, Conall waters in newly transplanted eggplant and peppers. Over the last week, focus has moved almost entirely to the open field. The seedling room is empty, the last of the seedlings are now in the greenhouse, and the push is on to get things in the ground as quickly as we can. My juggling of HELP is on-going. Word-of-mouth recruiting has gone surprisingly well, there’s quite a list of willing workers, and it’s tempting to call in a whole crew to transplant all at once. On the practical side, having to explain and coordinate takes a lot of time, I don’t yet have a System that works for several people in the garden at once, so I’m going along more carefully, working with Conall and at most one or two others per day. And one can’t forget the budget. In any case, everything should be in over the next 10 days. Think fast, take it slow!
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?!
Herbs…
Picked up some herb seedlings from local growers at the farmers’ market yesterday. From the bottom left: peppermint, lovage, spearmint, rosemary (started here from cuttings), and tarragon (peeking in from the corner). I generally grow everything possible from seed, so the ones from the market are a bit of an instant treat. I’ll buy a couple of seedlings and multiply them myself to production quantities, which in this case means next year, at least, for the lovage and tarragon. Last frost date was May 18, the 15-day forecast is well above zero C, so it’s now time to get all of the seedlings in. It’s also time to direct seed the flowers. Lots to do…
Set to explode
There are many particularly exciting points during the growing season, and this is one of ’em! We’re on the third plantings for some crops, things are emerging everywhere, and some plantings are just getting ready to put on serious growth towards maturity and harvest. In other words, the field is getting ready to explode with veggies. This happens several times during the year, in different sections, with different plantings and crops, but the first time is right across the field and always a thrill. For me, it still seems like kind of a miracle when all those tiny seeds and plans and energy actually turn into…the new Veggie Garden! Here, green onions (in the faint furrows) and carrots under burlap are recent second plantings (yesterday), and the garlic is starting to shoot up on the way to tasty garlic scapes in June…
Evening harvest
In the greenhouse, harvesting in the first and last couple of hours of the day is the only way to ensure tasty salad greens. Daytime harvest is near futile, as the leaves go limp and require serious rehydration. In the chilly evening weather, plants perk up, and it’s all right as rain! Here, cutting greens in the evening before market means clearing the arugula that bolted during the week and rapidly buried the lettuce. Out of arugula chaos comes delicious, garden-fresh salad mix! (On the tomato front, yesterday’s field transplants did well, only a few leaf burns where they touched the cover, this despite quite a hard frost. That’s good.)
Tomatoes go in
The first of the tender, warm season transplants—tomatoes—hit the field today! About 175 seedlings went in: Juliet, Striped German, Stupice, Emerald Evergreen, Mule Team, Yellow Stuffer. On the transplant team: Conall, Sherry and, new to the season’s crew, Jo. Compared to doing transplants alone or with one other person (my experience so far), this was quite the operation. Teamwork!
Juggling the weather and part-timer scheduling, I took a bit of a risk transplanting today, with patchy frost forecast for tonight. Still, the plants have been through highs and lows in the greenhouse, row cover will help, and tomatoes have…never let me down. I’ll be up at dawn to see how it went. Everything’s a gamble!