More slow but steady planting out. Flat-leaf and curly parsley, started so long ago, finally hit the field by the hands of Libby and Lynn. Later in the afternoon, we started one section of potatoes. The timing this spring is…unusual. We’re still tilling and retilling sections to further break up sod, planting the same crop in two or three different spots, and staggering planting dates by waiting as long as possible, to get as much variation in conditions as we can. It’s hedging bets in a new market garden…
waiting
Direct seeding
Direct seeding is going ahead at a careful pace. There’s a fair amount of broken up sod in the mix, and it would be nice for it to have more time to settle in and decompose, also for any bits of live grass to start poking up so they can be disrupted again with a light tilling… But we can’t just wait around. Spinach, beets, and radish went in a few days ago, just after the first peas. More peas went in yesterday (Connor for the first time wrestles with the kinda heavy and unwieldy Planet Jr., above, and ends up doing fine on a trial row). Now, the watching and waiting is on for the first plants to emerge in the field…
A brief return to winter
It snowed fairly steadily yesterday and today, transforming everything with that pretty but kinda unwanted winter wonderland effect. Looks like around 4-6″ (10-15cm) so far… (I don’t keep track of snowfall the way I do rain!) This isn’t forecast to last, it should warm up and be all gone in 3-4 days, and then the temperature is supposed to jump. Drying out time…
That first day of being able to actually work the field is always so different each year, especially the last 4-5 crazy weather years. Two years ago, peas went in the first week of April. Last year, it went from too-wet-to-work, to needing irrigation, in one mid-April week. Who knows how it’ll go this time around.
With the new garden, extra steps like disking, rototilling, and waiting a bit for the grass to break down some more, not to mention, prepping the ground for and putting up the greenhouse, make timing particularly critical. The farmers’ market officially starts in less than FOUR WEEKS. CSA shares begin second or third week of June. I can feel the adrenaline bubbling up just writing about it: timing and the WEATHER! :)
Tomatoes galore
Tomato seedlings are suddenly everywhere! We planted out the whole of this year’s line-up in a couple of days, starting a week ago. The first tray (above) started popping in just 4 days! There are over 60 varieties, including around a dozen cherries. Except for half a dozen hybrids, they’re all heirloom.
Heirloom tomato seed seems to be more quirky than the hybrids, with noticeably different germination speeds and rates from variety to variety, and year to year. Here, we’re waiting on Cherokee Purple from some leftover 2006 seed—one’s up, there in the distance, the rest may come along soon, or not. Meanwhile, right beside, three rows of 2008 CP are up and at ’em, so we’re covered either way.
I haven’t really looked into all this—setting up more efficient storage than my current airtight-bags-and-cool-place method, whether the plastic lined packets from the big seed companies do better than the plain paper ones from many smaller seed houses, presoaking seed for some crops in a kelp solution or whatever, and so forth—because there isn’t much older seed, and most seem to do just fine. So much to try, so little time… Luckily, it always works out!
Express yourself: parsley
Three weeks old, and the parsley is already well past its seed leaf stage, where everyone pretty much looks the same, and is busy expressing its true nature. On the left, Green Pearl, a curly variety, starting to pucker and…curl. On the right, Hilmar, of the generally stronger-tasting flat-leaf type. Curly, straight, plants, people…we’re all bobbing around in the same big boat! (I’m still WAITING, holding back for a few more days before starting the next wave of seedlings… :)
Apple a day…
Biting into the barcode on an apple, dreaming of the first garden meal… This is one of the many little quiet-before-it-all-goes-crazy times that happen through the season, a few things already going, just waiting for the moment that seems right to start seeding the rest. I’ve been steadily reducing the time indoors for seedlings, and this year, with the greenhouse not yet moved and set up, and the disking of the newly plowed land being hired out—you can’t count in a scheduled date until the machine is in the field!—I have to keep in mind that there may be a bit of an extra delay, beyond the weather. So, I’ve been carefully waiting… With transplant seedlings, give or take a week or two or even three can make a lot of difference, or very little at all—weather, weather, weather!—and there’s nothing concrete to go on, just…instinct(?!)…a FEELING about when it’s right to start… :)
The great WARM outdoors!
Ahhh, yes, THIS is what warm weather feels like! For the first time this year, the temperature topped 60°F (15°C), with a hazy sun and a gentle breeze. We’ve had some melt-off days already, but this one tastes like spring! Usually, there’s a day like this sometime in February, so it’s been a long time coming, and makes me wonder how even crazier the rest of the weather will be. No worries…today feels great.
The photo is a good to-do list for when real spring comes and the ground is dry enough to work and get around on. There’s a jumble of spare lumber taken from the barn when we cleared an area for the new seedling room—it needs to be sorted and stacked, and some of it will be the new chickenhouse! (Only patches of snow are left on much of the land, but I’m sure it’ll be back before it’s really gone.) The abundantly overgrown grasses that partially surround the barn and border the moldboarded garden areas is a big clean-up job. And, up the slope, the Kubota compact tractor calmly waits for after the hired-big-tractor disking and the compost spreading, when we do the final tilling of the garden beds. Coming soon. Cool!