Moved the first wave of tender seedlings—100 tomatoes, plus eggplant and sweet peppers—to the greenhouse yesterday, with zero (32°F) predicted for the overnight. There’s just no more waiting, with all of the light space in the Milkhouse…taken. It’s a long way from the ambitious barely-heated greenhouse plan of February, but there’s row cover, and the new KeroWorld heater is ready for action (it’s the white box in the middle)… That’s how some plans go when you’re dealing with the WEATHER. Elsewhere in the hoophouse, I’ve let the early lettuce and mesclun blend with volunteer lettuce and arugula from last year’s early stuff going to seed. It’s unruly, tasty, and growing fast. I don’t know how much of it will make it to the farmers’ market: since there’s too much to do around here, I’m not aiming to go extra early this year (yesterday was the first market day), but one way or another, the greenhouse greens will get eaten!
Mike,
Do you have any pictures from the first market? What did you have ready to bring? My first market is next Saturday and I am not ready. The lettuces were planted outside first week of April and are only 2″ high. Everything has been just sort of “sitting”. We finally got major rain yesterday and today. Maybe with some sun they will take off.
Julie
tomorrow is our first market day……we have about 75 bundles of green onions, 50 radish bundles, arugula bundles, bags of spinach and bags of salad mix…some heads of oakleaf lettuce……we put storage red and yukon potatoes in 3l baskets, we picked a bunch of wild garlic……we have some of my perserves and our honey as well as potted herbs and lettuce transplants.
i am very excited about the first day ……starts the ball rounding
Julie: Here’s a pic of first market day 2006, just lettuce. This year, I’m going to start next Saturday (May 17), which is our third market day. I won’t have much, going this early for what’s growing here is a stretch, the first field-planted crops are usually mesclun and radishes, I wouldn’t go in with just radishes, and mesclun has never been ready before the very end of May. So I’ll take what I can from the greenhouse, maybe 15-20 bags of mesclun, plus arugula, chives, Jerusalem artichoke…10-20 units of each.
Cathy: That sounds great! Clearly, we’re a lot tinier than you are! :)