Last fall we experimented with using low tunnels to protect September-planted spinach. The photo above shows what the tunnel looked like in December. Well, we just today took the cover off, and here’s what emerged:
If you can ignore the fall leaves that blew into the beds, you’ll see some nice healthy spinach…
Yummy!
Guess we’ll have to delay some of our plans for a few days until this snow clears away and things dry out. Again. We started prepping some of the field last week, but didn’t get everything finished before the weather turned. It’s not all bad, though. I injured my shoulder while installing the irrigation pipe, and this weather gives it some time to heal before I can get outside again.
Meanwhile, we continue starting things inside under lights. Today: kohlrabi, lettuce, and more broccoli to replace the poorly-germinated previous round.
Finally, after three years, I’ve accepted the fact that the season really gets underway not with the planting of seeds, but rather with the digging of trenches and the laying of pipe. Yes, once again, we’re laying out irrigation. Last year we irrigated with a combination of overhead sprinkler and drip. This year we’ll do the same, but as crops rotate through the fields, so must the two different types of irrigation.
Last year we planted some seed before we had the irrigation all set up. Luckily, nature gave us enough moisture in the way of rain to get the seeds germinated and up. But we might not be so lucky this year. So we’re working hard to get everything planned, layed out, and working before the seeds go in the ground. Which will be in two short weeks.
As you can see from the picture above, we have quite a bit of pipe buried. After this recent round of snow clears, we’ll get the laterals hooked up, and connect everything to a set of filters and pressure regulators, and finally to a manifold with electronic valves controlled by a programmable timer. For the most part, the irrigation cycles will be controlled automatically by the timer. But we will have to keep tabs on it to ensure we’re not over- or under-watering.
About every 4 weeks, we try to give the onions and leeks a trim, cutting them back to about 4”. The theory is that this encourages them to develop thicker, stouter stems. That may be, but for us, it’s really more about making them fit under the lights! At 6 weeks, we waited longer than we should have for these plants. They’ve been brushing the lights for a week now. But after their haircut, they look (and fit) much better.
After a long winter wait, we’ve finally begun seeding in earnest. While the outside planting is still a couple of weeks away, the inside seedling room is starting to fill. Here’s what’s growing to date.
Inside:
11 trays of onions (Walla Walla, Newburg, Copra, Southport Red, Dakota Tears, Ailsa Craig)
7 trays of leeks (American, Lincoln, King Richard)
4 trays of broccoli (Fiesta, Green King)
Outside:
The garlic and shallots we planted last fall (thanks to Stonebridge Farm!) are poking up (Red, Stonebridge Softneck, German Hardy, and Stonebridge shallots)
Over-wintered spinach (Tyee) under row-cover is growing again and is pickable.
Looking ahead:
Planting will pick up over the next 4 weeks, with the bulk happening the last week March/first week April. During that period we’ll direct-seed outside carrots, beets, peas, potatoes, radishes, salad mix, swiss chard, and turnips.
Inside, we’ll start some more brassicas (bok choi, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi), as well as the summer crops like beans, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins, squash, and tomatoes.
While there’s not a lot of outside farming going on over the winter months, for us there’s quite a bit of paper (or computer spreadsheet) farming. We use these months to formulate our production plan, including:
We tend to buy our seeds from three primary sources: FedCo Seeds and Johnny’s in Maine, and High Mowing Seeds in Vermont. All three have good selections of organic varieties.
We also use this time to get our infrastructure ready, including:
