Seeded radishes (French Breakfast) and turnips (Hakurei) today.  After a lot of rain last week, I didn’t think it would be dry enough to till, but we tried and it worked pretty well.

We also (finally) prepped the remaining onion beds as well as the pea beds, so we can at last transplant the remaining onions and direct seed the peas.  Those beds didn’t get prepped before the rain came, so we were worried it would be a while before we could plant.

Forecast is for more rain over the next few days, so more bed prep is probably a ways off.  At least we can transplant in the rain if necessary.

Our clay soil bakes up hard as concrete when a heavy rain is followed by lots of sunshine and wind.  That’s what is happening in the first direct-seeded beds of beets, carrots, chard, and spinach.  The carrot beds are the most worrisome, because the weak little carrot seedlings can’t punch through the crust.

We’ll attempt to minimize their struggles by laying drip tape directly over the rows and letting the water soften things up a bit.  It seems counter-intuitive to be irrigating after 2″ inches of rain, but this was the only solution we could think of.  Good luck little carrots!

Today we took the kids out to the farm to transplant the first lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson, Forellenschluss, Merlot, Green Deer Tongue), broccoli (Fiesta and Green King), and some kohlrabi (Kolribi).  The ground was completely saturated after yesterday’s heavy rain, but we learned a couple of years ago that you can tuck seedlings into mud and they’ll usually do ok.

We also learned yesterday that, if the kids wander away from the work, and then things are really quiet, it means they’ve gone behind the barn to have a mud ball fight!

Potted up close to 400 tomato plants: Cherokee Purple, Pink Brandywine, Aunt Ruby, Early Girl, and Shady Lady (courtesy of Pachamama Farm).  Chris helped fill the trays.

Did the first direct-seeding today: beets (Early Wonder), carrot (Nelson), chard (Rainbow), and spinach (Bloomsdale).  The picture above shows the field after it was disked, chiseled, rototilled a couple of times, and then marked with the tractor.

The potato and onion planting day was a success.  A big thank you to everyone who made it out.  We had something like 18 adults and 20 kids, which made the work go a whole lot faster than we thought it would!  After the planting was finished, the kids dug the last of the over-wintered carrots.

Here are some pics:

We set the potatoes out in the basement a couple of weeks ago to get them started sprouting.  In the picture above, you can see the little green buds.  Moderate light and warmish temps make for sturdy sprouts.  This gives them a head-start so that it takes less time for them to emerge after planting.  In all, 40 pounds: Carola, German Butterball, Yukon Gold.

If the weather allows us to prep the ground here in the next two days, we’ll plant this weekend.

Two kinds of broccoli: Fiesta and Green King, 65 of each.  Seeded into 1 1/2″ soil blocks because they love the compost.

Four kinds: Black Seeded Simpson, Forellenschluss, Galactic, Green Deer Tongue, 50 of each.

Moved 8 trays of onions and leeks outside to the cold frame to get them ready for transplanting next week.