Monthly Archives: May 2010

The greens at the new garden are about ready for picking

These days, we’re pushing to get crops planted.  Now that the cooler weather seems to be passing, we dodge the rainy days and get as many seedlings transplanted into the ground as possible.

That holds true for the home gardens as well as the farm.  Once we pass that “frost-free” date of May 15, a mad rush ensues as we release seedlings from their plastic prisons and give them room and water and sunshine and fresh air so they can stretch up as well as sink into the ground.

Tomato seedlings from my seeds and from Jen's father-in-law

I spent a couple of hours at the new garden this weekend in order to get caught up on planting.  A couple flats of seedlings had been lingering on my doorstep, getting hardened off, and it was definitely time to move them into the plot assigned to them.  The tomatoes took up one entire plot, between the Rutgers and Amish Paste seedlings I had brought and the variety of heirloom seedlings contributed by Jen’s father-in-law. (Jen also tucked the small basil starts in between the bigger tomatoes.)

Covering the new onion starts with grass mulch

I planted the small onions — Red Cipollini and Clear Dawn — that I had started earlier this year.  Tucked in between rows of broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbage, they settled in under a light blanket of grass mulch.  Here’s hoping they prosper.

Hoe, hoe, hoe: mounding the dirt around the potato plants

While Jen weeded other areas of the garden, I hilled the potatoes, just as Dave had shown me at the farm.  Knowing that those have grown so quickly gives me a sense of hope for this plot this year — these six rows should provide a good crop.

Extending the garden to make room for my staples

I also extended the garden plan into the back section, which was not as well tilled.  This area, designated for my grain and bean and seed crops, has already seen an invasion of weeds as well as alternated between mud and caked soil.  I’m not as thoroughly optmistic about this section, but it won’t stop me from trying.  At the opposite end from the oats I planted a couple of dry bean varieties (Jacob’s cattle and Soldier), a winter squash, millet, and flax — still to come are flint corn, more dry beans, sorghum, and buckwheat.

Radishes, turnips, and more are coming along nicely

In the meantime, older crops continue to grow and start to flourish.  The greens, shown at top, are ruffling out their little leaves more each week, and the root crops may need thinning fairly soon.

Everything needs to be mulched, of course, which we will work on as we are able — depending on weather and how much grass gets scooped up.  Jen has already developed a morning habit of heading out to visit the garden and do a little work for a while, though I still need to work in more regular visits.

Planting will continue, especially over the next couple of weeks.  We have loads of seedlings still to plant at the farm, and given my big box of seeds at home, I’m sure I can keep going in the gardens.  And now that the gardens are greening up with fresh produce coming in, the joy of homegrown food really begins.

First big harvest from the 2010 gardens

Thanks to an early start — both in seeding and transplanting — I’ve just harvested the first crops of the year in mid-May.

Last year's chard, back for a second round

I spent Sunday afternoon at garden #2 in town, clearing out weeds and preparing for more planting.  Some of what I cleaned out, however, came from last year’s crop.  What you see here is the golden chard I planted last season and left to overwinter in place.  It bounced back to the point that I was able to fill a gallon storage bag with the leaves as I picked on Sunday — not a bad deal.  It wanted very much to set seeds and carry on further (as did some of the pac choi plants I found), but I had other plans for the space.

Before all the hard work began...

The lower bed looked completely overgrown when I first eyed it: two-year-old green onions gone to flower, enormous weeds (also flowering), a scattering of pac choi on the rebound from last year, leafy radishes, and the start of this year’s cilantro crop.  Cleaning up here took more time since I needed to sort out what went to the compost pile, what went into bags to take home, and what could stay in place.

The same lower bed, now ready for this year's growing season

But what a difference!  After cleaning up, I was able to plant four Rutgers tomato seedlings and a Peacevine cherry tomato, along with rows of bush beans, peas, and spinach.

Potatoes, garlic, and herbs coming right along in the upper bed

The upper bed didn’t require too much cleanup, though I did need to hill up the potatoes.  I planted more greens — lettuce and chard — along with radishes, cantaloupe, zucchini, and nasturtiums, a surprising favorite with my young nephews. At the end of three hours of absorbing work in the warm sunshine, I headed home with plenty of chard, pac choi, stinging nettles, cilantro, dill, and onions to add to my meals for the week.  What a treat! We’ve been harvesting at the farm lately, too, in time for Dave’s first farmers’ market of the season.  His early offerings included radishes, kale, lettuce, and pac choi, and he reported that he sold out of everything on Saturday.  A good start to the year! Unfortunately, the wet weather has encouraged the proliferation of slugs and snails in the pac choi beds, and at the beginning of this week, he resignedly told me to rip it all out.  The slugs had turned many of the leaves into green lace, and the crop was no longer market-worthy.

A few holes, but still good!

Sadly, I complied, but I managed to peel off layers and layers of tattered leaves and salvage six bins worth of greenery that could still be eaten, if not sold at market.  Dave sent me home with two bins’ worth, a bounty I’ve been turning into dried and frozen pac choi for winter eating as well as into meals for this week.  The rest will be for his family’s eating, and the scraps got tossed into the chicken pen.  (They’ve already increased their laying in thanks!) In its stead, I’ve been transplanting radish, beet, lettuce, kale, and more pac choi seedlings for the next round of harvests.  And around the new pac choi, I’ve sprinkled crushed eggshells (with Dave’s blessing) in the hopes that that will discourage the slugs from feasting on this crop. So here begins the harvest season, with an early bounty and early difficulties.  May the coming harvests be sweeter and less problematic!

Springtime = mudtime

Springtime, personified, is a fickle lass. One day, she’ll appear in the guise of warm sunshine, bedecked with lush greenery and fragrant flowers.  The next, she’ll swirl in on stormy grey clouds, lashing her chilly cloak around her and casting cascades of rain down on the fields.

The latter vision of Spring visited us last week and lingered for a couple of days.  Though on Monday I was able to plant more potatoes and enjoy some sunshine (if also cool breezes), by Tuesday I was sequestered in the greenhouse to water, weed, and sow more flats of seedlings — and listening to the wind ruffle the plastic shell of the structure and the rain pelt against it from all sides.

By Wednesday, Dave called me to say I needn’t bother heading to the farm for work since it was far too muddy to plant onions or anything else.

This is what happens come spring.  No matter what we think we need to do, no matter what the calendar dictates we should do in the fields, the weather has the final say.  Sometimes we can push the boundaries a little, but after storms and abundant rainfall, there’s no point in mucking through the fields only to compact the soil and to plant seedlings that are liable to have decreased yield due to the cool and soggy conditions.

And so on Wednesday, I stayed home, poured myself an extra cup of coffee, and devoted the day to extra baking — something I welcomed as I was facing a longer list of market baking in preparation for the Grand Opening at Local Roots.

Eventually, the warmth and sunshine returned by week’s end, and since I’ve been neglecting my own vegetable patches lately, I decided to spend some time there, planting out the next round of seedlings and seeds.

On Friday afternoon, I headed out to Jen’s place for the next round of planting.  We agreed that by waiting until then, the sun would give the soil a chance to dry out a little bit, though it would still be comparatively easy for weeding.  I gathered up three flats of seedlings — mainly brassicas and herbs, with a few flowers and a four-pack of celery thrown in — and joined her in the damp vegetable patch to work for a couple of hours.

Small, but here's hoping these cabbages will turn out mighty

As we worked through one bed in particular, I discovered that though the soil was still moist and easy to clump together, Jen’s weeding had loosened it enough for me to transplant seedlings easily.  I laid in rows of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage before filling the rest of the bed with herbs such as cumin, chamomile, hyssop, and garlic chives as well as echinacea and shasta daisies.

The oats are growing, despite the mud

While there, I inspected the previously planted plots and was pleased to find that the oats I had sown (not wild, of course) had grown to approximately 4″ in height, despite the more muddy conditions in their corner of the garden.  Though that texture of soil is hardly ideal, my books on grain-growing indicate that oats tend to need more moisture than other grains, and clay soil, while not the best, is not a significant detriment to their growth.

The potatoes have started to erupt from the soil surface, though they’re not yet ready for hilling, and most of the roots and greens crops have germinated as well.  The rain may have made it difficult to plant anything earlier this week, but it certainly benefited what was already in place.

If anything, the combination of farming and weather is teaching me a great deal about patience and acceptance this year.  There’s not a thing I can do about the weather, which means that some days there’s not a thing I can do about the farming.  And as much as I’ve wanted to have plenty of control over my actions and my life in the past, I’m learning that not being in control can be rather freeing.  Can’t work today due to mud?  Well, OK, I won’t earn money today but maybe I can do something else.  Just… move on.

As of today, rain is in the forecast for the next three days — the three days I’m scheduled to work at the farm this week.  What that will mean for my work this week, I don’t yet know.  But for today at least, the sun is still shining, so I’m planning to work in another of my gardens this afternoon and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

Just one of many sacks of potatoes to be planted this year

Life on the farm has started to settle into a rhythm of late.  When I rumble down the gravel drive and park my now-dusty red pickup, I sign in and generally head to the greenhouse to water the flats of seedlings.  If it hasn’t rained recently, I’ll follow that up with watering fields #3 and #5, where the bulk of the early vegetables are planted.

After that, I’m likely to follow Dave and the tractor hauling bags of potatoes out to the field, girding my loins — or, rather, my knees — for extended sessions of planting.

More than a fingerling -- it's a whole handful of potato!

Dave has planted many,  many pounds of potato seed each year, with ever-increasing yields on the many varieties he takes to market.  He is rightfully proud of his success in growing spuds, and he likes to remind me — with a smile that I find myself returning — that these potatoes pay my wages.

As far as I’m concerned, the bruised shins, aching knees and back, and increasing layers of sunburn are a small price to pay for doing work that on the surface is repetitive and dull — but that actually offers me an extended lesson on reading the soil, the weather, the water situation, and much more.  Because when I’m on my hands and knees, clawing holes in the dirt with my gloved hand, I’m noticing the varying degrees of tilth in the plots, seeing what weeds persistently pop up, chasing earthworms back into the cooler depths, and even occasionally looking up and seeing the beauty of the day.

Sure, when I stand up, my knees are wobbly and my head a little woozy, but though my back aches at the end of the day, I do feel as though I’ve completed a satisfying round of very important and invigorating work.  (I can even say this knowing that I’ll be doing more this week — we’re only about 2/3 through the 1200+ lbs of potato seed.)

New garden, layered with compost and marked out for specific crop beds

So perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that after a week of planting potatoes, I would spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon off helping my friend Jen get our garden started — with more potatoes.

My friend Keith and I had dropped off a truckload of compost for Jen to spread across the tilled plot on the Friday before, and she marked out the beds as we had plotted them on paper.  I showed up on a windy, grey afternoon, with seeds in hand, ready to help her get started on this year’s experiment.

Marking the next row for planting

I had found Dave’s row-marking technique — two metal stakes linked with a hefty length of rope — to be so effective that I made my own row-marker to use on this garden.  And as Jen pulled weeds, I marked rows and planted potatoes.

New potato bed, planted

It didn’t take long to plant three rows of Purple Viking potatoes and three rows of Red Gold — nearly the rest of what I had bought for the year.  And after that, we moved on to plant roots (carrots, radishes, turnips, salsify, rutabaga) and greens (lettuce, pac choi, broccoli raab), as well as a patch of hull-less oats for me.

The new garden, all laid out (with the back plot reseeded for grass this year)

After about two and a half hours of work, we had made a good start on this year’s garden — plus had a good visit while we worked (one of the joys of gardening with others) and sat down for an icy cold drink afterward.

There’s more work to do — there always is — both in this new garden and at the farm, including planting more potatoes.  But it’s good to celebrate these small details along the way.