A few more updates from May 5th:
The bulbs were sown last November, and covered over with spelt straw to keep them from freezing through the winter.
Many gardeners leave the straw on until harvest, and allow the garlic to grow through it. For a couple of reasons, I take much of it off and re-use it elsewhere.
More to follow...
Back in the indoor nursery, the delicata (winter) squashes are also germinating.The Butterscotch squash is due to be sown in about three weeks. I have staggered the planting between the two in hopes of getting the delicata to flower and produce fruit first, so that the seed is not cross pollinated with our other variety, Butterscotch.
I have cleared some spare (unlit) shelves in the indoor nursery to make way for some plants from outside.With a couple of cool nights on the way, I will have to bring in some plants such as tomato seedlings fro the unheated outdoor nursery.
At this time of year, there is very little nursery space.
The outdoor nursery is doing just fine, even with a predicted plus 6 tonight.The temperature should remain about 10 degrees in there, not the best growing temperature but well within the plants tolerance level.
A few crops such as celery are intolerant to temperatures below 15 degrees, so even though they are more mature than the tomatoes and peppers, they remain within the indoor nursery.
Hello everyone:
Before getting onto the post, I have a couple of announcements:
I will be closing sales soon. If you are interested in purchasing a share of the harvest, please contact me very soon.
If you have been in contact with me but are waiting to determine what your plans are for the summer, I can hold your place until a later date.
I will be sending out our first e-blast of the season within the next 48 hours. If you do not see it, check your spam box. If it is there, adjust your email settings accordingly.
If you do not have it at all, please contact me and I will check to see if I have you on this year's list.
!!! VERY IMPORTANT !!!
When communicating with me by email either for requests, notification of absences, sending in recipes, etc, PLEASE use a separate email with a specific heading (eg "absent for next delivery").
If you add your email to a chain of emails, it is possible I may not see it. I want to spend my farm time doing farm work as much as possible - growing and tending your food and improving the farm and my farm skills as much as possible.
And now for the post for April 28:
It's been a very, very busy week here at Whitsend. Monday to Kingston for a chainsaw safety certification course, Tuesday fieldwork until 4 pm and then off to Ferguson Falls for a National Farmers Union meeting, Wednesday out in the field all day and then raking the lawn after supper (A silly task, but while living off farm, I have to maintain the 'suburban standard' method of yard treatment), lot's of shopping and computer chores for Thursday, in the field all day Friday except a quick jaunt over to Farm Credit Canada Corp. to drop off an application package, and then off to Julia's birthday party Friday night.
And sowing more seeds...And doing some engine maintenance on the tiller...
And repairing a leak in the outdoor nursery...
And electric fence maintenance...still unresolved, can't figure out where the short is occurring...
And sowing more seeds and promoting the ones I sowed last week...
And closing a sale...
This is what you pay me for.
Field work will continue Monday, the beds are getting cleaned up and prepared for the first direct sowing of peas and spinach and carrots...
Jen from Sysabee and I have trading documents all week, trying to figure out why her version was not functioning on my computer. Now that that is fixed, I have started tweaking the request page.
Time is running short, so I will be distributing this very soon. (one last test to run to make sure the glitch we had doesn't translate onto other customers computers).
Customers will receive a page detailing the season's crops they can expect in their baskets, and some options they have for choosing crops.
Please fill this out as much as you want to (there are three questions that must be entered - name, basket size, and a box to tick indicating you have read the document. Even if you are ok with whatever you receive - many of you are - please send it to me anyway, I will be using the printed out version to track what you are receiving throughout the year.
After we have this system up and running, attention will turn to developing an online tool to accomplish this request system. I expect this will take the better part of the year. The goal is to try this out a couple of times during the season, and then have it up and running for next year.
This is new territory for me, so I have no idea how long it may take.
The past week I have been putting some of the hardier plants (onions, leeks, parsley) in the outdoor nursery for the day and then bringing them in for the night. They get better light here than under the grow lights, and besides, the space under the lights is limited, and with so many other plants coming along, there just isn't enough room.
A couple nights back, I forgot to bring the onions in at the end of the day, and was greeted the next morning with some very sad onions - they were all limp and laying down. The min/max thermometer indicated that the low reached plus one inside the outdoor nursery.
As onions have such a long lead time and must be planted within a certain window of time in order to bulb, I set about my scheduled tasks for the day wondering if that was it for the onions and leeks. Green onions and parsley could be re-planted, but that would put a lot of pressure on the nursery with the squashes set to be planted soon. I kept telling myself of the resilience of young plants and all of the fail safes I had in place for moderating the temperature change......three days later and almost all of the onions have stood back up and continued their leaf growing. I lost a few (less than 2 per cent) and assume these ones were probably weaker in some way than the others, and may not have performed as well during the season anyway. Not everyone makes the team, as I sometimes say.
I mentioned in our last or second last post that the hotwax peppers (sometimes referred to as the "somewhat hot" peppers) had failed to sprout a week after the green peppers. I checked the package and found that the seeds were three years old. I double checked my notes from previous years and found that three year old pepper seeds usually had a slightly lower germination rate, but certainly not zero per cent. I recalled one of my mentors (Dick, I think) suggesting that field seed sometimes germinated slowly if it was old. So I continued to tend the seedling tray and finally I have been rewarded.Almost all of them emerged throughout the week, and I now have a decent compliment of mildly hot peppers to compliment our green peppers and super hot peppers.
Had I been less experienced, or not blessed with good mentors, or impatient, I might have given up!
The beds are finally dry enough to do a lot of work on.Having permanent beds with grassed paths provide an advantage that they are ready for planting sooner than a bare field. The grass turf can be trod upon much earlier than a soil path, which would get gouged up with deep footprints were I to be walking on it the day after a heavy rainfall.
For comparison, here is part of the new field. The grass seed was sown late last fall and has yet to sprout. The established beds pictured above are about the same elevation as the beds pictured to the right - you can see how saturated the soil is where the water is pooling along the fence.Having permanent beds has many benefits; one of which is that they are ready to go as soon as they are thawed out.
(I have a couple of posts from the years 2012 to 2014 that go into this in more detail.)
Old weeds that survived the winter and some quack grass rhizomes that were missed last fall teased out of the soil.
Aerating beds to stimulate aerobic bacteria, which in turn work on turning simple nutrients into complex molecules that the plants can use.
Cultivating beds to disturb any fresh weeds that may be trying to sprout, and breaks up clods of soil so there is more surface area exposed to the air.
Saw our first toad of the season while doing this work.
The list of tasks is seemingly endless. It is exhilarating work, with a little foreboding on the horizon - what if I can't get it all done in time? As I prepare the beds, I try not to think of the plants back in the nursery. Once I sow seeds there, the clock is ticking. Five weeks after sowing lettuce, the bed in the field has to be ready to receive them; four weeks for kale and pak choi. And the sowing date for the squashes is soon upon me...
I made a mistake in the nursery last week while sowing the tomatoes. I had been counting pepper sprouts to see if I had enough plus a few for my projected needs.
I then started sowing tomatoes, but I suppose my mind was still thinking peppers (12 plants per row, two rows per bed).
I was happily sowing tomato seeds at a rate of 12 plants per bed (only one row for toms) and didn't think much of it while marking off the number of seeds used in my production binder.
I realize many of you city folk may not know the difference between a pepper plant and a tomato plant, but there is a significant difference in size.
I planted twice as many tomatoes as needed.
So, I will have lots of plants to choose from (I'll take the healthiest and most vigorous growers); and then sell off as many of the sprouts as I can. Customers can have a couple if they want to try their hand at growing these too.
I'm sure my mentors might be appalled at this waste of seed, but this is the sort of mistake I don't mind...far better too many than too little. If this is all I have to fret over, then I must be in fairly good shape.
Bob