Hello Everyone!

Effortless observation.

If only watching the farm were this easy.

Cayley was too tired from her trip to the vet yesterday to know that she is in good health for a 17 year old.  

There is plenty to see.  The crocus' Julia planted last fall are starting to appear.  A few snowdrops  came up.  These are great early season flowers for our bees and other pollinators.  

Plants like this help tide the bees over until the dandelions come out.  Dandelions are an essential source of food for bees as they are among the first wildflowers to appear in large quantities, right when the hive is hatching its new generation of worker bees.

Your food is also starting to to emerge.  

Here are the first garlics.  The emergence rate appears to be about 98-99 per cent, typical for us.

Not as much green garlic for this season, though more than enough scapes to make up for that.

The priority task right now is to clean up beds that provided food late fall, and could not be cleaned as the ground was frozen.  

Grass starts growing at 1 degree celcius, and the longer it grows, the more time clean up takes.  It is essential to get ahead of it early, otherwise it slows down progress for the entire season.

Tilling is not an option with bluegrass or quackgrass, as the tines chop up the rhizomes and propogates the grass that much quicker.

From last autumns kale bed to ready for early summer green beans.

The old kale stems will be burried tohelp break down and add additonal organic matter to the soil.  Any stems that are still not broken down by planting time will be tossed into the compost.

If I am cleaning up one bed, 59 others are sprouting their first weeds.  To help stay ahead, I use a bit of plastic mulch to suppress some of that growth.  

Once the messiest beds are cleaned, I start cleaning the beds I intend to plant early spring.  

Beds that will not be used until mid summer for the late atumn crops will recieve a cover of peas and or buckwheat to suppress weeds and feed the soil.

The pulled rhizomes would continue to grow and sprout blugrass and quack grass if I were to put it in the compost, so these are diverted to the laneway to fill in wheel ruts.  

Here's one reason to reduce tilling:   At first I thought the wheel hoe had turned up a bright piece of legacy plastic, but when I picked it up and turned it over, I found it was a turtle.  The shell of Painted Turtles are brightly colored.  

At first I thought it was dead, but after a moment, it poked it's head out and started crawling around.  

Which means there is some egg laying going on at the back of one of our vegetable beds.

There will not be any turtles in this years delivery, even if they emerge along with the spinach planned for that bed.

Hello Everyone:

Plenty of change in the past couple of weeks.  Most ofthe snow has dissappeared and I've been doing some mnor work touching up the fence and clearing the sumac and poplar seedlings that have grown up around the perimeter.  

And cleaning upthe fallen branches fromthe ice stormlast week.  Aside from a large limb fallen off the willow and a snapped white pine in our yard, not too much damage to report on from that.  

Cayley is all to pleased that the ground is warm enough to walk on and starting to explore her yard again.

The field is all but clear of snow except for the more shaded corners.  As of yesterday, the soil was thawed to about 6 inch depth, though still too wet to work.

Still too early to see how the garlic bulbs fared under ther blanket of straw.  

In the next couple of days, I'll be gingerley lifting the straw from the ground and giving the garlic beds a little warmth and sunshine for a few hours.  

This will also help dry off some excess moisture,asthe area the garlic s planted in this year is a bit wetter than other parts of the field.

All of the food related work is still confined to the nursery.

Here I am inspecting a seed tray of different pepper varieties.  A few late seedlings are ready to "promote".  

I start the seeds in trays to save space.  As the seeds germinate, the seedlings are promoted to cellpacks (for smaller seedlngs like lettuce or chard), or pots for larger plants (such as peppers or squash).

The onluy tools are a small seed lifting tool and a delicate touch, to prevent damage to the plant.

Not all seeds germinate - if I were to plant a seed in each one of these pots, some would inevitably remain empty, taking up space under the grow lights and over the propagation mats.

A tiny hole is dibbled in the soil, the plant is inserted and the soil tamped gently around the roots.

I use a stronger soil mix in the cell packs and pots as well.  The seed starting substrate is very light and water absorbant, to ensure the seed is in a uniformly moist environment.

The soil the seedlings are promoted into is fortified with a light compost to provide nutrient for the plant as it grows larger and starts to differentiate it's leaves.

The earliest round of peppers have already started to produce ther secondary leaves.  

I've been doing this procedure with the green and bulb onions, celery, and celeriac; as well as a few  parsley, amaranth flowers, lemon balm, and catnip.  Julia included some violas, nicotiana, cardoons and carnations for the bees.  These last flowering plants will augment the wildflowers, trees, and bulbs that will go into the making of this years honey.

Lots to look forward to!

Talk to you soon...

April 2nd:

Hello Everyone.  

This is the thickest snow pack we have had for this date since arriving in Lanark.

Good for re-charging the ground water table.  

The hope is that the melt will be gradual, so that as much water as possible has time to seep into the soil as the ground thaws.  A rapid melt would send water toward the road and away down the ditch.

The bees know it's spring.  Despite the snow cover, there is a lot of activity around the hives as the temperature rises above zero.  

They don't show up well in this picture - the little spots are individual bees flying about.  While some clean debris such as dead bees, others are scouting for food sources and generally checking out the vicinity.  

These are older bees that hatched late summer.  The queen will be starting to lay new eggs around now.

The nursery is getting crowded.  Hundreds of onions are doing ther best to stay alive.  The challenge for me is to keep their soil from drying out as their roots are still fairly small.  However, leaving the soil too wet casues fungal infections (damping off) which young plants are susceptible to.

I plant a a lot more at this time of year than are required for harvest to make up for dampig off losses - there  are always a few per tray.  

Onions depend on day length to cue the development of bulbs.  Transplant too early or late, and the plants will not bulb or will produce small bulbs.  The seedlings require between 8 and 12 weeks of growth before transplanting.  So after about this week, it will be too late to sow any more.  Therefore, I have to get all of the seedlings I need for the year now - there is no second chance to plant some more.

 

Your peppers have arrived.    Most of them, as the hot pepper seeds failed to produce a single plant.  

The cayenne seeds were three years old so I planted all that I had - over 50 - expecting at least the 5 or 6  I require to germinate.  

At least this crop is fairly quick growing and though the first round might be a week or two late, there is still plenty of time to start over.

The other varieties are germinating well, especially one of the new varieties I am trying this season.  Milena is a green to orange sweet bell pepper.   The seed house advertised the seed as pricey but of high quality.  I'm usually skeptical about such claims but one can't argue with it after a 100 per cent germination rate.  

Picnic peppers (pictured above) are another new type I am trying.  Picnics are smaller and more elongated that bell peppers, and reputed to have a sweeter flavour than bell peppers.  These are a variety called yellow picnic - ready as green peppers after 60 days but turn a brilliant yellow at about 84 days.  It was bred by one of the seed houses I purchase from, High Mowing seeds.  For those of you into seed saving (or want to try) this variety is open pollinated.  

I am looking forward to trying these to see if they really do taste better than bells.

I've used the phrase "promoting" seedlings a few times, so I should go into some detail for those of you who are unfamiliar with farming jargon.  

I sow the seeds in trays to save sace.  The seeds have germinated and start grwoing,