Whitsend Market Garden

  If you have received a flyer or read an advertisement, here is a quick pitch:

For our new post as of April 27th, scroll down...

-Purchase a share of the produce in advance.  

-12-14 harvests between mid June and late November 

-Customers in Ottawa & Perth have doorstep delivery; if you have received a flyer, you are in my delivery area

-Customers in Lanark/McDonalds Corners area pick up at the farm gate store.  A few complimentary items shall be available throughout the season to make your drive worth while

-Broad range of produce available according to season:  Beans and peas, lettuces and greens, potatoes and onions, tomatoes and peppers, carrots, rutabaga, celery, garlic... 

-Honey and pork available as additional purchase

-All farm products are grown using organic methods

-Excellent quality - I now have over 14 years experience 

-Shares cost $360.00 for the season, payable in two installments

-Half shares available for $184.00, 10-12 deliveries per season

-If crops are a little abundant, quantities are topped up at no extra charge

-If we have a particularly good growth of one or more crops, you may purchase extra amounts for putting food by (such as canning for tomatoes, storing carrots, etc.)  

Our share sales have crossed the  68 per cent mark.  If you are interested in a share of the farm produce, please call us soon.

Hello Everyone:

Spring is slowly starting to wake up the farm.  

The snowdrops are starting to poke out of the ground, and the bees are making their first forays, finding pollen from somewhere, presumably trees.  That's a promising sign for some white or at least very light gold honey.  

The chickens came out for their first afternoon walk.  At first, they spent a day or so just pecking about by the door, but as the temperature warmed, they started strolling down to the crab apple tree to peck away at fresh shoots of grass and whatever bugs are just starting to thaw out under the leaf litter.

THis photo is a couple of weeks old - the snow has all melted.  

Another sign of spring:  Onion, lettuce, celery, parsley and pepper seedlings are starting to spend days and some nights out in the harden-off shelter.  

Not soon enough, they are making space in the nursery for the tomatoes and second and third rounds of lettuce.  

I anticipate the onions being planted early next week, if not sooner.  If it is still a little cold, they can be protected with row covers.

Time for the compost to get the covers taken off so it can thaw out.  As soon as there is enough grass to mow, this windrow will get some fresh nitrogen from the grass clipping and be flipped over to allow oxygen into the pile.

Most of this compost will be for the autumn, but non-brassica leaf crops prefer to have the compost added during the year they are growing, so this windrow should be partially used by midsummer.

 wonder if any snakes will hatch here this year?  (See photo from a post about a year ago).

I was hoping to have hired someone to start work by April 15.  The grant process appears to be frozen (I assume until after the election).  To buy time, I have deployed the infrared transmitting mulch to suppress te grass growth.  

Another sign of the farm opening:  the outdoor tap is on and the water is being used.  

The first crop to be seeded is the snow peas.  

These beds have a south facing slope and so are prepared in very early April.  After the peas are sown and watered in, I use the row covers to keep the soil surface moist and retain warmth in the beds for the cooler nights.

Now out to the far end of the farm to check on the garlic.

The first up (as usual) are some of the porcelaines, particularly the Yugoslavian bulbs.  

It's always a bit of a breathtaking wait when the varieties emerge at different rates, as one wonders if the final emergence will be a typical (for us) 98-99 per cent) or something substantially less.  

All one can do at this point is wait and see.   

Too much work to do so I can't wait to watch the garlic.  Further up the field, where the soil changes from muck to sandy loam, there are the beds prepared for the first time last season.

First, the beds need to be aerated with the broad fork (as on the left bed in the photo).  

With sixteen parallel beds to do, it is most efficient to aerate all beds at once.  Why stop?  There are another eight beds up here that were not used last year and will be hosting half of the squash crop.  

With the broad forking finished, some amendments are applied to these beds.  All of these had compost applied last fall, as well as slightly decayed autumn leaves to add some organic matter to this relatively thin soil.  

I add some ash (a natural source of potassium and some micro-nutrients).  While checking my field seeds last week, I located a small amount of forgotten rock phosphate, just enough for two beds.  Two of these new beds are going to have peppers (hot pepper and jalapeno, as well as some green peppers), and the phosphate will do them well.

Eight of these beds are going to have carrots, they will be following the late season potatoes from last year.  As potatoes are good at scrounging nutrients, I'll give the carrot beds an additional nutrient boost with a cover crop of a few field peas (The carrots  want some nitrogen but not too much to give them small roots and lots of leaves), buckwheat (a phosphorus concentrator and weed suppressor) and oats (extra organic matter).  

These are broadcast onto the soil and then raked in.  A row cover protects the seeds from the crows and starlings.

To be continued...