Contender number one, on the left weighing in at a couple of ounces is Green Wave, a stout mustard green with hints of wasabi, and in the middle, weighing in at the same but soon fattened with water, Pac Choi, a delicious asian dish addition, and contender number 3, weighing in at 1/3 of the others but 3x as delicious is the italian favor to win, Broccoli Rabb also known as rappini, great coupled with garlic
A few weeks ago the hoophouse looked a bit barren.
But I put some seeds in....and waited, and waited, and then...
They are still very tiny but soon they will be our salad/braising greens. YUM!
We planted a bed of lettuce the other day, along with 2 beds of broccoli, 1.5 of cabbage and a half of that all time favorite kohlrabi! We also have in now some fennel, chard, broccoli rabb, and pac choi.
Measuring the beds...
A little planning goes a long way...especially for lettuce!
One by one the little plants go in so they can spread their roots out...
Its a precision job, a bit like rocket science!
Well we have our first helper for the season. His name is Jared and he is from the chilly north of New York. We got set to work moving the tomatoes to their nicer diggs. This is a first move for them in a series to larger and larger pots until they are ready for the field or for sale.
Look at this Go-Getter
This is only a fraction of the 900!
A forest of Stupice
It takes a tender touch.
The greenhouse is full.
The tomato transplant factory.
The Redwood of the Tomatoes. It's about 2" tall.
I went to say "Hello and good morning" to the transplants and I had a present. The trap I had set finally caught the little rat that was eating the pepper plants. It chewed down about 100 of the sweet peppers while they were only a 1/2" high. It didnt go for the hot peppers. I will spare you the gruesome image by not posting a photo. I just hope I can get some more going for the season so we can enjoy them grilled with the eggplant and some steak. They are by far the toughest tropical plants to grow in this cool moist climate.
UPDATE: 4 total have been caught. We lost 3 flats of peppers in all. Thats over 200 plants. I wonder why they like the peppers so much?
Posted in
Pests,
Transplants
The kids from UW showed up the last weekend of February to learn a bit about farming and to get dirty...
They got a tour of the dairy and the farm in general.
Then we put them to work, to find out what its really like to be farmers. There was an overwintered pile of cow rear-end fixin's that needed to be moved into a window to compost.
Yes, that is steam coming from the already cooking pile that has been growing for months
And then the bottom of the pile, Oh how sweet it was!
And a few of them took the fun job of sifting finished compost so that we can use it in the soil flats to get a head start on the season in the greenhouse.
Thanks to everyone for helping out and learning what our farm is all about!
Posted in
work crew
They are only a month old but they grow up so fast!
These may not look huge now but if you would have seen them when they first poked their heads out of the soil. And just give them another month of sunshine, warmth, and room and they will be out of this world.
This is them in the small...
Posted in
Transplants
It got kind of frosty last night but the little ones were safe in their cold frames getting ready to move out the garden.
Well I poked under the row covers that were protecting the peas from marauding crows and lo and behold the marauding mice had been for a visit. It appears that the row covers mad a great protective run from the farm cats to have their way with the little pea sprouts. Its nice to know that we have help to feed another generation of furry creatures for the cats to hopefully feast on in the summer! We will have to wait a few days and see how bad the damage is. I think another sowing will be in order so we can all have those sweet natural juicy morsels of green candy!
Well, it looks like tractor season is over. On the last day of the wonderful dry spell we had through most of February I was fortunate enough to hook up the Rotovator to the tractor and get most of the fields tilled up at bit. The Rotovator by the way is a 72" rototiller that runs off the power of the tractor. It is much faster than a little Troybilt walk behind tiller.
Although portions of the fields were just to darn soggy to get the heavy tractor into and I almost got stuck a few times. They will get a tilling later when it dries out again.
I left my camera at another farm and henceforth there are no photos of the setup or the tilled fields. Trust me though, its a beautiful sight to behold.
