Full Steam Ahead

As soon as we start our first seeds in the greenhouse, a switch from a relaxing winter off season to a busier then busy season seems to happen overnight. We have been going at it non-stop for about 2 months now and we are happy to report that we are on schedule! We had a bit of a scare early on when night time temperatures hit 18 degrees on April 16. We decided to plant our spring brassicas (cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi) a few days earlier even though we knew a cold snap was coming (to be fair, the predicted low was 6 degrees warmer then what we actually got). We have found over the years that our best broccoli and cabbage crops are the ones that get planted around this time–any later and we end up with small heads. So we took the gamble and spent a day covering the tender seedlings with remay. We are happy to report the planting looks good. Even earlier crops that didn’t get covered that night look like they may produce.

Freshly planted brassicas get covered to protect from freezing temps
Freshly planted brassicas get covered to protect from freezing temps

The planting survived!
The planting survived!

Since that cold day of snow, we have had gorgeous sunny days enabling us to continue with our planting regime. We have got 500 lbs of potatoes in the ground, 10,000 alliums (onions, shallots, leeks), salad mix and head lettuce, as well as a round of frost tolerant flowers (snapdragons, cerinthe, ammi magus, agrostemma, sweet william, sweet peas).

Watching onions beds get made
Watching onions beds get made

Planting sweet peas by moonlight
Planting sweet peas by moonlight

Planting onions with the mechanical transplanter
Planting onions with the mechanical transplanter

We have also had an opportunity to add soil amendments to the ground (gypsum and rock phosphate) as well as a round of side dressing crops with an organic fertilizer. We look forward to harvesting the crops in a little over a month!