a little progress on the to do list

I have been trying to get a little gardening done every day.  Some days the weather has not cooperated and then there was the Easter holiday and my kids were at the farm.  But I am pleased with the progress that has been made.

The greenhouse got some attention.  Nikole took down all the gutter planters with their spent plant material and the gutters were emptied into the raised beds where the soil mix will be mixed with compost and reused.  The broccoli plants are moved outside.  The baby plants are looking good for the most part.  I hope to get quite a few of the big tomatoes in the ground soon.

The hoop house got some hoops.  One of the beds is ready to plant and the other needs some straw and compost and then it will be ready as well.  In the picture below the bed that is ready to plant is the one with the big white dog sleeping in it.  She has a knack for finding the most recently worked dirt for her naps.

The next picture was taken a little closer up.  Once the tomatoes are planted it will be ready for some plastic for the next month or so.  The plan is to remove the plastic for the summer and put it back on in the fall with some new crops.  There will be a decking walkway between the beds which will hold potted tomatoes this spring and summer

 Today I spent some time working on the sandbox which will hold the new cranberry plants that have been ordered and blueberry plants that I will transplant from their current location which is not working well for them.

On the left side of the picture is where the cranberry plants will go.  I have been reading about them and they need to be planted in a mixture that is one-half sand and one-half peat moss.  I had rescued enough sand to half fill the 3x8 foot section.  I added a large package of peat moss and wet it well while mixing the two ingredients together.  I will check again tomorrow to see if it is staying moist.

The right side of the picture is where the blueberries will go.  In my reading it was suggested to use a mixture that is one-third peat moss, one-third potting soil for acid loving plants and one-third bark chips.  These mixed ingredients were wet thoroughly and I will be checking the pH and moving the blueberry plants, hopefully while they are still dormant.

I have been digging trenches in the cornfield, making new raised rows.  I have planted six rows of potatoes and the two rows of peas.  I have cleared off another couple of wheelbarrow loads of old garden material.  I have not noticed that the cover crop seeded too late in the fall has started to sprout yet

I did set up the round and square potato towers in the area where the long box will be rebuilt in the potager.  If it doesn't rain tomorrow those will have to be watered.   Looking ahead there is a 70% chance of rain for tomorrow and 50% for the day after.  April showers...

what a great day!

Today's weather was wonderful, warm, sunny, not much for wind.  We had some melting that happened and the ten day forecast is looking great.  I spent a good part of the day in the greenhouse and I moved a bunch of the little seedlings from the house to the greenhouse.  I made many trips back and forth and each trip the snowbank that I was walking across was a getting a little softer and a little more slushy.  I took a few pictures.  Not sure that we won't have more snow and more winter but for now it feels like spring.

This is the tables down the center of the growing room.The greens make up most of it with a few potted tomatoes toward the front and the row on the right of the tables is broccoli.  I don't know if I will get broccoli heads before it gets too hot in the greenhouse.  Greenhouse broccoli is rumored to be a slow grower in the winter but the flavor is so much better than summer broccoli.  This is my first attempt at growing it in the winter.  

This is the north side of the room, I removed the planters of mizuna and did a little rearranging of the others to make a little bit more room on the tables.  

A couple pictures of the tomato experiment.  Some of the tomatoes have been transplanted into big planters which will be their final location.  More have been transplanted into 3 liter or gallon pots.  The will hopefully go in the ground.  Some of them are looking pretty tall and leggy and I am hoping that now that they are not in the house under the lights but getting lots of natural light in the greenhouse that they will start to get a little more sturdy and fill out.  

Some outside pictures.  this is the gate.  That snowflake has got to be replaced with something that says spring.  Last year a wreath hung there that I made out of an old hose.  This year I am going to hang a peony that Caitlin painted.  

This is the orchard area.  Lots of brown grass visible today that had been covered not too long ago with snow.

This is a picture of the 'cornfield'.  The snow is melting from the front of the space but there are still big drifts on the north and west sides. The black is the raised rows for planting.  It is pretty wet.  The poles divide the south half from the north half.

This shot is a little farther away.

Here you can see the snowbank on the west edge that extends into the grove and is probably five or six feet deep.  The snow is so dirty, end of winter is a not a pretty time of year. 

This is the little mini farmstand.  The farmstand that we made last year is tucked in the machine shed.  I am working on closing the ends and putting an awning on it and once that is done and the weather is a little more reliable it will be coming back out to this space.  In the meantime I built a small table to hold a cooler and a basket.  The cooler holds gallon zipper bags of mixed salad greens and the basket this week has homemade egg noodles and some artisan bread.  Over the next day or two I hope to add a few shamrock cookies for St Patrick's day and some dog treats.  

digging potatoes in the snow

Potato update

The title of this post is a little misleading.  We did get a little bit of snow and it was flurrying when I finished digging the last of the potatoes and now--a couple hours later--the ground has a light covering of the white stuff on it.  The last of the potatoes are dug from the cornfield garden.  There are a few in the potager and those will be retrieved tomorrow when the replacement box is installed and the potato towers dismantled.  Once that is done the only produce left will be the kale which is not minding the cool nights and continues to do well. 

Cornfield update

Tomorrow I have one potato trench left to fill in and then there will be 25 raised rows completed and ready for next season.  They have been seeded with oats for a cover crop and the earliest planted are about five inches tall.  There are a few more rows that have just sprouted and a few more that have not germinated yet.  I am hopeful that all will grow this fall but feel that those rows that haven't will germinate in the spring which works too. 

I am working to spread shredded leaves in the walking spaces between the rows.  We had a big wind from the south a few days ago and it plastered every leaf in the orchard up against the pasture fence.  Since there were so many collected there it was easy to mow over them and blow them into windrows to be picked up and spread in the garden.  It was a trick I learned from my dad who did the same with his yard and those leaves were  collected and hauled to the farm.  Lisa has also been generous with her bagged leaves.  Her newest additions are yet to be spread but that should happen tomorrow.

There is room for more eight or ten more raised rows at the west end of the garden where the vine crops were and if weather permits I will be trying to get that area made into raised rows yet this fall as well.  The north half of the garden where the corn grew has not received much attention and that will be on the fall list if the weather cooperates.  I hope to remove the corn stalks and stack them for eventual composting or feed them to the herd.  We will see if they are interested. 

Farmstand update

The farmstand made its way to the machine shed pulled by Dad's pickup.  Right now it is tucked inside the doors in the alleyway.  I plan to cap the ends of the roof and try to add an awning before it is tucked into a final spot for the winter.  Right now the tables in the trailer are ones from the greenhouse and those will go back.  I hope over the winter to get more tables ready that will stay in the farmstand and add display space along the two sides that can hold baskets or perhaps a cooler.   

The farmstand has been a lot of fun and it was sad to put it away for the winter.  It will be fun to tweak it over the winter.