Breaking Ground

Watching the weather paid off. The fields had dried out just enough to get on them and I was able to do the initial ground breaking at our newest site Stonebridge. I'm breaking sod so my plan here was to run a big rotovator through one time to break up the top layer. I'll go back as the weather permits and make another couple of passes. I'll make a deciscion at that point where to go from there. Most likely I'll run a chisel plow to bust up the deeper soil and hit it again with the tiller to make the final seed bed. This field will be potatoes the first year. I find that starting a new site with potatoes normally works well for me. The cultivation and hilling all done by tractor is a convenient way to get the field into good shape for the following year. I'm trying to get them in by may 1st. Potatoes are sensitive to forming nice tubers in chunky soil so I'm hoping this early start will give enough time for me to get the field in good shape by then. Fencing is the the next step here. We'll be starting that project soon.

The beds in the hoophouses I direct sowed on January 23rd have germinated nicely. Just under two weeks, thats normal for this time of year. Hopefully we'll have some sunny weather coming up and we'll be harvesting in March. I have one more house to plant out. I'd like to get some radish and salad turnips in, and of course more greens. I'll be on that soon.
Also I'll be sowing flats in the propogation house starting this week. I'll be starting with lettuce.
Also have one more bed of garlic to get in. I know it's later than most people are accustomed to but we did this last year and it worked brilliantly. No rust or botritus and we had a nice crop just slightly later than normal. We did get some of our stock planted out in October.

So here we are, one more time, another season begins. It's going to be good year.

Take it easy y'all,

Farmer John