Thursday, March 31, 2011

Double Down

Our annual plant sale / open house now has two dates. We'll be open on Saturday April 23rd and the following Saturday April 30th. Come on out and take a look. We'll have the pizza oven fired up and lots of other good eats. Live music by Spoonshine from Anacortes and of course, lots and lots of plants for sale for your garden. Come on out, have a good time and help us kick off our season. This time of year we are busy bees here planting and getting ready for the season. The weather has been very difficult this year but despite that, we are making progress. We have a few things in the ground outside in our driest areas, peas, fava beans, greens, radish's, potatoes, garlic, leeks and kale. We have a few beds ready to sow and will probably be on that as soon as the weather dries out a bit. It's still on the cool side for things to pop but waiting is difficult. We can still transplant in the rain and are doing so as the seedlings in the flat trays mature enough to go out. We have our greenhouses all planted out and also filled with tables to accomodate the flats. We really need to get some things into the ground soon just so we can make room for all of the potting up thats getting ready to happen. This is our last chance to get any last minute equipment maintenance and setup done. Mowing season is basically here and we're ready to cut some grass! We have alot of new tools and another cultivating tractor on line this year. Our newest and most exciting addition (for me) is our new Jang tractor mounted multi row seeder. We can sow three rows at a time now without having to walk a country mile to do it. Some would consider this a luxury. I see it as just being effecient with our time, plus I have been having problems with and old injury to my lower leg and ankle and frankly it's getting harder to walk comfortably so being able to sow without walking back and forth three to six times up and down a 2oo ft bed just makes sense. I'm scheduled to have surgery on it this winter but for now, anything I can do to reduce my walking mileage is a good thing. Until recently, one would have had to pay around $10,000 to get a decent tractor mounted preciscion seeder. The Jang's are a nice option for about a third of that. We've been using a single row unit for a couple of years now and I really like it. We've made good progress on the greenhouse and have done the intial tillage. I'm waiting a bit longer to put the endwalls and cover on so I can have full easy access with the tractor. We're shooting to plant out around mid May. It's pretty wet at that site so we would like to see it stop raining and dry out. Fencing is in progress and we are working on it as time allows. That's all from here for now. Thanks. Farmer John

1 comment:

Unknown said...

New seeder. That middle row is hard to push the Jang through. I ended up taking two bikes, putting a tool bar between them and mounting the jang to it. You still have to walk, but you dont have to tweek your body to seed the middle row. I built a box cultivator for the tractor to do the paths, unfortuntly with the cold weather and lack of weeds I haven't had a chance to even test it. When the hell is it going to warm up. Planted out my forth sucession, but why the first three are all the same size. The only thing growing outside is last years kale. Missed you at the spring meeting. There wasn't any drama, so you didn't miss anything. Time for dinner.
Ian