Enough already on the rain. There is possible snow in the forecast for today and it's pouring right now and about 40 degrees out. Looks like another indoor day. We'll just keep potting up toms and sowing flats in the greenhouse's today. Late start, long lunch and quit early. Might as well take advantage while we can.
We're all ready for our plant sale/open house this Saturday. Just hoping the forecast for "mostly sunny" prevails. Come on out if you're on island and take a look.
Not alot else to report at this time. Perpetually stuck in this No season thingy thing.
Take care,
farmer John
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Looking Good
This Saturday and next we are having our annual open house and plant sale. We'll have lots of veggie and flower starts for you garden and fresh pizza coming out of the oven and some live music from the boys in Spoonshine. Looks like the weather is going to hold and might even be sunny! Come on out and see what we've been up to.
One good thing about having an event like this (or company) is that it motivates you to tidy up. It's a good thing. We've been busy mowing, weed wacking, weeding and spring cleaning in general. The property is looking good. I love it when it's all spiffy. The only bad thing is we've spent all of outr time here on the home farm and are neglecting our other "in-proccess" projects like building fences and finishing up the greenhouse. It's OK, things are still drying out there anyway.
We've been building new green house tables this week too, something I've wanted to do for a long time. the new ones are way more space effecient than our current system. I think they'll work better too because we are using a mesh top so the roots coming out of the bottom of the flats can air prune which may be more important than I know. They also just look nice. This will be an ongoing project as time and money allow. We need about 40 of them. I've got the proccess down to about 30 minutes per bench and they cost about $30 each in materials. Hopefully we'll get at least ten years out of them.
Fields are still too wet to work so it's another big week in the greenhouse's. We moved about seventy flat's to our "showroom" solarium up at the house for this weekend's sale so we have a little more room for more flats. If it stays dry, we may be able to transplant on Friday? Needless to say, we're pretty backed up and we need to get some plants in the ground. Honestly though all the plants we've transplanted to date are not growing too fast, it's just been too dammned cold and windy. We're gowing to continue to plant the same as normal, eventually things will pop.
We've been making a few deliveries these last few weeks. Slowly getting back into the harvest/delivery schedule. Market starts soon! May 7th, Hope we have produce:)
That's the news from here, hope to see you this weekend.
Keep well,
Farmer John
One good thing about having an event like this (or company) is that it motivates you to tidy up. It's a good thing. We've been busy mowing, weed wacking, weeding and spring cleaning in general. The property is looking good. I love it when it's all spiffy. The only bad thing is we've spent all of outr time here on the home farm and are neglecting our other "in-proccess" projects like building fences and finishing up the greenhouse. It's OK, things are still drying out there anyway.
We've been building new green house tables this week too, something I've wanted to do for a long time. the new ones are way more space effecient than our current system. I think they'll work better too because we are using a mesh top so the roots coming out of the bottom of the flats can air prune which may be more important than I know. They also just look nice. This will be an ongoing project as time and money allow. We need about 40 of them. I've got the proccess down to about 30 minutes per bench and they cost about $30 each in materials. Hopefully we'll get at least ten years out of them.
Fields are still too wet to work so it's another big week in the greenhouse's. We moved about seventy flat's to our "showroom" solarium up at the house for this weekend's sale so we have a little more room for more flats. If it stays dry, we may be able to transplant on Friday? Needless to say, we're pretty backed up and we need to get some plants in the ground. Honestly though all the plants we've transplanted to date are not growing too fast, it's just been too dammned cold and windy. We're gowing to continue to plant the same as normal, eventually things will pop.
We've been making a few deliveries these last few weeks. Slowly getting back into the harvest/delivery schedule. Market starts soon! May 7th, Hope we have produce:)
That's the news from here, hope to see you this weekend.
Keep well,
Farmer John
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Working Around The Rain
The weather is still giving us fits. It almost dries out, then comes a big rain and puts us right back to where we were. This has happened time and time again. I beat it yesterday by about 5 minutes and was able to chisel plow some of our tight ground at the home site. Certainly not dry enough to till but the chisel plow travels beneath the soil without disrupting too much. The "chisels" ride about a foot deep and break up the hard soil below. This can help open up chanels for the water to pass through more readily and can let some air in. I'tll be some time before we can really do much tillage at this spot. Glad we have the diversity of multible plots to farm on.
That said, we're at a stand still everywhere else right now as well as far as tillage goes. We are planted out on every plot that will allow. Things will have to dry out before we can do final tillage and bed shaping. So for now we're back to sowing flats in the greenhouse's. Over the last week we have been able to plant out quite a bit so at least we have a good amount of space available. We're also potting up plants that need to come out of trays and go into a bigger container. That's the theme for April. Yesterday we started this proccess for the tomatoes, always an exciting time. We have about three thousand plants to pot up.
Speaking of tomatoes brings up a concern we're having. Clearly it's setting up to be a difficult year for tomatoes. What's potentially going to set us back is the delay the rain has caused in tillage of the new greenhouse. I have made one pass and not been able to get back in. It takes about five or six times to get the soil roughly workable. We'll have plants that need to go into the ground before the site is ready. Waying our options, the easiest solution may be that we go ahead and pot them up in to one gallon pots rather than the standard 4" pot. This could buy us some time. Other options include changing our planting plan and put the toms in the greenhouses here at the home site or grow them in grow bags. Considering we've never successfully grown toms in containers, option two seems like a big gamble. The one gallen pot option takes more soil and creates space and handling issues but could be the easiest way in the end. We'll keep you posted on that one. We may have similar issue's with other crops like squash.
So the rain and cool weather is making our lives a little more difficult and we are ready for sun as are most people I know. It'll come. Trying not to get too worked up about the things I can't change.
Keep well,
Farmer John
That said, we're at a stand still everywhere else right now as well as far as tillage goes. We are planted out on every plot that will allow. Things will have to dry out before we can do final tillage and bed shaping. So for now we're back to sowing flats in the greenhouse's. Over the last week we have been able to plant out quite a bit so at least we have a good amount of space available. We're also potting up plants that need to come out of trays and go into a bigger container. That's the theme for April. Yesterday we started this proccess for the tomatoes, always an exciting time. We have about three thousand plants to pot up.
Speaking of tomatoes brings up a concern we're having. Clearly it's setting up to be a difficult year for tomatoes. What's potentially going to set us back is the delay the rain has caused in tillage of the new greenhouse. I have made one pass and not been able to get back in. It takes about five or six times to get the soil roughly workable. We'll have plants that need to go into the ground before the site is ready. Waying our options, the easiest solution may be that we go ahead and pot them up in to one gallon pots rather than the standard 4" pot. This could buy us some time. Other options include changing our planting plan and put the toms in the greenhouses here at the home site or grow them in grow bags. Considering we've never successfully grown toms in containers, option two seems like a big gamble. The one gallen pot option takes more soil and creates space and handling issues but could be the easiest way in the end. We'll keep you posted on that one. We may have similar issue's with other crops like squash.
So the rain and cool weather is making our lives a little more difficult and we are ready for sun as are most people I know. It'll come. Trying not to get too worked up about the things I can't change.
Keep well,
Farmer John
Thursday, April 7, 2011
In Between
We're just farming whenever the weather will allow us to do it. Yesterday was a good day, despite the coolness we were able to get a few beds transplanted out. I don't know how they'll do but we just have to get going. Some of the stuff we put out earlier looks OK and some looks stressed. Beds we direct sowed like a month ago are spotty. Some are up but not growing. Some failed. It should be dry enough today to re sow. We'll keep sowing in the grennhouses's too just to have back up stock if things fail. Fickle. We really need some heat. At least we've been keeping up on lots of little projects here and there. We were able to do a nice Kale harvest too. It actually looks and tastes great. Nice and stalky, very sweet. It's my favorite time of year to eat kale. I like it better than broccoli. It is still very wet everywhere but the short term forecast has it being dry for the next couple of days. With any luck at all we'll be able to get a few more beds worked up but I'm not holding my breath. After today we'll have all of our available space planted out. From here on out we are at the mercy of the rain gods. Please be kind. We gave out daffodils in town yesterday too. It was fun. I just needed to do something good. I'm sick of all the bad news. And most importantly it was a good day because Katie said yes when I asked her to marry me. Keep it real, Farmer John
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