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