The photographs in this blog entry have been contributed by Danielle Keeter.
Each year we continue to experiment with season extension – we have learned that plants must grow to their full size before the cold weather and low day lengths of November and December set in but just last week we transplanted another succession of lettuce, tatsoi, baby boc choi, swiss chard and kale. If the weather is warmer than normal these crops will probably be sold at market otherwise tilled back under.
In preparation for putting Greenhouse #5 into production, we spent a couple weeks preparing the soil, which includes pickaxing the ground. We added a couple tons of our vermi-compost to the soil so thank the worms for turning our compost into beautiful soil! We pickaxe and turn the soil with a shovel to work in the compost and loosen the ground so the transplants have an easier time putting down good roots and becoming healthy edible plants. It has been a couple years since when we did this in our other greenhouses so forgot how time consuming and tiring this job can be. THANKS TO CARL AND JUSTIN for doing most of the incredibly hard job of pickaxing the ground. Danielle and I hauled and spread manure while Tony burned holes in our “black Landscape Fabric” that is used to prevent weeds from overtaking the crops.
Production Note To Self: Lettuce/Tatsoi/Baby Boc Choi: Seeded 8/26/11 and transplanted to the field 10/6/11. We will see if it grows to size but intend on making hoops so we can row cover these plants. On 10/7/11 we transplanted Kale, Collards and Swiss Chard to greenhouse #5. If our spacing works, we need an extra 240 swiss chard plants.