Planting begins…

It’s hard to know when exactly the gardens season starts… first seed planted? First shovelful of soil turned? First time the dog rolls in something very smelly?

If you go with the seed planted version, then we’re on our way! Jamey and I have started nearly 500 tomato seedlings and several other trays of onions, broccoli, rapini and celeriac. The tomatoes will be for sale both as plants and fruit; we have nearly 50 varieties on the go this year. Old favourites like Stupice, Black Plum, San Marzano, Zapoteca… and some new additions. 

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my new soil blocker from Johnny’s – it’s the 4 – 2 inch block model. You make the soil mix (peat/compost/perlite) very very wet, then squish it into the blocker, squeeze the blocker into a tray, and voila! Basically like making mud pies all day long. The advantage to this system is that it reduces plastic and the seedlings are healthier as there’s no chance of getting root bound. The disadvantages are time to make the blocks and the fragility of the block itself – you have to water carefully.

Here are all the tomatoes on an amazing seedling rack Jamey’s parents built us! Thanks, Grandpa Jim. They’re staying warm and toasty in our kitchen until the days are warm enough to move into the glass house.

 

Even when it rains, we can garden now – thanks to Jamey, the Greenhouse builder. The first round of greens (spinach, lettuce and beets) are planted, as of today…

We’re all pretty happy about that!

Tools of the Trade: The Power Rake

Sharing tips and ideas forms the bulk of the “shop talk” when farmers get together. Successful market gardening depends on constant innovation, tweaks and adoption of the right tools. The right tool can improve product quality and shelf-life, increase yields, and save some really precious things like our time and backs.

After 4 years of commercially farming we have made a lot of changes, but have started to develop a system. On the ‘tools’ tag we want to profile some of our favourites.

The Power Rake was purchased this year from Lee Valley: http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=2&cat=2,44821&p=10029

It has a long handle, a 2 foot width and aggressive teeth. It was $39.50 CAD. It was one of the best $39.50 we ever spent, Our planting beds for greens are 2 feet by 30 feet. The flatter, more even and less rocks the better. The bed preparation can impact density and straightness of the rows and therefore weeding, yields and quality. We used to use ordinary garden rakes. It was a slow process and bed quality was inconsistent.

With the Power Rake, prepping the beds is a now relatively fast process. Make 2 passes with the tiller and then a couple of passes up and down the row with the Power Rake. 2 foot rows, 2 foot rake, so the width is perfect. The long handle and smooth motion is super easy on the back.

The Power Rake was also really useful to remove the straw mulch from last year’s tomato patch. Apparently it is also useful for cleaning up dead fall apples. We will try out that use this fall

So the Power Rake is a worthy of our first review. It is a modest investment. It saves 10-15 minutes per bed. It produces a better seed bed. It has multiple uses and… oh yeah and saves our backs.

The Power Rake is very similar to the Elliot Coleman Bed Preparation Rake from Johnny’s Select Seeds. We haven’t tried it, but have heard positive reviews from other growers. The Johnny’s rake has a metal head and wooden handles. I can see the heavier, metal head being nice. Price $67.50 USD.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?category=292&subcategory=638&item=9219

Windows of Opportunity and Bonus Nights.

AKA “Part Time” Farming Challenge No. 1.

With the farm/work balance, weekends bear most of the load. Weekends in May (our intense planting, field prep and market readiness time) are tremendously precious. This weekend was a washout and blowout. High winds and torrential rains. We managed to fill the time with a trip to the city on Saturday (picked up an irrigation system for the greenhouse) and on Sunday we moved a dishwasher, moved a new fridge for the garage and filled the back of the truck with bags of sheep manure. How we lived before the truck I do not know.

The rainy weather meant no field work. No weeding. No planting. To have fresh greens at market every week we seed 1 bed (bed = 2 foot x 30 foot) of red, 1 bed of green and 1 bed of mustards. We normally prep the beds and plant on the weekends. We were a bit worried looking at the forecast. It has since improved. (nice weather on Tuesday) But ugh, Weds, Thurs and Fri look ugly.

When would we seed and weed? With all the recent rain, the perennial weeds have regained much of their vigor and the first flush of annuals is upon us. (Ohhh pigweed I missed you so much).

We normally have a class on Mondays, but it was canceled so we had we we like to call “bonus nights”.

Bonus Night: Unexpected and unscheduled blocks of time that coincide with good weather and become available for farm work.

Now for normal people, a Bonus Night might mean a bit of ornamental yardwork, running into town to rent movie or this thing called “recreation” I have heard so much about.

We managed to get in 3 hours of work. We seeded 3 beds of greens and one of radishes, laid some row cover on the freshly emerged mustards and did some significant weeding. (Roxanne hoed the annuals, I dug up cooch grass) But we had to take advantage of the time.

It seem often that these windows of opportunity happen at the wrong time or the wrong weather. Last year when we were trying to get some rototilling done, we were often frustrated by rainy evenings with sunny breaks only between 8:30 and 4:30. We’d be racing home to get started and the sky open up. arghhh

Planting already

We’ve often said that in Nova Scotia there are no in-between seasons. In the last 3 weeks, we have gone from Wintery snow-sleet cold to plus 15 temperatures and flowering bulbs!! This was a stellar weekend, with lots of sunshine and we were able to get about 1/6 of our planting area tilled and mostly planted (in addition to the greenhouse work). This is about 1 week earlier than last year.

We planted 2 kinds of spinach, 6 kinds of lettuce, Napoli and Chantenay carrots, peas – snap, snow and shelling, green onion sets, and a row of fava beans. Not bad for one crazy day!

With the greenhouse almost done (just the ends to add), we’ll plant another round of early greens in there. I’m hoping to do mustards in the greenhouse – another layer of protection from the evil flea beetles? We’ll hope so. With the baby due in September, our focus has been on early season crops – greens, carrots, arugula, spinach, cucumbers, peas… although we’ll be planting a few tomatoes, beans and melons for fun.