As you can see, the first bright red, crispy radishes are just starting to be ready.  All this rain has been great for the garden, but not so much for opening the farm stand.  If you are looking for bedding plants to take home with you, just be patient and the next sunny day, we will put the “Open” sign back out front and there will be lots and lots of tomatoes, eggplants, basil, squash and pepper seedlings for sale.

Also, if you have been out by the garden recently, you will notice a significant addition.  No, we are not building a miniature St. Louis arch or advertising for any fast food chains, but thanks to Neil and Jeff, we are starting to construct the high tunnel!  This will be an unheated greenhouse for extending the growing season and harvesting veggies throughout the Winter.  We hope to have the skeleton for the hoop house up in the coming weeks and will then cover it with plastic when the temperature drops in the Fall.

Thanks as always to all of our working shares for your contributions and we hope you are enjoying the rain.  Stay tuned for news about the first CSA boxes and more updates from the farm.

Climbing temperatures mean that the seedlings took their first plunge outside of the greenhouses. We began setting out the transplants last week to harden off and get acclimated before we stick them in the ground.  This will help reduce the shock, speed their recovery and hopefully lead to the plants producing fruit sooner than they would otherwise.  However, Spring weather is still unpredictable and Tuesday night brought us temps back in the 30′s along with some much appreciated sleet and rain. The plants were happy to stay back inside by the heater on those cold days and nights.

Jill and Justin also went to pick up some more alpaca manure from a nearby farm.  Alpaca manure breaks down in the soil faster than horse or cow manure so it is easier for the plants’ roots to absorb the nutrients.  Llamas and alpacas contain multiple stomachs so it is also more digested and less likely to contain unwanted weed seeds or pathogens.  We also soak the manure  in water to make a tea and water the transplants to keep them growing and healthy.  In the pictures (above) you can see Jill sitting in the truck on the phone while Jane (the farmer who graciously gave us the manure) skillfully maneuvers her tractor to dump the manure in the truck bed.  You can also see our brilliant idea to quickly unload the manure from the truck bed using bailing twine.  Yes, the twine snapped and we ended up unloading the bed with a shovel anyways…

And lastly to report, we set out some of the tomatoes under walls of water earlier this week.  This cold wet weather may be too much for them, but hopefully they will survive OK.  The walls of water are basically sleeves of plastic filled with water that stand like a teepee around each plant, acting like a little greenhouse for each individual plant.  The idea is that the sun heats the water during the day, and it radiates that heat throughout the night to keep the tomatoes from freezing.  Some of these tomatoes already have blooms so if they make it through, they should have a head start on producing ripe fruits!

That’s all for this week.  We hope you are staying cool/warm depending on the day.  Make sure to stop by the farm stand for some bedding plants to take home with you!  They are selling for 1 dollar each, or 6 for $5.  We will post the “OPEN” sign out front when they are available to purchase.  Thanks for visiting the blog and see you next week!

This past week we set out plastic 5-gallon buckets by the garden to grow some red potatoes.  After chitting them in the window sill, we cut off the eyes and stuck them in some rich compost/dirt mix in the bottom of the buckets.  As they grow, we will keep adding dirt and burying the plants, stimulating them to keep growing upwards.  At the end of the season, we will dump them out and the buckets should be full of delicious spuds!

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It continues to warm up out there and we are adding more and more seeds to the beds every week.  So far we have several successions of leafy greens and root crops growing, along with different varieties of summer squash (including Patty Pans!), winter squash, and tomatillas.  Yum!  By the end of this week we hope to have some tomatoes set out under walls of water to protect them from any cold nights we still have ahead of us.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for the signs out by the road for when the farm stand opens.  We will be selling tomatoes, peppers, basil, squash and melons that you can take home and plant in your own garden!  Have a great week and enjoy the Spring weather!

These past few weeks have brought us some much-appreciated precipitation!  Everything is sprouting and we continue to keep planting successions and filling up the rows.

We will also start selling transplants from our greenhouses soon.  Look for seedlings of basil, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons, and different varieties of squash out in the farm stand in the upcoming weeks, probably when it gets just a little bit sunnier and warmer.  These will be in coir (coconut husk fiber) cups and ready to stick in the ground when it warms up!

Also, we still have a few shares available for this season!  Click here for more information.

That is all for now.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and we hope you have a wonderful week!

Some people walking around the property have stopped to ask, “Why are those black tarps on the ground?” and “Why are those white sheets over the rows?”

Well, those black tarps are weed barriers.  They help shade out the weeds, as well as block the sun to keep the soil underneath moist.  We will plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, squash and beans in the holes cut into the woven fabric and hopefully they won’t have to compete for space with weeds.

The white sheets are row covers.  They float over the crops to help diffuse sunlight, keep off pests, and also to help reduce water loss due to evaporation.  Although it may be nicer to look at growing crops rather than these long pieces of fabric, they really do help the garden stay healthier, reduce water use, and cut down on labor.

So what is coir?  Those white tubes weighting down the row cover on the sides are filled with coconut husk fiber.  Although there aren’t any palm trees growing coconuts anywhere around here, we salvage these coir bricks from a commerical tomato grower.  They use them as a hydroponic medium to grow their tomatoes and then throw them out every year in a big pile.  We have gone and reclaimed them not only to use as weights for our row cover, but also incorporating the coconut fiber into our beds.  It helps with water retention and eventually the coir will decompose, adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil.  Coir can hold more than 5 times it’s weight in water!  It is also being used as a replacement for peat moss, which is usually harvested from bogs and swamps at an unsustainable rate.  Coconut trees grow and decompose very quickly, making coir easy and economical to produce.

Well, that is all for this week.  We have the 2nd succession of planting in the ground and finally got some rain!  The radishes and snow peas are already sprouting and soon there will be growing plants under all that row cover.  Have a great week!

It was a busy week in the garden.  Almost all of the raised beds are prepped and ready for plants, seedlings in the greenhouses are getting bigger, and the weather is snowy one day and 65 degrees the next.  It must be Spring!

This week we were able to seed some snow peas, spinach, flowers, kale, beets, lettuce, carrots, radishes, and other cool weather crops.  We will continue planting successions every week so that we can have a continuous harvest throughout the Summer.

If you stop by the garden you will see the white row covers set out over the beds.  These help to maintain the moisture in the soil and shelter the plants as they grow.  This week we will be setting out the black weed barrier to aid us in the quickly approaching battle with the unwanted, less-edible plants.

We hope you have a wonderful week and hope you are enjoying the warmer weather as much as we are!

Things are picking up quickly here on the farm.  The raised beds are looking great for planting, and our tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant are growing nicely in the warm greenhouses.  They still need some time before we can turn them into delicious pesto and salsa…

The drip irrigation system is all set up and fighting off the dryness we have had to help soak the ground.  Signs of green outside are popping up every day.  Trees are starting to bud out and some weeds are already taking root.  We should be able to start putting out row cover this week and maybe even direct seeding some carrots, beets, radishes, leafy greens, snow peas and turnips.

As always, thanks to everyone who has helped out at the work parties and we hope you have a wonderful week!

Hello everyone!  In addition to sprouting seeds in paper towels and moving them to the seed flats, we have been getting the ground loosened up to start planting in a couple of weeks. It has been terribly dry lately so we hooked up the drip irrigation system to saturate the ground. Once it was moist, we were able to start breaking the clumps of clay into smaller pieces, mixing in compost, llama manure, and recycled coconut fiber. Over time, we will keep adding organic material and the soil should get better and better each year.

In the picture, you can see the unbroken blocks of coconut fiber (coir) on the right and the ones on the left already incorporated into the raised beds.

Biointensive methods recommend minimum turning of the soil in order to conserve the natural processes and biota that live beneath the surface. Earthworms, nematodes, and millions of bacteria are working hard to naturally improve the soil for us. Using heavy mechanized tillers disrupts their work and although it may make the soil easier to work this year, in the long run, we would be damaging future crops by aggressively turning over the soil. Instead, we use what is called a broadfork or U-bar.  This handy tool makes it easy (well, it is still a bit of a work out!) to loosen the ground so water and organic matter can be mixed in with the raised beds.

That’s all for now. We should be able to start planting cool-weather veggies in a couple of weeks!  Thanks to everyone who has helped at our garden work parties!  Happy Spring!

Our internship position has been filled.  Feel free to keep us in mind for next year.

8-Month, Full-time Farm Internship

Room/board/stipend

We are a bio-intensive, ¼ acre micro-farm serving a small CSA program in our third year of operation on an 80 acre horse boarding facility.  We have one position for a FULL-TIME farm intern from March 2011 through October 2011 (possibly through December).  You will learn by performing all aspects of farming for the CSA.

Private accommodation provided, along with $100 weekly stipend and a 1-person share in the CSA.  Our internship is modeled upon the Western SARE farm internship program. Unless successful candidate makes arrangements, there will be no academic credit obtained at the end of this program.  This position is physically demanding and sometimes requires working outside of “normal business hours”. Successful candidate must be able to follow directions and protocols, be well organized, attentive and be able to work independently.

Please send resume, 3 references and cover letter explaining why you are interested in this position to tracy@localsustainability.net