We are one week past our last frost date at the farm. I am planting as fast as I can get dirt turned to do it. I have a bed full of onions, cabbages and broccoli, and one full of herbs like cilantro and sage and borage. Both carefully mulched in straw and covered with row cover. My beds are framed by grassy strips I call Beetle Banks. Untilled, and only lightly weeded, these provide year round housing and feeding for all sorts of beneficial insects. The roots of the banks are in the soil year round, keeping the fungal networks fed. In last year’s super rain events, my beetle banks became the only way to walk around my field, for a few weeks. The tall stems help break the winds a bit and provide perches for passing bug eaters. I see snakes and toads in them, and scoot them in that direction when they are in my tiller path, keeping those amphibious helpers safe.
A farm plot, with covered rows next to onion rows. Framing the bed are two of my beetle banks.
The big 60 foot row of cucumbers has gone in! 3 different varieties, Tokiwa, English Burpless, and Japanese Climbing. Straw mulch again, but cages to climb instead of row cover. My cucumbers get companion plantings of little flowers, Alyssum, which funny enough is edible, but I put it there to tempt in pollinators, so my cucumbers get good pollination.
A cucumber seedling and an Alyssum seedling nestled in straw, with cages above.
This weekend will start the massive plantout of nightshades. I grew something like 400-500 tomato seedlings, mostly heirloom varieties that I save seed from. I have at least a hundred spicy pepper seedlings, and a few dozen sweet pepper seedlings. This was my first year growing my own peppers, I’ve always asked a dear friend to do it, to ease space constraints in my grow room setup. I was pleased with the successes.
4 Tomato Seedlings out of the greenhouse. Roughly %.01 of the total available.
Spring won’t be the last planting I do. I will seed summer greens and fall roots. But spring is always massive, and since I’m always increasing the beds, I never quite get everything done. It keeps me striving and growing.
In a different sort of planting, the first of our chicken flock is being established at the farm. The second wave of chicks will join their sisters in a couple weeks. Initially, the flock will keep the farm team in eggs. Ideally of course, we get the hang of it, and expand into production for customers as well.
I had hoped to have more of you come up to help plant, it can be so much fun to do it as a team, in the nice spring sunshine and warm dirt. But with the virus still rampaging through Iowa, I mostly plant alone. Perhaps this summer we can have some tomato picking parties. Or a garlic harvest get together.
Wishing you good health and beautiful plants,
Jennie
