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A'farming I Shall Go
May. 5th, 2013 08:15 pmForty tomato plants - Brandywine, German Johnson, Black Plum, and Illini Gold, all paste or main crop - are now out of the seed trays and into the ground, along with eleven peppers of various persuasions. I've got a much smaller batch of cherries - my seed-saved Rose variety - and the Corno di Toro peppers coming along that will probably get planted out next weekend, when I should be able to get up a head of steam again. The annual beds are all completely straw mulched, now, too, alongside the bed with the strawberries and asparagus and garlic, leaving only the one permanent bed with the raspberries and blackberries and assorted early season beets and greens.
(If you've ever wondered why we mulch, you have only to leave one patch of ground uncovered and take note of the difference about thirty days later. Man, the weeds in that one remaining bed!)
It was a real toss-up this morning whether I'd put all this planting off yet another week. It has been cold in central Virginia this spring. Yesterday, it was 41. This morning, with some cloud cover, it was 46, with a northerly breeze that made my hands go quickly purple when I took the dog out for her walk. Tomatoes and peppers do not like the cold. But we have rain coming, a slow front that looks to bring us nice, calm, soaking rain for the first three days of the week, and I did not want to miss that free water. So, the tomatoes are in and I am tired, tired, tired. I should say we; I was not the only one out there.
This week, we took delivery of three very large loads of topsoil, which once spread will form the base for the hoop house we'll be raising as this year's major project. More and more like a farm every day. >:-)
Next up, sowing squash - summer and winter - and melons in the seed trays. It only took me three tries last year to learn that, with the crows, direct-sowing of these crops was not going to work. There are things I can direct-sow which will be going in next week (buckwheat, sorghum, corn, chard) and other things I need to start in seed trays (sunflowers, which the deer love and which, therefore, cannot be direct-sown). Unless the weather turns unexpectedly hot, however, those will wait another week, maybe two.
I picked the first spring-sown radish today. Some of the early spinach is approaching harvest size. Beets are slow, but coming along. The collards and kale which overwintered are in glorious, bee-feeding flower; once done, they're going to be the chickens' delight, and then I will have to do something else with that part of the bed. Hmm. I bet it won't be tomatoes. >:-)
(If you've ever wondered why we mulch, you have only to leave one patch of ground uncovered and take note of the difference about thirty days later. Man, the weeds in that one remaining bed!)
It was a real toss-up this morning whether I'd put all this planting off yet another week. It has been cold in central Virginia this spring. Yesterday, it was 41. This morning, with some cloud cover, it was 46, with a northerly breeze that made my hands go quickly purple when I took the dog out for her walk. Tomatoes and peppers do not like the cold. But we have rain coming, a slow front that looks to bring us nice, calm, soaking rain for the first three days of the week, and I did not want to miss that free water. So, the tomatoes are in and I am tired, tired, tired. I should say we; I was not the only one out there.
This week, we took delivery of three very large loads of topsoil, which once spread will form the base for the hoop house we'll be raising as this year's major project. More and more like a farm every day. >:-)
Next up, sowing squash - summer and winter - and melons in the seed trays. It only took me three tries last year to learn that, with the crows, direct-sowing of these crops was not going to work. There are things I can direct-sow which will be going in next week (buckwheat, sorghum, corn, chard) and other things I need to start in seed trays (sunflowers, which the deer love and which, therefore, cannot be direct-sown). Unless the weather turns unexpectedly hot, however, those will wait another week, maybe two.
I picked the first spring-sown radish today. Some of the early spinach is approaching harvest size. Beets are slow, but coming along. The collards and kale which overwintered are in glorious, bee-feeding flower; once done, they're going to be the chickens' delight, and then I will have to do something else with that part of the bed. Hmm. I bet it won't be tomatoes. >:-)
