Today we made our first field plantings, one bed each of spinach, peas and fava beans. (That would be 300 rowfeet, 200 and 200, respectively.) We’re looking forward to planting some mesclun, broccoli raab and radishes tomorrow. With all of the warm weather we’ve had recently, the fields have dried out nicely and it’s been hard to keep myself from planting everything. We’re still getting nights in the 20’s, however, and it’s important not to let freakishly warm weather fool you. So what have I been doing with these beautiful days? Working the greenhouse, of course. Today I finished potting up all of our heirloom and cherry tomatoes from the slot trays in which they’re started into larger 2″ soil blocks. This will give them some fresh soil to chew on and some more room to grow. In a couple of weeks, I’ll pot them up again into 4″ pots. I recently finished doing to our first planting of determinate tomatoes, which should be ready to go out into the field in a couple of weeks (with lots of protection, of course). The eggplant pictured in the previous post was potted up about a month ago and — around 6″ tall — is ready for the 4″ pot treatment itself. In addition to the tomatoes, I’ve seeded lettuce, chicory, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, pac choi, napa cabbage, Swiss chard and basil in the greenhouse.
And garlic! I completely forgot to mention that I unmulched our garlic a few weeks ago; all 1800 row feet. That’s around 3600 potential heads of garlic. So, unlike last year, we’ll have plenty of garlic.
On another note, we’re happy to report that the state recently approved our kitchen for bread production. So our bread is official and legal and all that now. We’ll be taking it to farmers markets as soon as they start up, which is … this week! Our first market in Orono is on the 2rd and Waterville begins on the following Thursday, the 7th.
That it’s for now. Stay tuned, though, for some info about a farm party we want to have in May.