Breaks in the Rain

The last week has consisted of vast amounts of potting punctuated by mad dashes into the garden whenever the rain stopped. On Thursday afternoon, when the sun actually broke through the clouds briefly, we finished the vertical portion of the fence, and I planted four different kinds of lettuce, gala mache, peas, carrots, and beets. On Sunday, I finished digging out the garden paths, although some still need correcting, and planted leeks and onions. Today, I got some of the rabbit-proofing down. I took rabbit fencing donated to us, rolled it out, bent half of it lengthwise at a right angle, put the more densely fenced half on the ground outside the garden and attached the remainder upright to the vertical fence. (I'll get photos up soon, I promise!) Theoretically, this will prevent rabbits and other critters from burrowing into the garden. Sadly, I had only about 50 feet of fence. Alex bought more rabbit fence after dinner, and I laid it out until it grew so dark, I nearly lost my wire cutters in the grass. Alas, the fence was only half done.

Even so, this afternoon, I planted 25 seedlings each of Earliglow and Honeoye strawberries along that first 50 foot stretch. At last. They were looking rather bedraggled after almost three weeks in the crisper drawer of the fridge. Tomorrow, if there are any further breaks in the rain, I'll plant 25 each of Jewel and Sparkle, along with broccoli, cauliflower, and kale. It looks like the rain won't really get going until 11am, and that should be plenty of time to get this done. If the weatherman is completely wrong and we get no rain, I'll plant marigolds and nasturtiums as well. If, however, the prediction holds up, I'll be in the greenhouse, rolling, rolling, rolling. At this point, all my crops are seeded. I am getting close to having all the tomatoes in 3" pots, and I'll then move on to cilantro, sage, and most of the flowers.

I sincerely hope the coir pots I ordered arrive soon. I took stock of my seedlings and realized that I needed vastly more 5" pots than I'd ever expected. CowPots, after shipping, cost about $.65 each. Multiply that by, oh, five hundred, and we're talking a hefty investment with no guarantee of return. As much as I love the idea of CowPots, I chose to purchase a less expensive but equally sustainable 5" coir (coconut fiber) pot, which costs less than half as much. And I desperately need them. The tomatoes in 3" pots are growing like mad, particularly the Hillbilly tomatoes, which are really impressing me with their vigorous growth. The squash are literally bursting out of their pots, particularly the two Giant pumpkin seedlings I started especially for Annelise. I repotted them in 8" pots I happened to have lying around.

Thanks to everyone who's put in an order, especially those who passed on my info to their friends and neighbors. I'm hopeful that I'll get at least some of these sold. I am, however, probably going to donate the bulk of the kale to the Beverly Bootstraps Community Garden.

The Rhythm of Potting

I've found a pleasant rhythm for working in the greenhouse. After my husband takes the girls off to school, I head out to the greenhouse and spray everything down with water.  If it's Tuesday, I spend half-an-hour giving everything a nice long drink of fertilizer. I use Neptune's Harvest fish and seaweed fertilizer, well diluted with water. If it's hot inside (and it's often so hot that my glasses steam up the instant I walk in), I open the vents and the front door in the hopes of luring bees in to pollinate my peas and bush beans.

Annelise, super-picky eater, loves fresh peas right off the vine.

Now if only she could find the peas...

And then I get down to potting. I take my largest Tubtrug and fill it up with soil starter: half soil, half compost, plus a little perlite to keep things loose. I mix well with my daughters' shovel, which is just the right size to get into a small tub. I start rolling 3" pots out of newspaper, adding a bit of starter to each of them as I go. When I have an 11x22" tray of pots, I pull down a seedling flat, pick a batch of seedlings that are clearly ready for transfer, and start gently teasing them apart and laying them in the pots. I finish filling the pots, label everything carefully (I'll often have several varieties in one tray), spray it down and set it on an available shelf. Repeat. Rinse. Today, I transplanted 36 Valencia tomatoes, 8 Brandywines, and 6 Sun Golds. That seedling flat is starting to look pretty empty.

When the Tubtrug is only about a third full, I switch to 5" cowpots. I put down a layer of starter in each, then I go find something in a 3" pot that needs more room. Today it was Chile de Arbol, for which I just got an order. I peel off the newspaper and dump it into a smaller Tubtrug full of stuff destined for the compost tumbler. If there are multiple seedlings in the lump of earth I'm holding, I gently tease them apart and deposit them in individual pots and fill up the pot around each seedling with soil.

At this rate, I am rapidly running out of room in the greenhouse, and running through my supply of Cowpots with dizzying speed. I have hundreds of seedlings available to buy, and yet I can't seem to find buyers. Two ads on craigslist (one in Beverly, one in Cambridge/Arlington) have yielded no orders. I have one customer from the girls' school, two from our old haunts in Cambridge, and two friends who are paying in kind. (One is paying in buckets of compost!) That's nowhere near the capacity of my greenhouse. I've been casting about for farmers' markets, but most of them don't start until June. Newburyport's market starts this weekend, but they're full up and have no room for me. I have emails out to several other markets. Right now, my best option may be a flea market in Salem, NH.

If anyone has suggestions for where I can hawk my seedlings, please let me know. And bear in mind that the profit margin here is slim at best. Any advertising will probably eat that dubious profit. As it is, I'm not sure paying $30-40 for a vendor space at a farmers' market will be worthwhile, but I hate to see all these seedlings go to waste. Worst case, I may just donate them to area community gardens.

Sixteen Middle Schoolers, Two Idealists, One Teacher, and a Whole Lot of Shovels

Wow, it takes a rainy day on the farm to get caught up on paperwork and blogging. I've been so busy with digging and fencing and potting and seeding and fertilizing... well, you get the idea. It took me nearly a week to get around to posting about one of the coolest things we've gotten to do with our teensy farm.

On Wednesday, April 25th, all the students of Harborlight Montessori School's middle school and one of their teachers, Jackson Tingle, came to our little farm and tore up the garden... on purpose. They came bearing shovels and rakes and lots of energy, and they literally dug in. Among the tasks they accomplished:

• Digging out 75% of the garden paths
• Raking out the garden beds thus created
• Spreading wood chips in some of the paths
• Constructing two pea trellises out of tree branches and netting
• Planting peas at one of the trellises
• Rolling pots and planting pumpkins in the greenhouse

And they did it all in less than two hours. Here are a few of the photos from this momentous occasion.

Our Farmhands, the Middle Schoolers of Harborlight Montessori School

We dug garden paths...

...and dug more garden paths.

It turns out that digging in a straight line is a lot harder than it looks.

The Pea Trellis Team did a great job creating a pea trellis out of tree branches and netting. All produce from this bed will be donated to the Beverly Bootstraps food pantry.

Our own pantry was well stocked. Teacher Jackson Tingle and three of his students dig in to homemade whole grain bread, veggies, fruit salad, chips, crackers, and salsa.

We had a blast with these farmers-in-training, and we hope they'll come back to help us harvest those peas for Beverly Bootstraps. Thanks, guys! You and your shovels are welcome anytime.

Digging in the Rain on Earth Day

It's pouring now. We're expected to get a large storm with dense, soaking rain and possible flooding tonight and tomorrow morning. Earlier this afternoon, though, the rain hadn't yet arrived. I dashed out right after lunch and began digging. It began sprinkling. I kept digging. It started to drizzle. I finished digging the paths around two beds, then raked them and the perimeter beds smooth. By then, it was actually raining, so I headed in, visions of pea trellises dancing in my head.

Our Garden Plan, already obsolete. Click on the image to view a larger plan.

 My husband, among others I'm sure, thinks I'm insane to be digging in the rain. What's so urgent that I need to be digging now? I feel time slipping through my fingers. The peas should have been planted a month ago. Leeks and lettuce and braising greens should be seeded. Broccoli and cauliflower are ready to be planted. Of course, I could just buy all these things at the store. I don't need to be doing any of this. Why stress about it?

Well, why do it at all?

When my husband and I realized that we were going to have to move away from Cambridge, to find a more affordable private school for our children in a more affordable suburb of Boston, we recognized that we had an opportunity and a choice. We could choose a standard suburban lifestyle with a house and a yard and two cars, or we could strive for something a little more. We wanted to grow our own food, and so we looked hard for a home that was close to the school we chose and also had a good chunk of land for a garden.

We want to grow our own food for five reasons:

1. Sustainability
2. Nutrition and health
3. Cost effectiveness
4. Community-building
5. Spiritual well being

This being Earth Day, the sustainability aspect should be self-evident. With food grown in my garden, I don't drive to the grocery store for my produce. It was not shipped to the grocery store from California or Chile. I grow my produce using organic methods; no artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides will contaminate the local watershed or my food. By using a no-till growing method, I use almost no fossil fuels to maintain my garden, and I support the delicate ecological balance of my soil. By composting my kitchen and yard waste, I keep that waste out of landfills and fertilize my garden naturally. By using rain water as much as possible, I reduce the burden on the local water system and storm drains. By growing heirloom varieties and saving and swapping their seed, I support biodiversity. By producing more food than my family strictly needs, sharing it with friends and neighbors and donating some of the proceeds to Beverly Bootstraps, I improve the food security of my local community.

I do this because I can. I spent most of my childhood on one grandfather's farm or the other's cattle ranch, and I've been growing things myself for as long as I can remember. I know that not everyone has the talent or the inclination to grow their own food, and I don't believe that anyone who doesn't grow their own food is somehow evil. We all contribute to the world according to our individual talents and abilities. I can grow food, and therefore I should, for my own good, for my family's good, for my community's good, and for the good of the community of Earth.

In future blog posts, I'll address our remaining four reasons for starting a microfarm. For now, I'm going to take a nice hot bath and look forward to a restful day of rain tomorrow.

Progress Before the Storm

There's a storm coming tomorrow, bringing heavy rains and the possibility of flooding. Thank goodness we're at the crest of a hill, and that we had a gorgeous spring day to prepare. My husband laid out string guidelines for the garden paths while I watered and seeded and transplanted and repotted in the greenhouse. Then I got outside - the greenhouse was really starting to cook - and dug out garden paths around the periphery of the garden. I made a new garden plan to reflect the reality of the beds and the not-quite-square shape of the garden, while Alex set up another rain barrel. We both put together another compost tumbler; the first one is already quite full, and I'm sure the new one will be stuffed in short order tomorrow.

If only the rain could hold off one more day. I know how badly we need it, but with one more day, I could dig out a few beds and get the peas and kale and pansies and snapdragons started. I could plant the strawberries and broccoli and cauliflower and kale and leeks, thus freeing up much-needed space in the nearly-full greenhouse.The cucumbers and yellow crookneck squash sprouted today. I repotted broccoli and zinnias, and some of the tomatoes look like they're about to burst out of their seedling flats and walk away. I'm out of compost, running low on 6-in. cowpots, but nearing the end of the seeding. One more flat of pumpkins, and then I just have to wait for May to seed the melons. Ladybug pupae have hatched and are prowling over the kale, devouring those tenacious aphids. Bees hum in and out of the greenhouse, happily pollinating the peas which are exploding everywhere and threatening to crash over onto the kale.

Ah, progress, at last, after the long, sluggish winter. Alas, with the coming rain, we will have to postpone the visit by Harborlight Montessori School's middle school students, who were scheduled to come and help us dig out the garden paths on Monday. I hope sincerely that things will have dried out enough by Wednesday for them to come. All our garden tools have been spray painted neon orange in anticipation of their visit, and I laid in a deep store of snacks and drinks for them. All we lack is lumber for the potato bins and fencing for the peas. I'm debating whether to buy folding fencing, as I've done in the past, or copy my next door neighbor and use fallen tree branches and string to create my own. It all comes down to time: how long will it take to dig, to construct, to string? How soon can we start growing?

If there were a full moon tonight, I'd be sorely tempted to go out and dig by moonlight, just so that I could plant peas tomorrow morning. Ah, progress, so very addictive.

The Vocabulary of Farming

Not a day goes by that I don't think about a blog post for that day, and then the day goes by - fast! Planting and plowing and plotting and potting... oof. So much to write about, so little time.

What strikes me at this moment is the rapid expansion of vocabulary I'm experiencing. Here are a few terms I've picked up recently:

Chitting or pipping - This is the practice of sprouting your seed potatoes before you plant them. All this time, when my yukon golds started growing in my pantry, they were chitting, and I didn't even know it! A few days ago, I pulled the seed potatoes from their vegetable drawer in the refrigerator (just in time to make room for the strawberries!) and took them out to the greenhouse. There I placed them in empty egg crates, recommended to allow the eyes all over the tubers to sprout. I'm unclear on whether I'm supposed to cut up the larger tubers before or after they've sprouted, but since I have far more than I need, I cut a few just to see what would happen. We are trying four varieties of potato this year (Bintje, Rose Finn, Yukon Gold, and a random russet as a winter storage potato) in an effort to find the best possible match to the Swedish new potato my husband remembers fondly from his childhood in Stockholm.

The rest of my vocabulary words have to do with the insects and birds I've been noticing emerging as the spring days warm up.


Carpenter bees - Initially, I thought these large, heavy-looking bees were bumble bees, but they lack the characteristic striped body; they're yellow on the thorax and solid black on the abdomen. They're more ponderous and less nimble than bumblebees, too, and tend to fly horizontally. One afternoon, as I worked at my desk, I was continuously distracted by the thock of bees slamming into the nearby second-story window. One ventured into my greenhouse one afternoon to pollinate my peas (thanks!), then became thoroughly disoriented trying to get out. Despite the fact that the roof vent was wide open, the bee kept flying horizontally at about my eye level and slamming into the glass, often stunning itself for a minute or so. Eventually it found the open door. I am much relieved to learn that the males lack a sting and the females, probably not even awake yet, very rarely sting. A disoriented and somewhat angry bee at eye level in an enclosed space is rather disconcerting.

Brush-Footed Butterflies - These are apparently a major subclassification of butterfly, of which the most easily recognizable member is the Monarch. I've been spotting a lot of butterflies dancing in the sun over the garden and have been trying to identify them amid a bewildering array of entomological terminology. How on earth am I supposed to remember the shape of the hindwing or how many spots the forewing had. Mostly, I notice something striking about them - yellow spots against dark brown turns out to be a Morning Cloak. The pair of small orange butterflies dancing in circles around each other were probably Painted Ladies. I still can't positively identify the monarch-ish butterfly with the striking dark orange or red bands on its forewings, but I'm working on it. I'm beginning to think I should start carrying my camera around all the time to catch these and aid in identification.

White-Breasted Nuthatch - Word appears to have gotten out around the neighborhood that there's a birdfeeder on our back porch. We've had cardinals and tufted titmice for some time, but this evening, as we were eating dinner, a bold little bird I'd never seen before edged his way along the roofline, down the gutter, and onto the feeder. He had a distinctive black cap, like a chickadee but without the matching dark throat, and he was considerably bigger. Also, he had a long, sharp-looking beak, and my husband wondered briefly if he were some sort of hummingbird. After poring through the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern North America, I have come to the tentative conclusion that he was a white-breasted nuthatch.

We surveyed the garden thoroughly today, and Alex dug out the first shovelful of path. If the rain delays for a while tomorrow, and it looks like it will, I may get the first few beds dug out. If not, it's pot-rolling for me. The zinnias and many of the tomatoes are approaching readiness for transfer out of the seedling flats and into individual pots. I still haven't started all the winter squash I wanted either. The poor spaghetti squash, delicata, and sugar pumpkins are waiting until I've dug out more compost.

Also, today, a small triumph. My daughters and their friend Susan ate the very first three sugar snap peas to be ready for munching in our greenhouse. Huzzah! Fresh, homegrown produce for my children. And right about the time the peas give out, the bush beans should be just about ready to bloom. Excellent!

No Better Smell than Freshly Turned Earth

Plowing day finally arrived. We've been incredibly busy preparing for this day. We shoveled and screened and dumped and spread 8 cubic yards of unscreened compost, then we bought 4 more screened yards from Clark Farm to finish off.

Screening Compost

Then we found out that we needed to remove all the undecomposed cardboard we'd just buried with compost. So I spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening pulling up cardboard with a pitchfork, and this morning Alex pitched in bright and early, and we got nearly all of it up before the tractor arrived at 9am.

Thanks, Chris!

Happy kids with the tractor

Chris Barnes came down from Middleton and did a great job with his tractor and its heavy-duty five-foot-wide rototiller attachment. He pulled the tiller back and forth over the soil three or four times. We kept waiting with baited breath. Would we turn up big stones? Bad soil? Nope, the largest thing we found was a very old tire iron! None of the rocks were larger than fist-sized, and the soil was beautiful throughout. There's a patch in the northeast quarter of the garden that's quite sandy, probably the base of the above-ground pool that once stood there. Even better - now I don't have to prepare a bed with sand for the potatoes and other root veggies.

Meanwhile, things in the greenhouse are cooking! Right now, the greenhouse is at 95 degF, and things are sprouting all over. I finally conquered the bug infestation on the kale (four dousings with insecticidal soap!), the peas mysteriously started blooming three days ago, the peppers have all sprouted, the tomatoes are just starting to peek out, and one overly ambitious nasturtium has gotten going, too. I think they're all liking the warm weather and the Neptune's Harvest fertilizer I've been feeding them. Looks like I will have vast quantities of kale, for which I really need to roll lots and lots of pots.

But my plan for today is to enjoy working outside at last. The soil is so rich and dark and delicious to look at. I can hardly wait until we form the beds. For that, we've hired all the middle school students at Harborlight Montessori School to come and dig on Monday, April 23rd. Before they come, I need to even out the soil in a few places and spread my amendments: blood meal, bone meal, beneficial nematodes, and MycoGrow for a healthy mycelial ecology.

Next steps:

• Start cukes and squash in the greenhouse
• Pull the seed potatoes out of the fridge and get them sprouting in the greenhouse
• Amend soil and build raised beds
• Buy and set up irrigation equipment
• Cover beds destined for hot-weather crops like tomatoes and peppers with black row covers
• Set up our new compost tumblers and move the compost heap from its rapidly decomposing wooden structure
• Roll more pots. And then more pots!
• Set up another rain barrel for that far-off day when we get rain again
• Get peas and other early crops planted pronto