Overhead Irrigation!!!

Each bay of the large greenhouse now has overhead irrgation!!  It is a beautiful sound to hear the sprinklers doing all of that work instead of me.  All the crops have jumped in size since the installation.  (So have the weeds)  We are looking forward to a week of wet weather.  We will be using this time to catch up on greenhouse weeding, seeding trays and field planning for the upcoming season.  We are glad that we didn't give into temptation and start seeding outside yet. 

We will be starting at the Kingston Farmer's Market May 19th hope to see you there!!

Crazy Weather!!!

Transplants don't seen to mind the fluctuating temperatures.  We only heat if the temperature goes below -3C.  It will be nice to get the irrigation assembled this week!!!  Everything that has been sown is growing but so are the weeds!!! 

Being able to plow this early is crazy!!  This field was almost impossible to turn the first year we tried.  It has taken almost eleven years to get it to a condition where it will be able to handle vegetable production.  When we bought the farm this field was full of spruce trees, 6ft alders, hard hack and wild blueberries.

A big batch of freshly made potting mix.  Time to pot up the tomatoes and peppers. 

Indian Moon Tomatoes

Three of many Parade green onion trays.

This is where we seed our trays...our front porch.

Turnips, Beets, Arugula, Carrots, Kale and Spinach have started to come up.

Napa Cabbage transplants.

One full bed of asian greens that were transplanted this week.

Two out of five beds have now been sown with spring crops.

A volunteer Parsley from 2011 in the large greenhouse. 

Big Greenhouse=Big Work

  Bay one of five being prepared for spring planting.  This will be the first year that this greenhouse will be used for season extension.  There is alot of prep work to be done to each bay before it can be seeded.  We broadfork not till our greenhouses.  It means more physical labour but the soil improvement is great.  After broadforking we pick sods and rocks,  string off the beds, ammend the beds, rake off the beds and then seed the beds and water the seeds in.  It took three of us to completely finish one bay yesterday.  We will start transplanting this weekend and put mini-hoops over the transplants to give extra protection from the cold nights.

Link to an Article on Our CSA

http://www.atlanticfarmer.com/article.php?id=3382

Root Washer

There has been some interest in the design of our root washer so I have taken a few pictures which show how it was constructed. We did not manufacture this washer ourselves but bought it used from another vegetable farmer. It would be easy to reproduce.

Getting small greenhouse ready for spring.

Small greenhouse after being broadforked. 

500 feet of carrots sown February 21st.