This week’s planting, all seedlings to be transplanted out later: broccoli, lettuce, and flowers. Also “bumped up” some seedlings into larger pots, separating multiples so there is only one plant per pot. When I am carefully trying to seed one seed per pot, it doesn’t always work out just one. That gives me some extras for safety, on top of the extras I plant anyway. I also spent four or five half days picking stones out of the field. We had a real muddy spot in the “road” coming up from the hill which now has a good lining of stones. I also finished (almost, there will be revisions) my field map and planting schedule. I now have printouts of what needs to be seeded each week and where they are to go.
The seedlings in the hoophouse are/were looking incredibly good. With the warm days, I had to open the end doors for ventilation. I made a screen for the end that opens into the current hen/duck/goose pasture, and that worked well until the wind came up and blew it down. A half dozen or so hens got in. They had a fine time. I’m fortunate that only a few made it in. Apparently I discovered it soon enough that only a few had found it, but long enough for some uprooted and tossed on the ground plants to wilt. Several trays were upside down on the ground, with seedlings strewn about. That means that instead of very uniform rows in the field, I may have some cabbage in with the broccoli, and late broccoli in with the early broccoli.
At least they forced me to do some things I needed to do but held off on. I still had beautiful lettuce and chard that we were eating and feeding to our small flock of Cuckoo Maran chickens that I am keeping closed in for breeding. They were in the way of tomato plants so really needed to come out, but I didn’t want to waste them. Well, they weren’t wasted – the hens thoroughly enjoyed them. The photo shows the chard stems that are left.
Major expenses this week: $500 for compost, $632 for 100 “started pullets”, 18-week old teenage hens. We don’t have the facilities to raise chicks in the winter, and since our main egg market season is summer, we buy them almost ready to start laying.
