We are getting close to having 10 hours/day of light. That is a magic number for plant growth – they start growing again! The weeds are beginning, so the greens shouldn’t be far behind. There were great photos of our hoophouse in the Press Republican today. The photos were taken in early December – most of those greens have been harvested and we are waiting for regrowth to harvest again. Here’s a tour of it now.
First, when you walk in you see the row cover spread about 30″ above the ground. Moisture from the ground condenses on this when it gets below freezing and seems to keep the air under the row cover from going lower than about 10. Here I have pushed it aside to let sunshine, warm air, and ventilation in to the plants. The metal is the support to keep the row cover suspended above the plants. Not as nice as in early December – it was really encouraging to see that picture in the Press Republican and the memories/hope for the future.
One of my challenges, and this is a learning year, is figuring out how densely or thinly to plant seed, and then adjusting the seeder to do that. I either had almost no seed, or thick as dog’s fur. When the plants are too close together, the leaves get yellow, it is hard to skip the older or damaged leaves and just pick the nice ones, etc. Here is baby chard, and you can see the older leaves hanging off to the side, most of which I just grabbed and pulled off yesterday after taking the photo.
And here is chard that is not crowded. It still needs trimming, but I was able to easily harvest the nice leaves.
Here is what the top chard photo looks like now:
Outside temperature doesn’t matter so much in the hoophouse as sunshine does. If it is cloudy and 38 outside, it is 38 inside. If it is sunny and 10 outside, it quickly warms up into the 50s and 60s inside. As soon as the clouds come out, back to cold it goes. So, I haven’t been real diligent about working out there in this cloudy weather.
Lots of you are hankering for spinach, so here is the status:
You can see there are some really nice leaves, but also lots that aren’t nice. Close planting is accepted, if you harvest by “crew cutting”, which I did the first time through. But baby leaves get “shaved” and end up with blunt, cut top edges. So, for now, I am moving to spacing them out and picking good leaves leaf by leaf. I hope to visit a farm the crew cuts to see how they do it and get good subsequent harvests. Or maybe they just ignore the cut leaves.
Here is spinach I dug and transplanted spaced out. I think we will have nice leaves to harvest within a week or two, especially if we get a string of sunny weather.
The Lacinato and Siberian kale is no longer harvestable, not even for our own use. The leaves are very yellow or brown, at least large streaks of the leaves are. The Winterbor and Redbor is still usable. It is not perfect, but since I am harvesting it out of snow, I think I deserve full price for my effort. To help you decide if it is acceptable to you, here are photos:
It’s relatively nice harvesting weather, so let me know if you want some. I’ll be down chopping off brussels sprouts plants for the birds anyway, so you won’t be pushing me away from the computer.
Yes, this is computer time. Updating the website, probably moving the whole thing to blog software, figuring out Facebook, and new plattsburgh.locallygrown.net system, and opening the Farm Fresh Food Club for 2010 memberships. Oh, and figuring out how much of what I’ll plant when, where, and how, and then figuring out a better storage system for next year. I appreciate the nudge to get some exercise and fresh air.
