Moved the chicks out of the basement yesterday. Yea. Well, it was nice having them there to go down and look at frequently, but they have stirred up a layer of peat moss on everything down there, are getting enough feathers that very soon they will be producing their own “dust” of feather bits, and they have enough wing feathers that they are flying over their “walls”.
We are hopefully past below zero nights, so went for it. Inside they were in a 6 x 8 area. The brooder house is 8×8. Inside I had a large piece of felt down with maybe a 1/2″ of peat moss on it. We have a 3+ inch layer of peat in the brooder house and they are enjoying scratching it. We have a “warm room” at the back of the brooder house – black felt draped over supports with two heat lamps. They can come and go as they wish.
Also transplanted head lettuce, pac choi, swiss chard, and onion seedlings into the hoophouse. The chard and onion seedlings are in a nursery bed to be transplanted outside later, but those two transplant easily so I prefer to put them in the soil rather than keep watch watering in little pots. Also moved several plug trays of flower seedlings out to the hoophouse. I think we will be having enough of a heat sink in the soil to keep them above freezing under the nighttime row cover. If we get another single digit or colder spell I may be retrieving them, but they get better light and on sunny days more warmth out there. Plus I need all the room under plant lights inside that I can get for the tomatoes.
I prefer to pick individual leaves when harvesting spinach rather than crew cutting (which leaves cut tops of new leaves as they grow) so need the plants spaced a couple inches apart in the rows, preferably on a 6 x 6 grid. Some were too crowded so I’ve been thinning them, which has provided nice small leaves for Saturday’s Eating from the Farm dinner and also for making the birds happy. They are carefully investigating each patch of exposed ground/sod, but the spinach is definitely fresher green than the bits of old grass they are pulling up.
