Complimentary Blueberry Juice

Just a few days away from starting the 2026 season, the seeds have all arrived, and we’ll be getting the greenhouse going a bit earlier than usual, for this is the first year we have our new Hoop House ready to go. It’s hard to imagine the “before times” now, even though a year ago there was no plastic on the new Hoop House, and it would take us until May 7th to finish it all and plant our first cucumbers and tomatoes.

So what’s coming up for this season? I figured I’ll go through a bunch of stuff I’m looking forward to, that I’m sure I’ll be writing more as the season progresses.

• Seeding Tomatoes and Peppers for the Hoop House on March 1st. These will be transplanted in the Hoop House by April 15th at the latest, and we should be getting Cherry Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Green Peppers all in the month of June.
  
• Speaking of Tomatoes, I was so blown away by Cherry Tomato output last year that we’ll be relying on only 112 plants in the Hoop House to provide 100% of our Cherries for 2026, and I expect it to be a record year. The quality, consistency and flavour of the different varieties last season was phenomenal. We’ll be learning to “lower and lean” these as by August they should be around 20 feet in height.
  
• I just pulled the trigger on a new camera setup today, so I’m pretty excited about that, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to share about the life on the farm, from insects to birds and everything in between. The farm is beautiful and I want to share that aspect of what we do, and what we get to witness. There’s a lot of farmer content out there, and a lot of it is focused on explaining how to do stuff, and I’m pretty tired of all the “Productivity Bro Mindset” trying to optimize every aspect of farming. I don’t know about you all, but part of what I love about farming/gardening is being witness to all kinds of beauty that we get to see, and all the life that we allow through our actions. I’m not sure how to share it all but I’ll figure it out as I go.
  
• Parsnips. YES PARSNIPS. One last try. Oh how the Parsnips have almost defeated us. Well I’ve been able to find a different variety to try. At no small expense I’ve tracked down a fair quantity of an heirloom Parsnip known as Kral Russian, which is reportedly more like a beet than a carrot-type long root. Which should mean we can actually harvest them. Will it work?! Will they taste good?!? Will Parsnips defeat us again? How will this story arc end?! Tune in to find out, same Parsnip time, same Parsnip channel.
  
• Bringing the No-Till field up to 100% capacity for the first time. This will mean we’ll be running 58 beds of 100′ simultaneously. We were close last season, but now that some trials on onions, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants have panned out and provided some great proof of concept, we can go all the way. We’ve been trial-ing and mostly error-ing this system since we first started it in 2018. It’s taken us a long time to get here and I’m ready to feel some sense of accomplishment when all 58 beds are in play.
  
• Mushrooms. I’ve finally devised a way to make sure we get a permanent supply of Wine Caps. I don’t know what the yield will be like, but I’m looking forward to abandoning the labour-intensive and fail prone methods I was trying before.
  
• Late Season Productivity. With the first-season Hoop House learning curve out of the way, it’s a bit easier to see how we can leverage it for true season extension, and how that works in tandem with the permanent bed system. We should have a lot of stuff available post-Thanksgiving, and I expect the Hoop House to be outputting Lettuce, Spinach and Kale into December.

So there’s a few highlights, at least the ones I could think of right now. There’s a lot more, like cover crops, or finishing the orchard, or getting good at all those heirloom and specialty tomatoes.

Signing off today with a favourite photo of mine, a monarch instar, shot with my old trusty Canon Powershot S5 that I shall be retiring.

I’ll be hitting the greenhouse this weekend.

Spring is coming.

Graham

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