It’s not exactly fun planting in cold weather, but things have to go forward. Any sunny day or decent weather we went ahead with early planting… Things are okay as long as it’s nice enough to irrigate, and we put row covers over our seedlings, they can get through a -5C night (or colder) no problem. We did wait through these -4C and -5C nights, with daytime highs of 3C-5C. Hopefully the last of those nights is behind us, so we can go full steam ahead.
Row covers are really an invaluable tool in our cold climates to get us through planting season without having to worry too much about frost.
Under all the covers is green onion transplants, hakurei turnip transplants, spinach, radish, carrots and parsnips.
Cold weather slows us down a bit and that means there’s a ton of stuff backed up. So one can’t wait for better weather…you have to keep pushing forward. It’s less of a “it’s too cold to plant” issue than a “time management” issue. All of a sudden there’s 1000 things to do, and those thousand things get pushed back, and in a week it’s 2000 things to do. A farming season is a marthon, not a sprint, so no need to burn out this early! Just keep planting.
The greenhouse is in desperate need of relief, and part of that is due to the fact that we’re just planting a lot more than we usually do, a lot earlier than we usually do. We’re trying to get stuff as early as we can this year. Even in the next few days there’s dozens and dozens more trays to be seeded, so we have to start getting stuff in the ground or we’ll create a space management issue for ourselves as well
Today (Thursday May 7) looks like a nice day and a few more to come, so in everything goes. On deck are onions, beets, kale, broccoli and cauliflower, pac choy, fennel, fall carrots, direct seeded beets, potatoes, brussels sprouts and lettuce.
Also, baby kales are rather cute.
Busy week ahead of us!
On the YouTube Channel is episode 3: listening to nature to guide us during a cold spring.
Graham
thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice
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