What a glorious day! Well, it was about three hours ago. (Now it is 15 degrees and snowing!) We were in our shirtsleeves and sweating it up earlier. It was sunny and balmy…at least 70 degrees. That is in the hoophouses...of course!
The west hoophouse is going to have early potatoes. The goal is to harvest them the first of May as new potatoes and then put our peppers in that house. We cleaned out the carrots that were still in there. Boy was that a surprise!
Then we cleaned up the yucky smelling greens in the east house. We checked our Stella Natura calendar and today was a “leaf” day, meaning we should plant leaf plants. Great!
The tilling went great!
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| Marty tilling the west house for potatoes |
The soil was nice and soft, beautiful. But, getting the tiller from the equipment shed to the hoops was a challenge. Will got his wooden toboggan and he and Marty sled the tiller to the houses. They lifted it over the threshold as we haven’t gotten our ramp built yet. But, it started up okay and the tilling was done.
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| Looking at the barn from the hoophouses...the four foot snow drift! |
Then we cleaned up the yucky smelling greens in the east house. We checked our Stella Natura calendar and today was a “leaf” day, meaning we should plant leaf plants. Great!
We tilled the middle section as we still have onions and garlic on the west, a few herbs, and some arugula on the east side. We planted a row each of red mustard, komatsuna, rapini, and cress. It’s an experiment to see how they do. We’ve never had a hoophouse in winter so we are testing everything this year to learn all we can.
This weekend are “root” days so we will plant our potatoes in the west house and the radishes in the east one. This is soooo exciting! We had a great time. It felt so much like April in there!
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| Our delicious hoophouse carrots |
How do you keep your hoop house so warm? Is it heated from within? It looks like it has plastic panels or sheeting for its outer layer.
ReplyDeleteI like your choice of vegetables and herbs to plant--its quite a variety! We've recently been eating YELLOW carrots with our mixed vegetable meals. I wonder if you've considered planting those too.
Love the additional pictures to your blog and other work you've done. It really is fun isn't it ? And yeah that hoop house does look warm. One more day of this cold cold crud and you just might find Keith and I out there with lawn chairs, and a grill cooking up a mess of pork chops !
ReplyDeleteLove all the pictures! Like the new look to the blog!
ReplyDeleteHope Petie Parker is doing all right. I will share with you sometimes what my last Tuesday and Wednesday were like...but I was thinking of Petie.