Looking through the Window at a New Planting Year

Every winter around the middle of January we start looking for a dry “window”, that will allow us to get into our fields and do some of our early plantings.

This season the window opened up wide enough to drive a semi through. After a wet front end this winter, the rain abruptly stopped in the New Year. And while we are glad that the rains are again forecast to return to our area by next weekend, we are also grateful for the break that allowed us to get a great start to our spring plantings.

Some of the vegetables we already have in the ground are: fava beans, garlic, arugula, baby turnips, radishes, salad mix, braising mix, carrots, beets, swiss chard, lacinato kale, scotch kale, collard greens, scallions, cipollini onions, parsley, cilantro, spinach, and mei quin choi.

Additionally we were able to work up beds for the transplants that now fill our greenhouse. Over the coming weeks we will be planting out: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, many kinds of lettuce, fennel, six varieties of summer squash, four types of peppers—including corno di toro and padron, basil and leeks.

Our new “Lewis Road” property is working out every bit as well as we hoped it would. From my perspective, one of the best things about this land is that it allows us to get all the benefits of planting cover crops in the off-season, and still get an early start to our spring planting. Most large scale growers in our area are reluctant to grow cover crops because they tie up the land and prevent them from getting in to plant early. Instead, they leave their fields bare—listed up into beds over winter. While this does allow them to plant early, it also results in large amounts of sediments and nutrients being flushed into area waterways during large storm events.

Our management strategy for this new addition to our farm is to use it mainly for our early season production, shifting later plantings to our home site. By late summer/early fall we will put most of this new site into cover-crops which means they will be fully mature and ready to mow and incorporate into the soil by mid-January. This is something we could never do at our home site, because the heavy clay soils can take up to a month to dry out once the rains stop. The sandy, well-drained soils at Lewis Road, however, only need a few days of dry weather before we can get in with a tractor.

Our crew likes the new farmland too. For one thing, this nice early planting is helping to keep them busy through the winter. Plus, the Lewis Rd. farm has a nice spot for a makeshift soccer field. Keep an eye out for the High Ground Organics soccer team one of these years.