It is looking like we will soon be back into the wet and windy weather that has characterized this winter so far, but we are grateful for the brief sunny break that we are experiencing now. Combined with the longer days, it feels like we have turned a small corner of sorts in the stretch toward spring. It has allowed us to get caught up on many things—getting mulch down on our front strawberry patch, changing the aging film on our transplant greenhouse (destroyed in the storms, picture at right), and planting.
Although most of our so
ils here at our home ranch are much too wet to plant into, we have a small field behind our house that is perched up high and dries out amazingly quickly. Unlike most of our fields which are in an overwintering covercrop, we left this field bedded up, ready to plant into during a break in the rains like we are having now. In that field we’ll be planting parsley, cilantro, scallions, arugula, spinach and a few seed beds of leeks. We’ve had good luck planting leeks from seed at high-density rates (close together) and growing them out until they are as thick as a pencil. Some of them we will then harvested as “baby leeks;” the rest we trim and replant around 5-6” apart and let grow to full size.
The greenhouses are rapidly filling up with transplants, some of which will be ready to plant out starting in a week or two. Lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, romanesco, fennel, chards, kales and celery are all crops that we grow from transplants. In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking for more breaks in the weather for the ground to dry out enough to give us the opportunity to plant these out.
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