Garden Tour Sort of

I was warned that this would happen…the long-hand blogging would come to a screeching halt once I started posting photos to Instagram.  Yes, I’m still here, and if you check here in the sidebar you can see pretty much how a day unfolds around here.  We’re all over the place, literally, and with two people posting to Instagram you get a little better perspective of the farmstead, I believe.  So without further ado, a quick garden tour this fine April day.

Main garden

We’ve got two gardens and two greenhouses and both get different treatment as far as planting, irrigation, and general fussing.

The main garden above gets crops that need or benefit from irrigation.  I also plant seed crops here.  That’s leeks on the left just heeled in after tilling, we hope to eat them, but maybe not.  On the right are selected leeks and parsnips for seed.  Yesterday I got the cover crops that had been mowed, tilled in.  Not much will get planted here until mid to late May except dahlias, which I might plant tonight if I get off the computer.

greenhouse 1

Directly adjacent to the main garden is greenhouse 1, a lot happens in here, it acts as a prop house, and our first garden of the season.  Growing in here besides a ton of transplants for sale and for us are: potatoes, carrots, beets, peas, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, bok choy, arugula, lettuce, daikon, black radish, salad turnips, cilantro, basil, and some miscellaneous greens.

Tokyo Bekana and buckwheat

greenhouse 1

Just a different view from the other end.  Once the transplants are gone, all the barrels and makeshift tables will come out freeing up more space for more successions of quick crops.  This greenhouse is way more intensive, plantings are biointensive and watered daily in John Jeavons style.  There is something about watering plants in a greenhouse by hand that I can’t describe, it’s almost like you can see them grow.  I wouldn’t recommend it on a large-scale though, but we eat a couple of meals a day from this greenhouse, it just feels right to spend a little time in there tending.

greenhouse 2

Next to greenhouse 1 is, you guessed it, greenhouse 2.  We’re funny like that, our trucks have simple names too, Green, Red, BRT, Weenie, etc.  Greenhouse 2 is a little more hands off, drip irrigation, plastic mulch and crops that don’t need as much attention as lettuce and greens.  The tomatoes are planted already, and I’m threatening to plant the peppers next week when the freezing level goes back up.  Rounding out this greenhouse will be melons, a few cukes, and some moschata squash (squee).  A girl has to try right?

dryland Staple garden

East of the greenhouses is the dryland Staple garden, big plantings of potatoes, winter squash, dry beans, Jane’s root crops, naked seed pumpkins and corn go here.  We rarely irrigate these crops, just weed and harvest basically at the end of the season. As of yesterday, all the amendments and cover crops have been worked in and now we’re just waiting for the cover crops to decompose and the weather to moderate a bit before planting.

Jane’s excellent mowing job.

And the last shot of the staple garden shows Jane’s great “mowing” job on the headland and my tilling…not too bad for a couple of girls.