Fields Filled

Transplanting one of the last rounds of lettuce a couple of weeks ago, I believe #24 of 25, which have gone into the ground weekly since the first week of April.

The 2020 outdoor seeding and transplanting season is finished. The last of the available/planned for field space was filled with the final round of external transplants and a last gasp direct seeding event to fill in the extra available bed space still vacant after transplanting. With the subsequent inch of rain received early Thursday morning the outdoor planting season was successfully concluded. This isn't the end of 2020 planting, though. We still have 2,300 feet of beds under cover, in the tunnels, to fill with crops to be harvested in November, December, and perhaps into winter 2021. There'll be a 2-3 week gap before we begin planting inside so at least we'll have a brief departure from one task we've been doing for almost six months.

Prior to establishing these indoor populations each tunnel space will require different methods of attention to achieve ideal conditions for planting into. Some tunnels house our seedling flats and need to have tables and landscape fabric removed followed by forking, hoeing, and raking. The movable high tunnel beds are able to be prepped with the tractor's bed shapers. This space was experimentally covered with large pieces of fabric for two weeks to passively kill grass and weeds and reduce the need for tractor tillage. After the bed shaping is finished we'll move the 30'x96' high tunnel over top. The hoop tunnel currently protects the 2nd and final round of tomatoes which will soon need to be pulled and composted and the beds will be forked, hoed, and raked. We should receive our new tunnels this week which will be erected to cover an additional 900' of bed space.

During this upcoming week we hope to harvest the rest of the potatoes. Spent summer crops like cherry tomatoes, husk cherries, and tomatillos will be cleaned up. New transplants will probably require cultivation. Some fields beckon the flail mower. Certain crops request hand weeding. More seeds will be sown for Late Fall harvest. A lot of time will be spent harvesting and distributing.

Please join us at a workshift if you can!