Pivot and Modify

We officially transitioned from outside to inside planting last week. Tardy by a week, the final round of outdoor plants went in, including head lettuce, bok choy, arugula, red mustard, and turnips. We planted the first round of crops in the tunnels, including lettuce mix, chard, spinach, and curly kale. Over the next four weeks we'll make weekly deposits and will eventually fill each of our six protected crop places for November and December harvests.

Except for two, each of our tunnels are of a slightly different design, length, width, height. Five of the six are stationary as well. Four of the six are used for growing during spring, summer, and fall whereas two are only used for early winter. Due to the confines of the covered space, most of our prep work has been done manually. It wasn't until we put up the most recent caterpillar tunnels which have flexible endwalls that we were able to amend and prep with the tractor. Most appealing and influential was the use of our old spading machine which can, in one pass, loosen, aerate, and incorporate amendments and organic matter. Last week, prior to using the spader, I decided to test whether or not I could pull our compost spreader through. It worked. Accomplishing both those tasks inspired me to re-do the endwall construction on the Hoop Tunnel so that I could pull those machines through there as well. So now, including our movable tunnel, four of our tunnels can now be amended and prepped with the aide of the tractor, greatly reducing the amount of labor and time it takes to have these spaces ready for planting into.