Learning from mistakes

This year we have a lot of orders to fill. From CSA members to Farmers Markets, I would say we have about double the amount of of work as last year. The number one lesson I learned last year was that less is more. If we had only had a smaller garden, we would have had more time to take care of it all. Our onions were great, tomatoes were even better, but two patches of carrots went unharvested. They were too small to bother with because we didn't have time to weed and thin. So the weeds grew ever higher, and our excitement to deal with it diminished. This was the back garden which we are planting into a cover crop this year. Everything back there was pushed aside as we dealt with the other gardens.

So this year, I am planting new secession crops only after I have the first secession taken care of. Once my baby carrots have germinated, and I have thinned and weeded them, we will plant the next bed of carrots. That's the idea anyway. Most of the time it is easier said then done.

We have planted a 105 ft. Row of Salad Mix (covered with Remay to keep flea beetles off of it), 50 ft. row of beets (Golden beets will have to wait until it warms up a bit more), 9 ft. of baby carrots, and 50 ft. of spinach, a few spring onions, and some herbs. This is a picture of the blackberry field where we are planting a majority of our crops this year. In the distance you can see 3 of the four greenhouses. Above the garden is a good sized blackberry patch.

In other great farm news, we just got our Earth Way Seeder from the UPS man! That will make planting a much quicker task!