Farm News: March
March is the month when gray gives way to green. As the days lengthen and the weather warms up, we are working hard at Farm Kitchen. It’s Maximum Springtime!
I’m Phil, facilities manager at Farm Kitchen, and here is some of what we’re cooking up outside at the Farm:
Plant Babies
My daughter gets feisty about me calling seedlings my babies, but they’re so cute! And they need constant feeding!
Sometimes the wait makes us nervous after planting. The process starts in seed trays, usually with 72 “cells” per tray. Each cell is an individual bed of potting soil for the seeds. Some of these seeds are so tiny that it’s hard to picture them ever turning into a plant, and the wait for germination (when a tiny green seedling emerges) can take so long that I start to wonder if the seed will grow at all. Some of the peppers, for example, took three weeks before germination.
Our brassicas, though, popped quickly. Brassicas are a family of vegetables including kale and broccoli, and they like it colder, which might explain why they seemed so eager to emerge in early March.
Time to Chill
Our greenhouse is full of seedlings right now, not just the veggies we’ve planted but also hundreds of sweet peas. This summer, those sweet peas will be climbing trellis netting and bursting with colorful and sweet-smelling flower blooms, but right now they’re two-inch-tall green babies. We can’t wait til they reach the stage when we can share them with you through our you-pick events and our farm stand!
Sweet peas like cooler weather, like the brassicas, so “hardening off” has begun. Hardening off is the process of putting seedlings outside in the cold, first for a few hours per day, then longer, then overnight. This gets them used to the climate. We can tell they’re happier, too, because they started to sag in the warm greenhouse but they stand up straighter when they’re outdoors.
All seedlings get hardened off at some point, but the sweet peas are first in line.
Fork & Harrow
These plant babies need a home where they can thrive once they’re older, so soil prep in the fields is well underway. Our biggest tools come out in March:
The broadfork is a giant fork that we drop teeth-first into the soil, then stomp down on to push the teeth as deep as possible before pulling back the handles to lift and aerate the soil. It’s exciting to see a ton of fat earthworms thriving and improving our soil for us. We use minimal till methods here at Farm Kitchen. This means that we work hard to not disrupt or disturb the soil structure. Flipping or tilling the soil can interfere with microbial activities in the soil, and can promote weed seed germination by bringing weed seeds to the surface where they get the light and water they need to grow.
The mighty harrow comes through after broadforking. The harrow is an attachment to our BCS, which is a tractor with two wheels that I walk behind. Its teeth (or “tines”) churn the broadforked clumps into a bed of airy, hospitable soil that is just right for growing.
Weeds War
Many of our perennial flowers, like the peonies, are sprouting this month, but so are the weeds. I probably don’t have to tell you. In some beds we’re laying down weed cloth, and the weed wacker has already made an appearance or two. This battle will rage all spring and summer, when the scuffle hoes and our Green Dragon flame weeder will come out of The Shop. For March, though, there’s only a little weeding to do here and there.
It’ll only get greener around here! Expect Farm Kitchen to start blooming brighter than ever over the coming weeks.