rain, rain, go away

it has been a busy and frustrating week. it keeps raining. the fields are wet and muddy and hard to do much in. a lot needed to be done this week, but so much is weather dependent at this point. it is great once the rain stops, but fields need time to dry out, you can't just rush out there and do what needs to be done. you need several days in a row of no rain. and the nights are still getting into the 40s, so even if it is not raining, the temperatures aren't helping things to dry out.

so what did get done this week? the herb plugs arrived. perennial herbs are very hard to start from seed, and with everything we start from seed, they cost time and money. so we order herb plugs. they are similar to what our seedlings look like in the 72 cell tray, only smaller. once we get the plugs, they all need to be repotted or planted in the herb garden, and fairly quickly so they can start growing. they call them plugs because you fill a pot up with soil and literally just push, or 'plug,' the tiny plant into the soil. the majority of these will be taken to landis valley to sell (and those are the ones we repotted), but we are still growing and developing our own herb garden on the farm so many plants were for us (and planted directly into the herb garden). the herbs we received were chives, arp rosemary, fresh tarragon, lady lavender, greek oregano, lemon thyme, lemon verbena, fennel and fernleaf dill. (we are expecting to receive english thyme as well, but that variety had production issues and we won't receive it for a couple of weeks.) we potted 545 plants to take to landis valley and planted 115 plants for us in the herb garden. (our dill hasn't been planted yet because it is going in the big field on plastic where it is more likely to get the nutrients it needs.) we do not use plastic in the herb garden so we use another method to keep the weeds under control - cardboard and straw. we cover the garden with cardboard and then cover the cardboard with straw and then wet everything down. if everything was dry, it would just blow away. once the cardboard and straw start to degrade a little, they will stay in place. we can't just use straw because it wouldn't take long for the weeds to grow up through. but with the cardboard under the straw, the weeds will be kept under control for most of the season. once all the weed protection is laid, we poke holes in it to plant the herb seedlings. parsley and 3 types of basil will also be planted in the herb garden throughout the season, but for the most part the herb garden is done. cutting and preparing fresh cut herbs for market is time consuming and kind of a pain in the butt, but people do seem to appreciate.

we planted 25lbs of french fingerling potatoes, the first planting of fingerlings. about 8 rows of black plastic were laid in the main produce field. there is more that needs to be laid, but that is all time and weather allowed for. i planted 3 more flats of lettuce in the field. all of the coolers were scrubbed well. (we have about 20 coolers and they are not the easier things in the world to clean.) they have been collecting a lot of dust and dirt over the winter. (we pack all our produce and meat in coolers to take to market.) more lettuce seeds were started. the asparagus to up...we might be able to cut it for market this week. some of the strawberry plants have buds. much of the garage was cleaned out. we use the garage during the regular season to sort through, wash and pack our produce. we have a big commercial size double sink we use to rinse greens.

so despite the rain, a lot was accomplished this week. some outdoor plantings are falling behind because of the weather, but not much we can do about that. there will be a lot of projects to do inside next week, mainly repotting the seedlings i started for landis valley.