It’s a busy time on the farm. We are filling the greenhouse with seeds for spring transplants. We are cutting down old crops to prep the beds in anticipation of all that will be planted soon. We are planning crop rotations as best we can, composting – the chickens love helping with this – and taking care of general maintenance as we get pockets of time. In our extremely high-tech greenhouse set-up, (not), we are starting tomato plants on heat mats – they like it nice and warm, but we are opening up all the windows by 9:00am because the sunshine and warm days get things really cranking hot in there before you know it. We don’t have a real source of heat, so we shut it up tight by 3:30 or so to retain the day time heat for the night time temperatures. Tricks we use for heat – simple heat lamps hung from above, vanity light strips set below the tables, 55 gallon drums full of water that take in the sun’s heat of the day to keep things warm at night… We’ve also created a mini-greenhouse within the greenhouse to reduce the area that we need to heat. We did this by draping used greenhouse plastic and tarps around a much smaller, confined area. (It’s all about frugal farming, after all!) For water we need to water some seeds 3 times a day, because the tiny soil blocks setting on warm heat mats can dry out before you know it. Lots of tender loving care is going on at the farm right now. Come see us; we’ll spread the love… Psst…We take requests for what you’d like to see grown for the farm stand!
Tomato seedlings in the greenhouse
