Adirondack Erratic

…’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ Keats

And sometimes it can be found in the garden… Hard to remember this in the intense flurry of planting everything, building stuff, and getting the market display ready. But the garden is beginning to fill up with green, as well as other colors, which truly does bring joy when I take my evening stroll. I’ll be posting batches on the photo page periodically; for an early season look click here.

Some of the pictures in this batch are of the hoophouse, which is so far living up to my expectation of an inspiring and challenging experiment. Melons that have been planted and watered with drip irrigation already have flower buds! On the other hand, the sides must be rolled up when the sun comes out or the air temps will get too hot. And I’m not sure how many years the plastic will last if it is constantly being folded and unfolded.

This is the hoophouse in all its glory:

and these are the end walls before assembly:

Here’s Rich working on the boards that go along the edges:

and this is inside the area before covering:

There will be more pictures of vegetables in the next few days. Next year, during the winter months, these posts will help to remind me what was happening in the garden, and when.

Beautiful weather means everyone is on the move - including this woodpecker beating my alarm clock lately (the hose sprayer does seem to cool him off.) And it means an influx of hungry deer.

It took a surprisingly short time to get the electric fence going again this summer. In order to condition the deer to the fence I’ve put bait on bits of foil all around the perimeter. The idea is for the deer to touch a tender part (their noses) to the fence, getting an instructive shock. We will see; last year they blithely walked through the fence to reach the goodies in the garden.

My charger setup is on the left; the picture on the right shows the baited foil, with garlic sprouting in the background.

And here’s a shot of the forsythia, just because it’s so lovely.

Sunday was one of the best days skiing at Whiteface - soft snow, crazy spirits, beautiful views. I returned home to see bare ground peeking out from the snow edges, enticing me to pull my first weeds. The growing season begins!

Last week I stoked my enthusiasm for expanding my gardens by attending a workshop on high tunnel growing in Saranac Lake, sponsored by the Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Various presenters, including farmers and researchers, talked about the pros and cons of growing under plastic (mostly the pros) and showed a number of different types of structures that could be used. Investment costs range from over $10,000 to grow raspberries to a few hundred dollars for low tunnels, such as the ones built by Eliot Coleman as a demonstration for the Common Ground Fair in Maine.

(to be continued…)

The sky is blue, the conifers are green, and the garden is buried beneath feet of snow. It’s almost April first! Click here to see a small view of the early, early spring signs, or just go the the “Photos” page above.

I am just beginning to put together some gear for the garden and market this year. Trying not to spend too much, but also trying not foolishly disadvantage myself. These three items (bought used) are winging their way to my house via the magic of Ebay.

First up, a few planting trays with inserts for 72 plugs each. I could have purchased trays of 128 or even 512 plugs, but I don’t have room to transplant very many plants (thinking of lettuce starts) and weather for planting out might not come along predictably enough before the plants outgrow the smaller slots.

Also en route is an Earthway seeder, an inexpensive walk-behind planter. I’m hoping it will cut down on the need for thinning, especially with veggies that will be seeded many times during the season. I also plan to use it for small scale cover cropping, reasoning that I’ll get better germination if I plant more consistently.

Finally, I’ve picked up a price computing scale for selling at the market this year. I’d like to let customers pick out their produce for themselves, and it should cut down on my pre-market prep time. The scale I’m buying has an adding function built in: you can enter a price, weigh the item, press add, and then enter a second price for a different item. This should help me keep a running total of a customer’s purchases.

Sunwarm Gardens is my kitchen-garden-turned-market-garden. A small grower in Canada at Tiny Farm Blog calls his 2 acre farm a “micro farm.” By this standard, I have a “nano farm.” However, it does produce enough food to keep my family in fresh produce from May through November AND sell a portion at our farmers’ market.

I am located in an area that might be thought of as transitional to Zone 4: we do occasionally have temps fall below -30 F, but that is becoming rarer. Our last frost might happen during the first week of June; our first frost during the first week of October. I’ve found from conversations with other local growers that my hillside, south-facing site gives me an advantage in keeping frost away.

The soil here is acidic, sandy and rocky. My garden sits on a mix of glacial till, with rocks from pebble to watermelon in size cropping up continually. There is good drainage; that, and the generally low humidity and cold winters might help with disease. With a few exceptions (potato beetles come to mind) insect damage is usually not too much of a problem here. That is, if you don’t count the damage to the gardener from black flies and sweat bees!