Early June Greenhouse Activity

Lettuce, ready to find a home in the great outdoors! Getting so big in the greenhouse it is a chore to get water to the roots...the umbrella of the plant can often be obtrusive when trying to water, additionally, the roots begin to dominate the soils capacity to absorb water and the plants dry out much faster. These flats of lettuce are on their way out, following recently transplanted flats of celery and, of course, the hundreds of chiles an tomatoes plated out earlier this spring.




Cabbage? I didn't even check...if not cabbage, broccoli. This stuff comes in waves throughout the farm as Lee and Wayne try to always keep it available as staple crops. In fact, this is what we were sowing again this week. The stuff we seeded this week will be the fall harvest and some of it will go into winter, for example the brussels sprouts. Other crops seeded this week include another succession of lettuces, cauliflower, cabbage (lots of sauerkraut to come!), broccoli, romanescos, etc...All of that sea-green stuff. All of this is done according to the moon phase and we were in a hurry this week to get seeds into soil while the timing was right.

An overview of celery to plant out in coming weeks. The Thanksgiving crop? Perhaps. Planted too early the celery will flower as it is a biennial and reacts to temperatures that are too low. Planted too late it will never mature prior to fall/winter frosts. We have a good time trying to get the perfect celery specimen to harvest each season. It is one of my personal favorite growing experiments. Not to mention the tiny seed size. It is a challenge to drop just one seed per cell, one must focus very hard or else thin later on which can prove to be a lot of extra work.



Number one all around assistant Dominique and her side kick, Marisol, work hard to drop seeds in soil, organize flats, follow instructions from Lee, brew soil to fill flats, water greenhouse during high afternoon temperatures, etc.... This is a nice shift from the farm stand, the CSA, the commercial kitchen and all the other places Dominique had divided her energy for the farm these days....not to mention she is trying to invest time and energy into her own farming adventures this season! If there is one thing for certain, farming offers way too much work all the time. If you could do ten things at once, you might be able to get to it all...

Transplanting Celery

Look how long and tall these baby celery plants are....more often they are about half this height when they are move out of the greenhouse to find new home in the field for the season of growth. This is a prime example of a "leggy" plant, or something that has been greenhouse grown. It may remind you of a nursery plant that looks big, lush and green, but also seems to lack the strength and vigor of a more hardened off specimen that might better endure the challenges of nature that the outdoors is bound to introduce. Either way, these plants were going into the ground yesterday. Lee could only hope that the next few days of environmental conditions would not damage the perfect little celery plants, loved and coddled for weeks in her greenhouse. Celery is always a focal point as it is a nice staple for the CSA....additionally, Lee is always trying to time the harvest to correspond with Thanksgiving (good in stuffing and other harvest season recipes).


Here the celery is placed in a bed just north of the chiles. If you walk far enough into the field you will find them and may observe their progress along with all else. This is just one of many phases of planting, we were working in the greenhouse with a younger generation of plants yesterday too.

Lee and Jose follow the tractor driven by Pablo here. An attachment that draws duel furrows in the bed as Palo slowly drives creates space for the plants to be inserted quickly in the ground, soil falling back over them as the tractor proceeds forward. Transplanting at Tierra is one of my many favorite activities to observe...mechanically efficient on a small/large farm scale versus the back breaking methods I might employ in my own garden.

Greenhouse Management

Another set of brassicas (cabbages, cauliflowers, broccolis) is packed up and ready to head out to the field today. There is some celery and celeriac that is ready to go in the ground too.

This is good timing as things need to be moved about in the greenhouse. As dictated by the waxing moon phase that favors seeding above ground annuals and flowers at this very time, Lee and I worked to put a few more seeds in the soil yesterday including cabbages for sauerkraut (large varieties), colorful cauliflowers (graffiti/purple and cheddar/orange), and some savoy cabbages, more celery, etc...

Here is a look at the brussels sprouts we seeded one week ago, emerging at a sporadic rate, Lee and I spent some time fussing over their conditions. As the season warms, some of the micro-climates within the greenhouse are less suitable (too hot) for seeds and seedlings that require lower temperatures to germinate like a lot of these items we are seeding for the fall harvest time. By moving out the seedlings that are ready for the field, we create more room for other flats of seeds that would prefer the cooler locations within the greenhouse. So we spent a little time finding the ideal homes for all of these little guys....

An overview of flats full of seeds demonstrates some of what we are fussing with here. Keeping track of the soil and air temperatures is constant work and shifts all day long depending on the outdoor conditions. A while back, Lee installed some cardboard above this area to filer the intense light a little bit. When we were working with chiles and tomatoes, the intense heat and light was a bit more favorable. As we work with less heat-loving seeds amidst the early summer time heat, the challenges have shifted to keeping the temperatures from rising too high.


In the cooler, outer room (where the seedlings harden off and live out their final days prior to transporting to the field) it is also getting quite warm. Yesterday, we spent some time putting extra shade over the roof of the greenhouse in order to filter the sun a bit as the temperatures remain high this week. Everything this season in the greenhouse is still a bit experimental since it is a brand new structure.

Hopefully the TLC we invested yesterday will pay off with high rates of germination. It is frustrating to spend so much time working with tiny seeds and to come back and see failed results, but it always happens one way or another. Seeding is such a balance of conditions, healthy soil, balanced water, perfect light and temperature, it is really a full time position to watch over all of this stuff.

In closing, I got another nice shot of celery and celeriac seedlings. The brilliant midday sunlight enhanced the vibrant green of these guys and inspired the photographer in me yet again. They are headed for the field next and hopefully to our tables by Thanksgiving to Christmas time.

Today is a great day to come out in the afternoon and try to catch us putting these little transplants into the ground. If you are stopping in to pick up your CSA share today, think about bringing a hat and setting aside 10-20 minutes to go and check out what is happening out in the farm fields. It is quite a treat to get to see all the steps behind your food production. Make the most of it!

In the Greenhouse-Thinning

Yesterday afternoon Lee and I found time to work in the greenhouse. It gets tougher this time in the season now that the CSA is in full weekly operation, the farm stand is open Tues-Sat, and the farm fields demand more time than all of us could ever devote all on their own.

There are small plants in the greenhouse that demand attention too. These are mostly those we seeded a couple of weeks back including celery, amaranth, and a slew of new brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, etc).

As Lee set to work sowing another round of celeriac seeds for the fall, I focused my efforts on thinning the current inventory of seedlings. Above is cabbage (I think, could be broccoli, I wasn't paying full attention after a while as I was in high speed thinning-mode in an effort to accomplish all we could in our single greenhouse afternoon). When seeding, you can drop one seed per cell assuming this one seed will grow and produce the plant you are attempting to have come transplant time down the road. Sometimes the seed packet contains a less than ideal germination test rate on the label as a warning that this might be a bad idea. At least two seeds per cell doubles your chances of having that germination success. This also uses up twice the seeds. In some cases, a small pile of a few seeds is better when it comes to things that are prone to poor or slow germination. This is the case with the celery and celeriac. Additionally, sometimes the seeds are so small that it is nearly impossible to drop in just one seed, like the amaranth. One must juggle the seed success rate, with personal ability and experience, with seed supplies, and then optimal greenhouse conditions and watering to follow through and make all this effort worthwhile. Lots to consider at once as usual and this is just in the seeding stage of farming!

So, my job yesterday was to thin all these plants down to singles to prepare for their new phase of growth and life prior to transplanting. Now that the seeds are up, we can see the success, in this case the cabbage seeds popped up ideally and we are thinning it down to one plant to eliminate the growth competition and have the single seedling ready for transplant when that time rolls around. I could have just sown one seed, but what if that seed never came up? Then I'd be here three weeks later with no plants. A little extra insurance is good when you are providing food for people who are relying on you to do so.

I snipped away the small stem of the brassica-type plants, lettuces and amaranths. I found the celery plants a little easier to simply weed down to one plant as the disturbance was minimal to the roots. This is moves along much quicker since I can drop the cumbersome scissors and work with two hands, doubling my efficiency. Technique with this task aims to optimize growing conditions for the plants you will save, that means the least amount of root disturbance while you eliminate the competition.

The tiny little celery plants above now have all the room their roots systems need to grow big and strong to prepare to go out into the wide-world that is the farm field.