Happy New Year!

Kabuli Chick Peas. Easy to grow and super productive.

Its a brand new year, and despite our fields being completely flooded because of this incessant rain, I am in a pretty positive space. I was going to write today about the politics of seeds and why it is so important to support small scale seed producers (like us!), but meh.

I’m way too excited about the upcoming season and crop planning. This is the part of the year that everything is perfect because my plans are all down on paper or in my head and I haven’t screwed anything up yet. Its all good!

For example, for one bed in one of my greenhouses I have written down that I am to start spinach by January 15th inside under lights to be ready to transplant as soon as they are ready. The bed will be all amended with compost and a light dusting of oyster shell, and I will be able to plop them right in. Once I have harvested them several times and they are starting to bolt, I will have a bunch of cucumbers ready to transplant in where I will have hoed through the spinach. They will be left in place to provide a mulch and to decompose. I will also have lettuce transplants ready to put in beside the cucumbers, a row on either side of the cucumbers at the edge of the bed to utilize the entire bed while the cukes are still small.

Once the cucumbers are finished (and these are cucumbers grown for both harvesting fresh and for seed) in September/ October, I will “clean up” the bed by cutting off the cucumber stems at soil level and sprinkling some more compost. I will then transplant more lettuces into the bed for a final crop.

Will this work? I have done this before but it never works exactly to plan. Sometimes I fall behind in the weeding so things are a mess, or the spinach bolts too early before the cucumbers are ready, or its still too cold at night to put the cukes in. Anything can happen, and something usually does to keep things less than perfect.

But right now, on paper and in my head, the year will run smooth like a well oiled machine.