Finally, some plants in the dirt!

But first, we decided we needed a little more dirt, so we bought a yard of very stinky, organic compost/dirt. Based purely on the age of our respective spines, we have officially switched to the no-till method, so we hauled it over in wheelbarrows and then just lightly raked it in.





We planted peas next to our trellis - both snap peas and snow peas.




Also into the ground went kale, calabrese broccoli, pac choi, baby leeks and endive - all starts from our cold frame.




Looking good...we were all smiles. Spring=hope and unlimited possibilities!

Other garden activities

Poulsbo, the next town north of us, about 12 miles away, has a great place called Frank Raab Park. Raab Park has a Community P-Patch, a picnic shelter, a sand volleyball court, a big open field, a basketball court, a skate park, and a leash-free area for dogs. Perhaps more uniquely, it also has a Youth Garden, a 10,000 square foot garden planned, planted and tended by youth. Its goals are to help kids develop a curiosity about the natural world, educate families about the connection between food, nutrition and health, and develop community interest in gardening with youth.

Cheryl, as part of her Master Gardener activities, regularly volunteers at the Youth Garden in Raab Park. This week, she also enlisted the assistance of Grover and Mark. Hoop house construction!

Progress

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I was in California for two weeks, and not much was happening with the garden anyway.

March, in like a lion, out like a lamb. Where's that lamb - there are only a few days left?!

The weather did get just a little bit warmer and there was a little more sunshine, so our babies are progressing nicely. And we are done (we hope) with bringing our babies in each night to keep them from freezing. Some of them will be going in the ground this weekend!

Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister

This book came to my attention when Grover called to tell me that he read in the paper that the owner of Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island was going to be reading from his newly-published book at our local bookstore the next day. Since Mark had just graduated from a fascinating and enlightening hog butchery workshop on Vashon, I wanted to hear what Kurtwood Farms was all about.

Turns out that Kurt Timmermeister was a successful chef and restaurateur in Seattle, who bought a parcel of land on Vashon - first to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city after work but which eventually led to his becoming a full-time farmer.

At first I was put off by his writing style. By put off, I mean that I found it distracting. I had to force myself not to pick up my editing pen and go to work on it. This is a personal problem of mine. There can be a fairly minor problem with a sentence that causes me to be unable to focus on its meaning. For instance, page one includes the sentence, "What was significant to me about this entire process was there was integrity." That "was there was" bothers me greatly. How about the not-quite-as-bad "What I found significant about this entire process was its integrity."?

After awhile, I stopped this mental editing. Kurt didn't claim to be a writer. He's a restaurateur turned farmer. And this book is not a "city boy moves to the country and lives off the land" story, written to entertain us or warm the cockles of our hearts. He is honestly and sincerely telling us the story of his farm, what it means to him, and how it developed over time. It is realistic and it is also fascinating.

The book imparts a great deal of information as well as being the story of Kurtwood Farms. I realized how true this was when I got to the end of the book. It actually has an index, where you can look up calculus, coagulants, cannibalism and Cargill, among many other things, just in the C's. This wealth of information is generously shared by Kurt with his readers, in a charming way, and with much humor.

He's tried a variety of farming activities, so there's something for everyone: vegetables, bees, chickens, raw milk, eggs, pigs, vinegar, cheese-making and especially Jersey cows. His descriptions of the butter will make you sorry you have given it up for olive oil. The descriptions of slaughtering the pigs may not be for everyone. His explanations of the farm's finances will discourage you from trying it yourself.

I'm actually going to read it again. But my biggest take-away first time through is this: food deserves our respect. If you eat meat, stop and think about the animal that gave its life for your dinner. If you're eating a potato, stop and appreciate the effort that went into growing it. And know what you're eating; it should be "food" rather than a "food product."

And by the way, Kurt was charming in person, as well. You will enjoy his book. The full title is Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land.

The pH

We needed to raise the pH level of the soil, which the soils test had indicated was moderately acidic at 5.2-6.0. Most vegetables prefer something closer to the neutral range, 6.5-7.2. The solution was to apply lime, so today we sprinkled 50 pounds of lime on the plot. Although you typically see "dolomitic lime" at the nursery, Grover and Cheryl found "plain lime" because dolomite would have added magnesium our soil did not need.

We also added some mulch at the end next to the trellis, where the pea starts will soon be going into the ground.

After some debate, we pulled the black plastic back over the soil when we were finished. It is keeping the soil from becoming too soggy and wet in this rainy weather, and it is warming the soil a bit on those days the sun makes an appearance. It is evidently also making a nice home for some mice or voles, but maybe they're being useful by helping to aerate the soil.

Soils Test Results

Remember how I mentioned that us four (aging boomer) veggie-growing newbies, all with too much time on our hands because we're "between jobs", couldn't just plop some seeds in the ground in the spring? No, we needed to do research, take classes, figure out ALL the rules, make diagrams, create Excel spreadsheets linking the range of possible first and last freeze dates to the exact moment those seeds should go in the ground, and where they should go into the ground taking into consideration the next 5 years crop rotations as well as the best and worst companion plants..and more, until we drove ourselves nearly mad.

All this isn't really slowing us down yet, since spring is not here. Well, I see crocuses blooming everywhere and the daffodils are getting close, yet it is still freezing at night, with the threat of more snow to come. Grover added a light bulb to the cold frame but he is still taking the plants into the house at night. Hopefully, it will start to warm up a bit by the end of this week.

Anyway, part of our research was to have our soils tested by a lab. We paid $47.50 (I'm keeping track of all this, as we are competing with "The $64 Tomato") for a soils test. We took carefully collected samples of our soil to Twiss Analytical, Inc. in nearby Poulsbo. The results are attached. Basically they show that our soil has plenty of nutrients, but that the pH is slightly more acidic than we might want for most vegetables. This can be remedied by adding lime. The $47.50 probably saved us money because we were poised to add some amendments that we do not need. The soils test results came with some other good information about how to amend the soil, which vegetables like what pH, etc. We think it was well worth doing. Although I will note that we could have just plopped our seeds in the ground without knowing, and been in the same place. But now we know. And we have something new to do: we're off to shop for lime.