Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Planting Spuds, etc.

Now that it's getting warmer, we're in the full swing of planting. It's been pretty wet and rainy lately, so we've had to hustle on the dry days to get everything planted. Last week, we planted 375 pounds of potatoes! We planted them on top of the hill this year, since the whole of last year's crop was washed away in the flood.

We have a new tractor implement this year that digs the trenches and covers them up again, which makes the process so much easier and faster. We used to use rakes to do it all by hand. Even with the aid of the tractor, it still took all day and almost half an acre. The weather was nice, and we had fun working together as a family.

Planting potatoes is fairly simple. You cut up your potatoes into pieces that have at least one eye each. Then you plant them, cut side down, in a trench and cover them up with about 6-8 inches of dirt.
We space the pieces 12" apart, using the precise method of "eyeballing". ;)

Jacob is a very talented farmer. He can talk on the phone and plant at the same time.
I'm so thankful that the Lord has given me such a pretty place to live!
We've also been setting out lots of lettuce, kale, and bok choy transplants.
I spent almost all day on Saturday planting all kinds of seeds - spinach, radish, turnip, beet, Swiss chard, carrot, etc. I'm trying an experiment with carrots, so I'll post about that soon.

CSA season begins in a month! I can't believe it.

-Tricia Ann

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