Hey there, friends of the farm! As I write this from my office in the barn, snow is falling steadily outside. It seems like Fridays are snow days lately, hey? We’re happy to report it’s not affecting us or our crops too much at this point, though! We did have one more repair to make on the greenhouse plastic, but we’ve otherwise managed to survive it all unscathed. In fact, snow actually adds a nice layer of insulation on top of our strawberries, which helps them survive colder weather more successfully.
All this white stuff does make it hard to believe that asparagus will be popping up through the soil in just two months or so from now, though! Time is starting to move awfully quickly.
In the meantime, we wanted to fill you in on a few more updates. Our heated greenhouse continues to get a little fuller each week, with more and more seeded trays making their way into the warmth. We now have onions, shallots, Swiss chard, spinach, and mustard greens on the go, and it’s so fun to see them develop each week!
Remember a few weeks ago I mentioned how our onions and shallots would eventually need a haircut? Well, the time has come! Over the next few days we will be trimming these little guys down so that they don’t get too top-heavy and start to topple over. This process is made possible thanks to a modified tobacco trimmer.
Rob grew up on a farm, and his parents (my grandparents!) first grew tobacco. Our family has since transitioned out of this crop production, but we still have a lot of the equipment and supplies around here, so we decided to put some to use!
It’s really quite simple, albeit time-consuming: we set the trays on the tabletop (fashioned out of a wooden skid placed on some sawhorses) on which the trimmer is built and slide them through one at a time. The top parts of the onions are trimmed off and swept out of the way, and then we return the trays to their position in the greenhouse. We then use a battery-powered leaf blower to blow all remaining onion tops off of the trays, and sweep them up off of the floor. This trimming process ensures the plants stay upright and strong and continues to promote healthy root production.
Blog post written and photographed by Alex Chesney, RD