We are slowly getting the vegetables planted. The garlic of course went in last fall and is doing really quite well. The conditions have been very good for the garlic; an early spring following a very mild fall and winter, lots of moisture, not too hot and very well mulched with leaves and straw. We have thirty rows of potatoes planted just this past week and a third of that is already mulched with leaves and straw. The leaf mulch will retain moisture (helping to maintain uniform growth), keep a more uniform soil temperature, suppress most of the weeds and add fertility to the soil as they breakdown. The photo below is of the potato rows hilled up with the plow attachment on the wheel hoe. Aerron makes a pass along the one side and comes back along the opposite side. To the far left in the photo there are two rows shown covered with leaves and topped with a cover of straw, and this side of that, the rows are covered with leaves only. The straw acts to hold the leaves in place and prevents the wind from blowing the away. Stays quite good even with the strongest winds
We have also done a lot of work transplanting various trees, including fruit trees, and pruning and tending to the already established fruit trees. We are slowly getting a good number of fruit trees many of which will bear fruit again this season, apple, pear, peach and some plum. Probably within another year we will have a significant amount of fruit and will be able to sell some as well as provide for the CSA. The top photo from two weeks ago is of of two sweet cherry trees in full bloom. they now have little cherries frming and if not too many birds find them we should have a good harvest in a few weeks. The photo below is of our shrub cherries which are a sour cherry and again this was two weeks ago and they too now have many cherries forming s and we’ll likely have a good harvest from these. As can be seen, we also had a great crop of dandelion.
We do make good use of the tractor, the horses are retired … for now. There are a few jobs in the garden for which the tractor is a real work horse, and which would be very time consuming for us without the tractor. One important job for the tractor is working up the soil in the garden using the disc harrows. A few, maybe many, turns around the area being prepared with the discs set at a large angle followed by one or two straight across passes at a shallow angle will have the ground prepared for planting, seeds or transplants or tubers. Another job is moving the hay or straw bales in from the road where we have our bale delivery guy drop them. He cannot bring his large truck and trailer in closer to where we store the bales. A few times we have needed to use the two furrow tractor mold board plow but mainly the soil prep jobs are left to the disc.