Portage River Farm
Notes on our struggles and successes on our family farm in rural Michigan.
(Pinckney, Michigan)
02 Apr Thu 2009
Better Late Than Never!
I keep telling myself that this is a year for building and that it won't always be this crazy. I suppose it doesn't help that my enthusiasm is driving me to do absolutely everything that I can this year rather than taking things on at a more gradual and reasonable pace. For that reason I am finding myself perpetually behind. It's a good thing that I'm having such a great time!
The vegetable garden project is an excellent example. My ambitious plans led me to order a very large selection of vegetable seeds (see what I picked here). Each day the mailbox has been stuffed with little packages from seed companies who are more than happy to take my order and indulge my lunacy. The seed packets are now stacked up around me and impatiently waiting for me to get them started.
If there is a meticulous way to go about something, that is what I favor. The problem of figuring out of when to do what for the garden led me to the idea of making a calendar (see it here). I bought a gardening book for Michigan and combined that with information from the Internet to pull the plan together and get it organized.
Of course, as soon as the task was done I could see that I was massively behind in getting my seeds started indoors. For some things such as onions it was obvious that the boat had sailed so long ago that I will have to give up on those for this year. I decided to tackle all o
f the seed starting for March in the last few days of the month and hope for the best.
The pictures show the contraption that I built to encourage the seeds to do their thing. I bought four fluorescent two-tube light fixtures and rigged them from the basement ceiling so that I can adjust the height as the plants grow. I also bought seed starting trays and organic seed starting soil mix and rolled up my sleeves.
The lights must be working because it
has only been three days and all of the trays now have little seedlings in them. Now that they are on the way I need to do something about the varieties that are listed in the calendar that are supposed to be in the ground outside already such as peas, shallots and turnips. Since I have nothing to prepare the soil for planting other than a hoe and a shovel, I am now turning my attention to getting some better tools!
The vegetable garden project is an excellent example. My ambitious plans led me to order a very large selection of vegetable seeds (see what I picked here). Each day the mailbox has been stuffed with little packages from seed companies who are more than happy to take my order and indulge my lunacy. The seed packets are now stacked up around me and impatiently waiting for me to get them started.
If there is a meticulous way to go about something, that is what I favor. The problem of figuring out of when to do what for the garden led me to the idea of making a calendar (see it here). I bought a gardening book for Michigan and combined that with information from the Internet to pull the plan together and get it organized.
Of course, as soon as the task was done I could see that I was massively behind in getting my seeds started indoors. For some things such as onions it was obvious that the boat had sailed so long ago that I will have to give up on those for this year. I decided to tackle all o
f the seed starting for March in the last few days of the month and hope for the best.
The pictures show the contraption that I built to encourage the seeds to do their thing. I bought four fluorescent two-tube light fixtures and rigged them from the basement ceiling so that I can adjust the height as the plants grow. I also bought seed starting trays and organic seed starting soil mix and rolled up my sleeves.
The lights must be working because it
has only been three days and all of the trays now have little seedlings in them. Now that they are on the way I need to do something about the varieties that are listed in the calendar that are supposed to be in the ground outside already such as peas, shallots and turnips. Since I have nothing to prepare the soil for planting other than a hoe and a shovel, I am now turning my attention to getting some better tools!
John_3
12:00 AM EDT