Freshman Farmers and Peaceful Valley Staff share some basic growing tips throughout the season. From starting seeds to using row covers, we hope to provide future farmers with the necessary resources!

Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is now shipping leeks, garlic, onions and shallots! 

Leeks are a wonderful winter crop. Here on the north coast of California they will grow now until mid spring. They add a lot of character to the otherwise dull landscape of the rainy winter season.

Swiss chard and kale are two additional crops that add delightful color contrast to the beds. Chard now comes in a rainbow of colors and textures as does the kale. These crops also mingle very well together in the kitchen. Whether you are making soup, a veggie tart or swiss chard rolls (think cabbage rolls but better) it is always a pleasure to dine on fresh winter produce picked just moments before consuming.

The leeks arrived with very detailed growing instructions. The first thing I did was remove them from the box and place them in a bucket with about an inch of fish emulsion solution, mixed at one tablespoon fish emulsion to one gallon of water. That would hold them over until the next day for planting.

Leeks are heavy feeders, meaning they consume large amounts of nutrients. In anticipation of this fact I had already added a yard of compost to my raised bed. I also added some bone meal for phosphorous and gypsum (calcium/sulphur) because we tend to have acidic soil. That project completed it was time to plant!

Well almost, first I had to trim off all the roots and tops down to the innermost leaf that I could see. Once that was completed I had a nice sized bucket of starts.

Now on to the planting, I dug six inch trenches, placed the starts about two to three inches apart in the rows and six to eight inches between each row. This is a bit closer than is recommended but I will be harvesting every other one in the row as soon as they reach one half to three quarters inch.  I have a recipe for steamed young leeks with a mustard sauce that is a family favorite. I filled in the trenches and watered heavily. As you can see in the photo they look great. As a side note, I ordered ten pounds of starts and that planted a one hundred square foot bed perfectly, noting the close spacing. (Five - twenty foot rows)

If you would like a visual to this story Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden has an online video on how to plant leeks that is really good. I even learned a trick, albeit too late for this season (I need to check my emails more frequently, if you subscribe to the weekly videos they will show up in your email box, how simple is that). If you pay attention to how the leaves are growing you can place them in the trenches so the leaves grow into the space between rows, and not into each other. That will make for a much prettier and less crowded growing space. Yes, I contemplated going out and giving my starts that were not positioned correctly a twist, but decided there were too many other projects yet to do, the leeks would be fine.

PESTS: Leeks, chard and kale are not bothered by much here, especially in the winter season. There is one exception to this rule however. GOPHERS: gophers love, love, love leeks, onions, garlic and such. Did I say loved?

For you folks following my progress, let me insert a brief update on our gopher situation. I will follow this post with another one giving a review of the traps we use and their effectiveness.

Okay, back to the gophers. They will eat a lion’s share of leeks if given the chance. We usually don’t mind sharing but this last season it got completely out of control with entire cabbage heads disappearing into the ground. So my Husband began trapping them. To date we have gotten ten gophers and one mole! With a few yet to catch. They are very determined critters. 

When my daughter built this raised bed she intended to make it gopher proof. She placed two layers of small chicken wire at the base of the bed, stapled it three quarters of the way up the sides, and still the gophers got in! So if you have gophers and you are going to build raised beds, you might want to check out the gopher wire offered by Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply. It was also mentioned in the leek video. It has smaller holes and is galvanized to protect against deterioration.

Well I am off now to finish building a chicken tractor (portable pen) that I intend to use to keep my beds weeded during the rainy season ahead.

One of the coolest things ever just happened here. We had been contemplating adding yet another handful of hens to the laying flock, and finally decided this was the weekend.  We inventoried the cardboard to-be-recycled pile and made sure there was enough duct tape to build a brooder.  Check.  Waterer, feeder, heat lamp?  Check.  Chicks from our local feed store, which has an awesome selection?  Check.  The will to raise chicks in the garage again… well, it had to be done. Rewind to at least… Read the rest of this article »

As we were beginning to modify our planting beds back in February, we were fortunate enough to have a family friend let us borrow a Honda Rototiller (Model FR800 if you’re curious) to break some ground. When compared to hand hoeing, this tiller was a godsend; but after one 10 hour day of non-stop tilling back in the spring, I was out of commission for a couple of days afterwards.  The Honda certainly had some power to it, but harnessing that power effectively resulted in more fatigue than… Read the rest of this article »

This weekend I received some help getting onions into the ground.  My neighbor, Jacob, and my girlfriend , Marcy, made the trek from Eureka to Orleans.  The conditions were great for our spirits (sunny and a cool breeze), altho a bit warmer than ideal for transplanting onions(around 70 degrees F). We started several waves of onion seeds in the greenhouse in early and mid February.  Our method was to line a square planting tray with newspaper, then fill it with moist soil.  We then made five furrows… Read the rest of this article »

Not long after the earwigs went to town in the greenhouse, they started causing havoc in the rows.    As I’ve been looking for ways to control the damage, I’ve often read cautions that the insects are most often beneficial, or at least, harmless.  This includes the book I most often consult for organic ways to deal with pest and disease problems.  (I would agree with this -  is so interesting that neither Matt nor I have had this type of problem with earwigs before.  But we… Read the rest of this article »

The good news:  the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and things are starting to grow! The bad news:  it was a rough week for young plants around here.  Between the sudden strong winds (gusting into the 30 mph range, according to the forecast) and an explosion of earwigs, new transplants in beds and seedlings in the greenhouse had a good chance of being throttled.  Luckily, we have only set a few tender plants out (lettuces, and some too-early bush beans just to see).  The other… Read the rest of this article »

An herb spiral is a unique permaculture technique that creates a bunch of microclimates in a small space. This allows for planting sun and shade loving herbs all together. I first heard about herb spirals last summer when Matt attended a permaculture course with Toby Hemenway. I knew I wanted to incorporate one into our farm. A few weeks ago, my best friend Jessica was here and it seemed like a good idea to build an herb spiral in our “kitchen garden” area. Luckily for me, she agreed.… Read the rest of this article »

Floating rowcover, agribon, reemay… whatever you call it, this lightweight, translucent, water-permeable, spun-bonded plastic sheeting is awesome!  Though it is plastic that eventually gets shredded and ends up in the landfill, this material has a myriad of uses that help my crops succeed: 1) Warmth bonus - Even the lightweight version that I use manages to add a few degrees of warmth to my young plants.  The protection from wind is definitely a part of this.  I use it on the cool weather… Read the rest of this article »

In Eliot Coleman’s book “The New Organic Grower”, he describes an intriguing process of starting seeds. Instead of the traditional plastic containers and flats, he recommends using a tool called a soil blocker. The soil blocker is filled with “blocking mix” and presses out squares with an indent for planting your seed. I was immediately on board with this method. It reduces our plastic consumption and provides a more suitable home for our seeds (less likely to dry out… Read the rest of this article »