Spring Field Work

Well we just had another spring soaker, but before the rain I managed to get a bunch of ground work done and begin the regular outdoor plantings.  This spring has been warm, but its been wet.  My field was just barely dry enough, but I new there’d be more rain coming, so I went for it.  I started by mowing and disking the ~4.5 acres of cover crop and spreading lime over everything.  With only a few days for cover crop breakdown, I spread rock phosphate, some azomite, cow manure, and chicken manure over the ~1.5 acres that I’ll be planting between now and the beginning of May.  Over this area, I then chisel plowed, rototilled, marked beds, and began sowing and transplanting!  More time for breakdown, and a slightly drier soil would have been ideal, but now that the field is soaked again, I’m glad I got in when I did.

Our standard beds are 100’ by 5’ (with ~3.5’ of bed top between the tractor tires).  We were able to direct seed 3 beds of carrots, 3 beds of snap peas, 2 beds of beets, 1 bed of spinach, 1 bed of radish/turnip, and a 1/2 bed of cilantro & arugula, then transplant 3 beds of broccoli, 1.5 beds of lettuce, and 1 bed of baby bok choi.  We just managed to get all the direct seeded beds covered with rowcover before the rains began.

I was hoping to get more pictures of field prep (especially the manure spreader in action), but I was working solo that day.

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