Digestive Aids

To follow up on last week's tough decision to provide extra protection to the tunnel greens or not, we did decide to play it safe and not throw caution to the wind. Better safe than sorry my friends. After all, once the hoops and covers are in place all we have to do is remove them once in a while to harvest or vent on hot days. We also assume that at some point this fall and early winter temperatures will actually bottom out at a damaging degree. This time around the lows didn't get quite cold enough but based on prior experience we never really know. Earlier this fall we woke up to temperatures in the mid-20s after a forecast low-30s night.

Of course, we played with the variables a bit. We only covered portions of tunnels where crops haven't been harvested yet except for the curly kale in the high tunnel, which we left to fend for itself. Plants are too big to safely cover (fabric needs to be suspended well above plants to allow for that thermal warm air pocket; if it rests on plants we've seen worse damage than actually no cover). Kale is also super hardy. In Caterpillar Tunnel 1, where we've already harvested head lettuce and lettuce mix (which will regrow), we left endwalls open. In Caterpillar Tunnel 2, previously harvested arugula and mustard greens, that are happily regrowing, were left uncovered next to covered plants. We'll be able to observe success or failure of cold tolerance of these crops.

Besides dealing with the complexities and intricacies of cold season growing, we're tackling other items from our master farm and life winter to-do list. Seeds, strawberry plants, fertilizer, soil amendments, and greenhouse supplies have been ordered. Potting soil and potatoes should be secured this week. The master seed list and seeding schedule has been updated but we still need to extract the greenhouse and transplanting specific list as well as cross reference crop family bed feet and planting dates to facilitate updating the master crop rotation. There's a lot of maintenance and repair work to do: fenceline clean up and rehabilitation (pesky deer have begun thwarting 8' netting); barrel root washer overhaul; annual tractor and machine servicing; employee housing remodeling; etc, etc, etc. It's more or less the same as past winters though for sure there are more big projects going on now and I can't relax quite as much as I'd like to just yet. At least we're enjoying a pretty nice and dry autumn which will allow for outdoor admin-balancing work and fun time.