Well, I thought I might be able to tell you about how we built a greenhouse this month, but since spring has been exceptionally slow to arrive, this project has been quite delayed. In an attempt to keep things on schedule, I have been shovelling snow and thawing the ground with large sheets of plastic in order to at least start driving in some foundation posts. The progress is painfully slow, but since I can't control the weather, my best plan is to just keep chipping away at this while I can afford the time.
It's hard to imagine the scope of the greenhouse project from a row of posts, so I have included an image below that shows what the finished structure will look like. It will be 14 feet wide, 42.5 feet long, 9 feet tall, and cover an area of 600 square feet. I have had plenty of time over the winter to order the different parts needed and sort out the tricky design details. Now I am just excited to see it come together over the next few weeks.
In the last field journal entry, I said that there would be a lot more greenery to show for our work this month, and fortunately, this has turned out to be true. The winter conditions outside haven't prevented me from starting seeds indoors! I am happy to report that our basement nursery is now loaded up with our first round of transplants. Most of the space is devoted to onions at the moment, but there are some leeks, celery, and cabbage transplants started as well.
While March farm work can still feel a bit slow at times, things really start to accelerate in April. Today, I will start all of our tomatoes and peppers, along with our first beds of lettuce. In order to have a continuous harvest for our members, we need to keep planting regularly, so there will be something new to plant pretty much every week between now and September.
That brings us to the end of your farm update for the month. Now it's time for me to head outside to see if I can get my spade any deeper into that frozen soil. I'd like to make some more progress on that greenhouse!
