as you may have noticed, it's rained for about the entire month of april! the ground swells with moisture to the point of creating a quicksand-type situation in some areas. the hope of prepping beds in time has been pushed back and pushed back and we're officially 2 weeks late with most of our first crops. ahhhh!!!
breathe...it will all be alright....
on the bright side, we did get one planting of mixed greens in and it is coming up beautifully if not a little too thickly. this is my third year using a six-row seeder to plant my intensely planted greens and spinach. it's a great little tool but it definitely takes some practice and even though i've had it for a couple years, i really haven't had much practice with it....sooooo...i tend to overplant in the fear that i'm not dropping any seeds at all. the beauty of it is the ability to plant an entire 3' x60' bed in about 10 minutes; the negative side is, due to the quick and clean nature of the thing, it is difficult to tell if it's drops seeding at the rate you want (or at all). so, like i said it takes a bit of practice.
we also planted a little bit of our head lettuce: a lovely variety called "magenta" which we also grew last year and were very pleased with the results. i say we planted a little bit because there are still more than half of the transplants to go in the ground and all the romaine transplants as well. we simply don't have the beds prepped to put them in. plus, as you would expect, we are not the only ones being affected by these hardy spring showers. our compost source, which was supposed to deliver 50 yards two weeks ago, has been unable to sift the mucky black stuff and therefore no compost yet. so even if we did have our beds prepped, we'd still be in want of compost.
so i try to remain calm despite this anxiety-provoking situation and remain very thankful that we have a consistent non-weather-dependent crop like the sunflower shoots to sell at market otherwise we'd just be out of luck.
