April 23, 2007

Welcome to the wonderful world of organic gardening! I am begining this a little behind schedule, as we have already been working and planting for the past month, so I will play a little catch up. This entry describes what we did on April 23.
After planting the leeks last week (we started them from seed inside the greenhouse, and then transplanted them to the larger of our plots), we needed to side dress them with our handy compost. (By the way, ou compost is made from lots of scraps from the restaurant, coffee and tea grounds, manure courtesy of Kelly and Alex's lovely horses, eggshells, fish carcass... everything to make it delish for our plants). After side dressing, Mark and I (Mark Baerwolf is a chef/garden expert working with Chef Alex Young to make this thing happen- I will preface that he knows a lot more than I do, and I will always be basically speaking his words of wisdom, his garden gospel, if you will) made rows between the leeks to plant some lettuce from seed. We have a great seeder that has a prescribed settings for different seeds, so all you have to do is pick out the correct spoke for the seeds you are planting, put in the seeds, and the wheel will turn as you drag it through the row, dropping the seeds, while a chain drags behind you, covering up your newly planted seeds. It is a miracle. We planted Bibb and Red Leaf lettuce. All day Chef Alex worked hard on installing the very complex irrigation system. He began with an enormous bag of parts and screws and tubes and manage to fit everything together to effectively create a system for the whole farm. As puzzling as it was to me, he seemed right at home with a blowtorch in one hand and a pick axe in the other. By the end of the day large pipes were running all along the property, hooked up to the main source, and ready to be merged with drip lines. We later took Broccoli and Kohlrabe seedlings from the greenhouse and put them in the ground. In between the seedlings, we also planted some from seed..... Until next time....