Spring Planting Is in Full Swing!

Picture of my Zinnia transplants grown from seed, in the greenhouse ready for the next stage - planting out! Finally it's that time. Shifting gears from starting seedlings mode - to crouching down to get the plants in the ground mode.

I forgot planting season = please pass the tylenol season.. But the pain is surpassed by the excitement of the many more varieties going in this year.

A clean slate:

I title this pic - Farmer - Self Portrait. (ha!)

We did wait a good 2 weeks after the last frost date to plant, and after a major wind storm blew by us, we finally felt safe to shift gears to installing the babies.

Special rush delivery from the mail man. You know how excited some ladies get about their shoe collection? - I have the same fetish about seeds!

Last years irrigation lines have been re-installed and Dumplin charging full speed ahead with the seeder. Boat-load of new varieties to test this season. probably alittle too many. Bachelor Buttons, tons of different type of bouquet fillers, Sunflowers galore, and of course zinnias. Mr. Kitty - Ready to get his farm on !

One of my favorite plants in the whole wide world is Buddelia aka Butterfly Bush. While they do look a little on the scrubby side when they get big, but boy are they the #1 butterfly magnet ever. Its not uncommon to see 10 different varieties of Butterflies just cover one big bush in bloom.

I've got 150 of these baby bushes to plant! The cuttings only took a month to grow fabulous root system. So impressed.

They will be the driving force behind getting more butterflies in the gardens this year and give height and spike-type flowers to our bouquets. They do have a sweet flora fragrance as well. A new Coreopsis experimenting with this season. From the "Incredible!" series. Healthy babies but Notice the lack of soil blocks :( Compared to last year. kicking myself. Cosmos - 3 varieties ready to go in the ground. I did make a terrible mistake this year. I had started out my normal soil blocking methods, but having to start 4 times as many plants this year, I quickly ran out of enough trays early on - My Bad! - I couldn't find the trays I wanted in bulk so I folded under the time crunch pressure rush of spring and decided to use the traditional plastic pots to save myself time (oh, so I thought!). Boy will I never do that again!

With the soil blocks I could hang off the back of the tractor and plop the blocks in very quickly as chris drove the tractor down each row as he would make each planting hole. With the plastic pots this time. I could NOT do that. Rows were made first, then I had to carefully remove each plant from individual cells, or plug trays - before plopping them in. All this while crouching down these never ending rows, to fill the thousands of holes. What it took to do in a few minutes last year - took daaaaays this year...And my back and hips- oy - I feel like a 95-year old lady to boot. hahaha - Lesson learned. No more shortcuts for me. Soil blocks are the bomb y'all!! Plastic pots have their place for starting cuttings or selling plants, but not for the labor intensive work of transplanting seedlings. Soo not worth it. good that I learned this now at least.

Well gardening and farming is all about this learning and sharing process - so we did alot of that at the annual Seed Swap hosted here on the farm. Here are some pictures from the great event.

Couldn't believe the enthusiasm and willingness to share everyone brought with them. Seed Swap was a total success. Had people bringing accordian files full of seeds to swap, pictures and scrap books to show off their gardens to others, and lots of seedlings, everything from heirloom purple tomatoes to - hairy balls?! lol. yes that is the name of a plant, and after a few beers, it made me laugh too. that's gardener humor for ya.

Met so many cool gardeners. Everyone had their speciality - from tomato aficionado, to collector of all varieties of butterfly host plants.

We brought the egg-mobile up to the stand to visit and the kids did get to enjoy hanging out on the farm.

I got alot of ideas if we are to host one again. One of the guests was fellow blogger Erin and her family. She is a Virginia Beach Master Gardener and has a kick butt back yard. She does a great blog about gardening, cooking, living in small spaces and to my amazement knitting and quilting too. Gotta love how she incorporates her two boys into gardening. I'm sure I will torture my children equally with blogging once that day comes! Oh yeah.

Check out her blog "Garden Now - Think Later!" (april's/easter 2011 post) and get a view of the farm from her kids prospective: http://www.gardennow-thinklater.blogspot.com/

Leaving you with the view out my back window. First day of May and the Butterfly garden is in full bloom with view of the coop. With more bugs around, its entertaining to watch the girls perfecting their stealthy bug catching antics. One of the hens will find a bug, squawk, and take off running - then all the others assume she wants to share her bounty and start chasing her around. Imagine the chickens version of duck-duck- goose.

Ah, spring time at the farm - It is a good place to be a chicken- Next week our batch of 30 chicks arrive!! Yippy!

Spring Showers Bring May Flowers

Spring showers have brought in the wind and rainstorms that blow the white bits of flowers off the Bradford Pear trees. Puddles of petals everywhere. They cover the property and collect in the ever growing pools of water around the farm.This shot sums up my morning trip out to the greenhouse to water seedlings. Drainage. One of the challenges of farming in Pungo. Maybe I should be growing water lilies!? Well the good news is, frogs certainly don't mind this ponding. The symphony of croaking night life echoes through the woods and has been amplifying in volume every night. Tadpoles on the way... bring on the future bug catchers! Weekends are turning into one big blur of planting. I regret not getting more sweet peas in during the fall. Couldn't resist starting extras though. The ones sprouting up look so healthy wish I had a thousand more! All this seed starting has made me realize I need to get on the perennial bandwagon, before I wear out. Thankful I had planted some last spring that are coming back and will return a little better every year, without any input of labor from me! This trend will continue -Lavender plants are starting to leaf out. Heavenly scent. My goal this year is to grow more flowers with fragrance, an attribute usually lacking from most commercially grown bouquets. Mints, lavenders, sweetpeas, rosemary, and as many varieties of basil as I can find (from lemon - to cinnamon). - and edible to boot!

If you reap what you sow, hope there is alot of fun in store for us this summer!

Wouldn't be a blog post without a picture of Dumpling. He is busy dreaming up the next project on the horizon - a new sign.

Silly me :) I just assumed we would use the existing sign and repaint. Then I find random napkin drawings around the house of the new designs he's got constructed in his head already. "Gotta match the building babe!"

Installation of Plastic Mulch & Painting!

Noticing an increase in the egg-output, with the turn of spring and the lengthing of the daylight hours. I had to burst out laughing when I collected this one from the coop the other day! Almost thought dumpling was trying to play a joke on me, but nope - it's real! Well you can't find that in stores, lol- Mini-omlet anyone?

Greenhouse is getting full of seedlings awaiting the last frost date. I have them in a hoophouse with a second layer of plastic over them to keep them sheltered from the cool nights.

Have blisters on my hands from all that Soil-blocking - many heirloom veggies this year.

Dumpling staining the boards and decking.

Here's dear dumplin' on round two of paint samples. Had a few emergency "Date Nights" at home depot this week, since we couldn't decide on the color for the farm stand. Originially wanted to match the color with the main farm house, and paint it white, however, it just looked way to bright once a full wall was painted. Opted for a more natural brown tone for the main color,but kept the white trim give it some pop.

Like it? After a few trips to the HD - We think its groovy. Dumpling finished a test wall so the electrician could install the meter box. Another big step accomplished!

On a more fun note, We got to attend a great seminar this month at "The Gardener's Workshop" http://www.thegardenersworkshop.com/ . A class taught by a mentor of mine and fellow flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia - Lisa Ziegler. Lisa's farming philosophy is all about building great soil. We learned about a tractor attachment she uses on her farm called a sub-soiler. Luckily we had not installed our plastic rows yet, and were able to purchase one so we could add another step in our field prep. The attachment is just a simple spade that goes about 18 inches in the soil to open up the subsoil level to receive, oxygen, nutrients, water, and micro-organisms. Without breaking up the clay subsoil level, roots have to grow wide, instead of deep, where all the moisture and nutrients migrate to.

Here is a visual showing the 2 distict layers - notice the topsoil level is the color of a dark chocolate brownie, whereas the subsoil level, is well...more like creamy peanut butter! Hopefully our new tractor implement will open up the clay soil and allow roots to grow deep, and tap into water and more nutrients. A tomato plants root system, for instance, can go down to depths of over 6 ft, if your soil prep will allow -

Got that sub-soiling done just in time for the Plastic mulch to be installed. Love, Love, Love this part! We planned it so much better this time and Chris and I were glad we had learned so much from last year. Including to make the distance apart large enough to take a riding mower through. Makes life alot easier in the heat of the summer.

Took about 40 minutes to get all the rows down thanks to a fellow neighbor - who is a strawberry farmer, with access to a huge tractor and mega - plastic mulch layer.

Here I am shoveling the soil back on top of the edges. Then dumpling drives the tractor tire as close to the edge of the row as possible to pack the soil down over the plastic's edge. Last year we did not know about this extra step and the wind caught the plastic, and blew it off of the rows. What a pain that was. This year is already off to a better start due to a jump on the learning curve!

You can see the uncovered edges here on the right, which can catch easily in blustery March winds and that is no fun. Luckily this year, we had the tractor tire trick under our sleeve.

5 lovely rows all done! So the soil is all prepped and warming up with the black plastic mulch, can't believe tomorrow is the first day of Spring -

Excited that we are hosting a seed/seedling swap here at the farm - April 23rd, 5pm.

This weekend got my hands dirty - Starting seedlings for the stand. Alot of heirloom varieties this year.

Sticking with the technique we used last year - organic soil amendments with old fashioned - soil block method. Only last year I used tiny soil blocks, and this year, will stick to the larger blocks. They give me more wiggle room on the planting date since they have more room to grow.

Have the standard 3-pack seedling trays for the stand.

My little system - once the seeds "hatch"/germinate - under the grow lights and heat mats, they go out to the greenhouse to grow for a few more weeks. My goal is to maintain a steady flow from shelves to greenhouse.

Outside, dumplin was on his own to do list. Well-aged horse manure was delivered to the stand last week and Chris got a chance to till it into the soil before more spring showers started!

He wouldn't admit to it but think he was having alot of fun with this project.
All tilled up and pretty before the plastic rows go in.