A much different start to this year than 2023

It is very hard to compare each year to previous years but we’ ve already had such a different start to 2024 than we did to 2023.

The first few days of 2023 were filled with rain and lots of it. All we could do was seed veggies in the greenhouse, organize the barn and do some office work.

Right as the soil was drying out and we could get into the fields we got another few inches of rain last year.

This year we have not got much rain so far in January or all winter long. We also have had a warmer and sunnier winter which has been nice and encouraged the plants to grow more than they did last year.

There is forecasted to be rain lasting a few days in about 10 days but that is still so far out on the forecast who knows if that will actually happen.

When it is cloudy we can keep the greenhouse fully closed to trap all the warm air in there to help the seeds germinate but with the sunny days there is a lot more managing of the greenhouse because the seeds don’t enjoy when it gets above 85 degrees when they are trying to germinate.

We try to keep the soil temperature in the trays on the germination mat in the low 70s as that is optimal and so far we are happy with the even germination we have been getting.

The trays of seeds that are not on the heating mat are taking longer to germinate and they are not as even as the ones on the heating mat.

After a big week of seeding last week we didn’t have much to do this week just seeding bok choy and spinach in the greenhouse. We mostly direct seed both of those veggies but we like to transplant an early planting so that we can start harvesting earlier than the ones we seed in the colder soil at the end of January.

With the sunny days we have been having lots more work in the field can be done. We have been doing a little bit of weeding the overwintering onions which are looking good and ready to grow once spring happens.

A big task we got accomplished this was pruning all the fruit trees on the land. The only fruit we sell are the figs but there is such a wide variety of crops that we get to eat whenever we want.

It has been very fun learning to prune fruit trees over past few years and how they react to being pruned.