Protecting plants from hungry birds
While growing in the greenhouse the seedlings are protected from almost all of the dangers of the outside world so once they get planted they need some assistance is starting on a strong foot.
Even though we start getting them adjusted to the weather by setting them outside during the day for a few days and then overnight for at least one day before we plant them they can still be affected by the weather when we plant.
We try not to plant when its windy as that dries out and stresses the transplants so they are not able to focus on growing their roots and getting established as quickly as they can.
Once their roots are established they will start to grow and at this time of the year every new leaf speeds up how fast they are growing thanks to photosynthesis.
The one vulnerability these tender baby plants can’t protect themselves from is birds eating them. The birds love small tender leaves filled with water and the only way the baby plants can protect themselves is by growing bigger leaves the birds don’t want to eat.
But that takes time and the birds alert each other when something new gets transplanted that looks scrumptious so we have to help the plants not get eaten.
We put some light row cover over top the beds of our newly transplanted greens like lettuce and kale to make it as hard as possible for the birds to get in. A few still do but it reduces the damage by a significant amount.
When the birds are able to eat the leaves of the transplants it reduces the plants ability to grow since the leaves that photosynthesize are reduced to almost nothing more than stems.
That significantly increases the time it takes for the plant to grow to the stage where we can harvest it whether that be a one-time harvest like broccoli or a continuous harvest like kale.
The row cover is also used for our first summer transplants to keep them slightly warmer on the nights where it is a little cold for them and could cause some stress. That is a way to get slightly earlier first harvest of those veggies if we are able to plant them earlier than usual and protect them when they are most fragile.
We initially were planning to come back to the Wednesday Davis Farmers Market starting today but we are delaying that until March 20 when we hopefully have more veggies to harvest.
A number of our overwintered veggies we have finished harvesting and are waiting on our spring plantings of them. We still have lots of carrots, lettuce, chard, kale, beets, green garlic and broccolini along with another week or two of leeks.
It’s only the start of March but this week we are direct seeding our last carrots of the spring. They take more time to germinate in the field when its colder out and then grow slowly so we will likely be harvesting them in May/June.
We don’t want to have carrots when its really hot because they do not enjoy the hot soil.
Additionally the last planting of beets and arugula are happening this week and we’ve already planted all of our spring turnips.
In the greenhouse we seeded the first melons of the year. All of our other melon plantings are going to be direct seeded but this first one is a little early so its going in the greenhouse.
Once we transplant it out in the field we will cover it in row cover to help it grow while the temperatures warm up.
