Working on the tractor

The focus this past week has been on starting to prepare areas for the upcoming plantings. Almost all of the fields have been in cover crops since the fall so there is a multi-step process to prepare them.

A flail mower that is attached to the tractor mows down the cover crop and then we will run a disc over the fields a couple of times to break it up. Letting the soil sit for a few days or longer will help dry it out a little bit so it is easier to work with.

To finish preparing the beds we will use a roto tiller to break up the soil even more so that we can seed and transplant in it. Each pass with it creates one bed that is about 40 inches wide.

The dry weather has helped us get into the fields for the last two weeks and it looks like there isn’t any rain coming soon so we will be able to continue using the tractor in the field.

The greenhouse is starting to fill up and everything is germinating including the tomatoes and eggplants which is very exciting. From our estimates there are about 26,000 seeds in the greenhouse currently.

Potentially at the end of next week we will transplant our first successions of cabbage and lettuce in the field.

Over the last two days we have seen the first of the crops we direct seeded start to pop out of the soil. As expected, radishes are the first ones to germinate and everything else should follow in the next few weeks.