Working Smart, Not Hard...

April 12^th

 

Now that most of the stuff in the first hoop house has poked through the ground it is time to feed the plants.  We use a mixture of these soy and alfalfa, they are great organic fertilizers.  I liberally sprinkled the rows with the soy pellets and then went back over the rows with alfalfa pellets. 

it will be really interesting to see how quickly the crops in the hoop house grow with the extra boost from the fertilizer.  It has been very sunny the last few days, so we should see some big growth spurts in the next week. After fertilizing I used my organizational skills to clean up all the empty pots.  They have been stacked here since last summer and buried under feet of snow, we will be using them a lot through out the spring and summer and it is much easier when you can see what you have got.

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

This project took me a little longer because I had to inspect a lot of the empty pots for ticks...there is some tall grass behind those pallets of pots and you all know how much I hate ticks.  Once I had finished organizing the pots and checking my legs for ticks I helped John clean out the water garden.  The water garden is gorgeous, partly because it is a water garden but also because John does such a nice job cleaning it every spring.  Cleaning fish poop out of the ponds sounds gross but it inspired an experiment. We use a fish emulsion on a lot of the crops we grow here, it is an excellent organic fertilizer.  I was thinking we could use the nutrient dense water the we pump out as fertilizer.  We saved a five gallon bucket and have chosen a small section of the hoop house to pour the water on.  This would be a great way to recycle some of that water.  We definitely do not value fresh water enough here, and it is going to be interesting to see if it pays off. I will keep you all posted. I will also post more pictures once we have filled the ponds, the plants around the ponds will perk up pretty quick.