Spring in any market garden is a very busy time. On a new farm, it is especially demanding. In early April, we started hundreds of seedlings in the south-facing windows of the farmhouse. We also started construction of a greenhouse, which will give us more room and better growing conditions for seedlings next year. We cultivated the fields for planting, rooted out weeds for the first time, and added manure.

In mid-May, we started hardening off seedlings on the back porch, and then transplanted them out in the field. We also direct seeded vegetables such as radishes, beets and carrots. We lost our first planting of lettuce when temperatures unexpectedly dropped to –8°C one night, but we have new lettuce in the field catching up now.

Hot dry weather in May hit our young brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, etc.) hard and meant we had to get our drip irrigation system in place earlier than we had hoped. We recently covered the brassicas, squash, pumpkins and other cucurbits with row cover to keep out the pests.

It’s June now, and with the rain and heat in recent weeks, most of our crops are growing nicely. It looks like a good season is in the works!