Oh a planting we will go...

It's always great to get the whole family involved with planting and here Eli is pulling the cart of tomatoes.  Roughly about 80 tomatoes, (10 varieties) were planted on Saturday, with several peppers and ground cherries.

It has also warned up enough that I felt good about planting the okra but we are using row covers to protect it from getting scorched by the sun and to keep a little heat in.

Weeds

Can you see the green blanket that lays across the soil...well it is WEEDS!! Here I am using a simple but affective practice to combat some of them. Earlier this spring i tilled the soil about 6 inches deep but today I am only tilling about 2-3 inches deep. The idea behind this is to kill the top layer of weeds and to not stir up any new weed seeds underneath in the soil, thus combatting weeds. 

Another practice we have for combating weeds is laying down a paper mulch and covering it with grass clippings. This we have found is very effective and tends to last the whole season.

The greenhouse is overflowing with green!

Something new I'm trying is planting okra. Here I have it ready to go to the garden.

The tomatoes are patiently waiting for it to warm up so they can be planted!

Cool weather crops

Cool weather crops are those that like cooler temperatures to grow. So getting them in early is a must! At HBF we plant broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, spinach, and Brussels sprouts, along with peas and raddish and they are all considered cool weather crops. On May 6th after school we had a play date and planting is what Molly chose to do. 

She helped plant cabbage and broccoli.

Spring has sprung!!

On May 2, we we're busy weeding strawberries and planting potatoes. Laura and her son Henry are getting firsthand experience.

Unfortunately, the cold weather has kept them in the ground so it wasn't until a few days ago that we could see green rows of potatoes.