Preparing for Spring

Village Farm Team,

Now that some time has passed since the freeze we’ve been able to discern which crops are worth trimming and which ones won’t be bouncing back. Our kale, collard greens, and chard were trimmed of their dead and damaged leaves and already have healthy new growth coming in! Our Brussels sprouts still look a little rough but they have green growth on them so we will most likely be giving them a good trim as well. There were also a couple of crops seeded right before the freeze like a row of scallions that have germinated over the past week. Overall things are definitely starting to look more green and spring-like on the farm.

As we mentioned last week, the upside to losing some of our crops is that it has made it easier to map out which rows will be transplanted with tomatoes. Bed preparation has involved plenty of weeding as the freeze didn’t seem to set these pesky plants back by much. It’s looking like we will have fourteen total rows dedicated to tomatoes so we hope you’re ready for a tomato feast! We’ll be focusing on transplanting our cherry and heirloom varieties first followed by BHN and big beef varieties. Weather permitting, our tomatoes will begin going in the ground either at the end of this week or next week.

Planting has ramped back up over the last week as we get back on track for spring. A few of our raised beds were planted with late winter/early spring crops from the greenhouse like kohlrabi, lettuces, and cilantro. We direct-seeded some quicker growing crops like radishes and arugula which are already germinating. We also direct-seeded a few rows of bush beans (green beans) to add to our spring crop diversity. Here are the varieties we seeded: Provider, Cosmos, Dragon’s Tongue (a purple and yellow streaked heirloom), and Soy (which will be harvested young when the pods are tender).