I can't believe I am finally planting.....

     Most of my winter projects are finally completed so it's TIME TO PLANT ! Hallelujah. Seed deliveries have been arriving and my green thumb has been getting twitchy.
     The soil in the hoop house is ready for planting so I started with it. I like variety so I planted multiple selections of spinach, bok choy, carrots, beets, radishes, kales, chards, mustards and lettuces. I also planted sugar snap peas, kohlrabi and broccoli raab. Soil temperatures in the hoop house have been fairly warm so germination should not be an issue with most of these seeds. If the February weather would have been a bit more frigid, I may have presoaked some of those seeds.
     That was a good couple of days work. I hope that the seeds appreciate all the preparation and hard work needed to make them happy so far.
     After completely planting the hoop house, I began seeding trays for future transplanting into the hoop house. I have begun several trays for broccoli, tomato, onions, leeks and romaine transplants. I hope by the time these seedlings are ready to transplant, a spot will have been created by a hoop house harvest.
     In a few weeks I will begin seeding trays for the rest of the MicroFarm.

The last of the hoop house improvements.....

     Space in the hoop house is precious.  So I designed the floor plan with only a few narrow aisles.  The aisles look wider than what would be needed now, but wait a few weeks when the vegetation is spilling over from the raised beds. 
     The beds were created when the soil was removed to create the aisles.  Of course I wasn't going to use any treated wood, but I also wanted to be conscious of using any material that would need to be replaced over time.  I want the MicroFarm to be as earth friendly and sustainable as possible.
     Another project completed today was the creation of four heat sinks.  The greatest concern of an unheated hoop house is the cooler temperatures after the sun sets.  These heat sinks consist of barrels filled with water which will heat up with the daytime sun and slowly release their stored up heat throughout the night.  The water-filled barrels have the extra benefit as an emergency water source if the outside storage totes freeze. 
     I also placed some cement paver stones in the areas that will see the most foot traffic and around the washing stations which could become muddy.  These should act as additional solar heat collection units.
     It's beginning to look like a professional MicroFarm.
     When can we start planting !

Starting with a good soil....

Looked like a bit of garden art,
but actually some mud which was
left behind by the tractor to dry.

  Since it is my first year on this property, I had sent soil samples from the hoop house on the Green Kuisine MicroFarm to the University of Wisconsin Soil Testing Laboratories. Today I received the results. I expected the findings to be very encouraging and I was not disappointed.
     The MicroFarm's hoop house will be a work horse and I plan to grow produce in it nearly year round. It's true, some chefs search far and wide for winter grown, hoop house spinach since the colder growing conditions produces a crisper, sweeter harvest.
     With the soil currently fallow, it was a great time to give it a simple organic boost for the upcoming season.
     I began amending the soil with some of the MicroFarm's very own compost to add lots of living micro organisms and to improve the water holding capacity of the soil.
     Then I added small amounts of organic blood meal (nitrogen source for leafy greens); organic bone meal (a phosphorus source for healthy roots and a calcium source to prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes); organic sea kelp (every mineral on earth exists in the oceans and many have been absorbed by its plants) and a few other minor supplements.
     I gently worked them into the topsoil and thoroughly watered. I wanted to make good environment for the microbes/bacteria in the soil/compost to begin breaking down those fertilizers to a form usable by the plants.
     Still nothing planted ..... I can't wait much longer !!

Making improvements to the hoop house.....

     During some unseasonably warm days these past few weeks, I made some modifications to the hoop house on the Green Kuisine MicroFarm.
     I began by digging a trench completely around the base of the hoop house. Then I attached some hardware cloth to each of the base boards. The wire mesh was attached so nearly two feet of it would be buried into the trench. This was to deter any furry creatures from burrowing into the hoop house to enjoy the warm environment and some tasty vegetables.
     Then, I filled the trench with active compostables so they could work as a heat source and as a frost barrier from the cold exterior ground. If this works well, I will repeat the process next fall. If it doesn't work as well as predicted, I plan to fill the trench with pea gravel so it can drain away the water from winter thaws and overhead snow melt off from the hoop house. *A spring project of mine will be to design and construct a water collection system for the hoop house to use during summer rains.
      The side panels of the MicroFarm's hoop house are designed to roll up and down depending if the weather forecast is for clear skies or for stormy conditions. This puts allot of stress on those thin sheets of greenhouse plastic. They were beginning to show some wear and several holes were clearly present. I was already working with the trenches below the panels and the weather was good for another day so I stretched the rehab project so it included new side panels for the hoop house.
     I sure hope that the work and foresight to do these projects now lends itself to some great harvests in the future.
     I am dying to plant something !!