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 !!