Spring Farm Activities

Greetings! Thanks for checking in on farm activities this week. We are still out there rain or shine planting away and off to a great start at Simington Gardens. We are happy to extend our discounted Farm Share rates through April 17th. The price till then is only $600. This equals getting a box for free! Also please read about our Farm Open House, which will be a fun family day out in the country on April 25th. Come tour and learn about the farm and have a picnic!
In other news, we are keeping up with our planting schedule and running out of room in our intitial propagation house. We need some dry weather to get all those plants in the ground. Also, we have built a secondary propagation house where we move starts that can handle cooler temperatures. Here, Katie is organizing all the trays by type and by those most ready to get planted out so we can easily access them come transplant time.

On the note of transplanting, the transplanter has arrived! Art, our go to team member for anything mechanical or anything that needs fixing has been busy tailoring the new equipment to the farm. Here he is adjusting the seats on the transplanter so we can sit comfortably while far more work gets done than we could do alone transplanting by hand. This equals more variety and availability for our customers as we can get more out in the ground as weather windows open up.

We have only just begun planting tomatoes at the farm and a big project lately is prepping more hoophouses for more. Reid is measuring out the beds so we can properly ammend the soil and make nutrient rich homes for the young plants. We will add compost, minerals and lots of other goodies so the tomatoes will have just what they need to grow and produce delicious tomatoes this summer.

Planting early tomatoes means we have to give them a little extra care. With night temperatures down in the thirties last week, the tomatoes were covered in an extra frost blanket. Martin is tucking them in for the night to make sure they stay warm enough. Tomatoes respond very quickly to any changes and are already making a lot of progress.

And, as always in any farm or garden, we are weeding! Warm and moist air in the hoophouses makes for a perfect environment for early season vegetables. It is also a perfect environment for all sorts of weeds to grow and threaten to take over. Luckily, we have able hands to keep all of our plantings in check. Rip and Devon just moved here to work and live on the farm and spent this morning weeding new plantings of onions, chicories, beets and carrots that we will begin harvesting next month for farmer’s markets and later for the weekly Farm Share beginning in June. By then, only carrots will be in these houses and the other crops will be replaced by warm weather vegetables like cucumbers and peppers.

Thanks for checking in on the farm and supporting us! Remember to sign up early for your Farm Share this year and get a discount. Please the blog regularly for more updates, photos, recipes and farm life news and come visit us in person April 25th.

-The Simington Gardens Team