Well!! I need to get into the habit of adding a few more posts to this puppy.  If not for those out there in cyberspace who are trying to “follow along,” but for myself to have a history of what’s going on.

So here at the end of February, things are great, I would say.  The spinach is looking really good in the greenhouse.  Today was about 50 degrees and the next few days look about the same.  I turned the drip system on this afternoon for probably about 4 hours.  Maybe the 3rd time I’ve watered the spinach since November or so.

Just harvested about 25 lbs earlier this week and could easily pull out another 25 right now.  Hoping the total yield for the winter will be greater than past years, as I’ve widened my beds (4ft) and narrowed the walkways(1ft) to make way for more spinach.  We’ll see how it goes.

Had a nice compliment yesterday that my spinach tastes sweeter and better than another local farm.  The exact reason was that the other spinach tasted/smelled like fish….probably fertilizing with fish emulsion.  That has been recommended to me in the past by more experienced farmers who understand that plants aren’t absorbing as much nutrients from the soil this time of year due to the cold and lower microbial activity, so it makes sense.  For no other reason than, I forgot, I haven’t fertilized and lo and behold my spinach won the taste test!  Hopefully I have taken good enough care of the soil with the proper ammedments that I don’t really need to fertilize, or can at least get away without and keep producing delicious, sweet spinach.  I’ll roll the dice.  It looks good!

So look what showed up today….

Turmeric and Ginger for 2017!!

I ordered 10 lbs of ginger(this year the variety is Blue Bubba) and 10 lbs of turmeric.  This will be my first year with this ginger variety and the first year with turmeric.  I know turmeric is hot right now, so I don’t suspect I’ll have any issues getting rid of it.  I imagine it just be a matter of producing enough to make a decent profit.  Last year wasn’t so hot.  I made a little on the ginger, but the yield was about a third of what I was hoping.  I need to be diligent about my feeding this year…both of these are heavy feeders.  Planning on getting a soil test done in the next few weeks while the ground is thawed out enough to get samples.

I’ll get this into trays and covered with potting soil(Fort Vee) today or tomorrow, and probably get a few herbs started.  Let the games begin!

Very excited!

Rock on!