Well, its March 13th, we just got about 20″ of snow, its going to be in the single digits below zero tonight, and I have ginger seed from Hawaii that I’m trying to propagate!  How’s that for dichotomy?!  Yep.  10lbs of ginger arrived yesterday from Hawaii.  It came pre-cut, which is an option you have when ordering ginger.  As instructed by another grower, I counted the pieces and have 160 pieces, which ideally will turn into 160 ginger plants.  In theory, 10 lbs will turn into 50 to 100 lbs of baby ginger by mid-September.

I kept them in the trays, on top of about .5″ of potting mix(Fort Vee from Vermont Compost, for those keeping score) last night.  They were on the heat mat which is set at 78 degrees.

This is the temperature control for the heat mat.  Ooooo….aaaaaahh…

This afternoon I covered them with Fort Vee and watered.  A couple growers I talked to to said it might be a good idea to cut the Fort Vee with perlite or something else to lighten it up.  The ginger apparently does not want to be sitting in heavy, wet soil, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem based on my experience with using Fort Vee for my seedlings last spring.  The plan is to keep them in the trays in the house at 70-80 degrees for the next 4-6 weeks, during which they will sprout.  At that point, I will transplant them into containers(size and specifics to be named later) and put them in the greenhouse, where I will be keep ing the temperature at a minimum of 60 degrees(May 1st-on). This is pretty exciting.  The whole greenhouse is pretty exciting as is, but ginger seems pretty cool and there aren’t too many folks growing it, which makes it more marketable.  I will make an extra effort to document the ginger’s progress as the season progresses.

So this is a general idea of how the spinach is looking right about now.  I have to say, I’m not thrilled.  There is not enough, and what I have is rather small.  The amount has a lot to do with rodents.  See below.

The little buggers(voles) have pretty much trashed close to a third of the crop.  Not only did they chew off the nice big leaves, great for maximizing the small amount of photosynthesis taking place during the low light of the winter, but they also ate the heart of the plants.  This is where the new leaves come from.  Once the heart is gone…well, you fill in the rest.  So far, the snap traps have been the most effective.  I have a couple electric trap zappers which have only got one tiny one, so far.  This year, I need to not make a compost pile near the greenhouse(they live in it all winter eating fresh spinach salad) and keep the grass trimmed low around the greenhouse.

As for the size of the spinach, it is my guess that the cold winter has played a big part.  I seem to remember things looking a bit bigger by this point last year.  I actually looked back at a post I made on January 4th of THIS year(you can, too), and the spinach looked great.  The deep freeze and voles hadn’t really hit it up yet.  Regardless, I fertilized during a warm spell a few weeks ago and am hoping that some warmer weather will eventually show up and I will be able to finish the spring with a strong harvest and hopefully come close to what I sold last year.

As for the starts program for this year, I will be starting my first seeds this weekend.  Mostly onions and tomatoes for transplant in the greenhouse in hopes of early tomatoes to sell in June and July to the local co-op.  I caught wind of plants being sold ready to transplant in the next couple weeks…they will have early tomatoes!  We’ll see how early mine show up.

If you read all this, cool!  I’m happy to share my thoughts and experiences and apologize for not sharing more often… but maybe that’s a good thing.  Stay warm, be present and enjoy!