2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Mar 10, 2019

7 more trays of peppers sprouted last night.. 6 more still waiting to see any hooks.. annuums here we go...clock is now ticking on getting plastic on the high tunnel, don't have room to pot them up indoors!

Those trays were quad seeded and I'll split the transplants, should get somewhere north of 3,000 transplants off of them.

Starting ~31 trays of lettuce, kholrabi, some tomatoes for market sales, etc this week in the evenings

Walchit · Mar 10, 2019

Just build some 49' windmills lol.

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

All that rain this weekend, on top of frozen ground, was not good to me, had about 6 1/2 acres flooded out. Worst of it was under about 3 feet of water...

Got me a tractor today..

Cat 2 hitch

Grow room is getting greened up

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

The stick grew out of it's shoes...

It's new main stem is as thick as the original..

I managed to get the original label off last year's 4" pot intact, and moved to the new pot

It's been christened The Duke, because it's such a tough sumbitch

The "I refuse to die" habanero is .. not actually a habanero. Dunno what the hell kind of seed got down under the habanero cells and sprouted in the 1020 tray underneath, but it's not a habanero...

I'd found it lurking beneath the 72 cell insert on that tray of habaneros, and planted it on a whim..

Tonight we seeded trays 73-100. Whole mess of veggies. Leeks, cabbage, tomatoes, kale, cauliflower, romain lettuce, butterhead lettuce, bibb lettuce, radicchio, kohlrabi..

internationalfish · Mar 12, 2019

TrentL said:
All that rain this weekend, on top of frozen ground, was not good to me, had about 6 1/2 acres flooded out. Worst of it was under about 3 feet of water...

Hoooly crap, sorry to see that.

But that big green thing is a seriously awesome new toy.

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

internationalfish said:
Hoooly crap, sorry to see that.

But that big green thing is a seriously awesome new toy.

Thanks!

Yeah the flooding is bad news for my wheat crop.

But, on the flip side, we are officially "all caught up" .. for now. Finally got all the trays started that should have been started March 1st.. we have the grow room completely full now.. tractor and attachments are in.. picking up rest of greenhouse crap I need on Thursday..

Was hell putting in an 18 hour day today, but wanted to get caught up bad enough it was worth it. Still fighting influenza, so pretty weak, but ... now I can go back to 8 hour days for a couple days anyway.

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

Oh I ordered a flamethrower for weeding.

And a few precision seeders for veggies.

internationalfish · Mar 12, 2019

TrentL said:
Finally got all the trays started that should have been started March 1st.. we have the grow room completely full now..

Was watching videos from janitospeppers earlier today... between the two of you, my retinas are now seared with little green V's. Not complaining, mind you, just informing.

TrentL said:
Was hell putting in an 18 hour day today... Still fighting influenza...

I suppose at least you should sleep well tonight. :shocked:

TrentL said:
Oh I ordered a flamethrower for weeding.

Walchit · Mar 12, 2019

Nice to see you got your pond done Trent! What do you gotta do to make sure that doesn't happen when you have plants in there?

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

Walchit said:
Nice to see you got your pond done Trent! What do you gotta do to make sure that doesn't happen when you have plants in there?

I did have plants in there.. my wheat crop was planted last fall and was / is underwater..

As far as what to do, dunno, it's a natural low spot and the ditches along the road only carry so much water

TrentL · Mar 12, 2019

internationalfish said:
Was watching videos from janitospeppers earlier today... between the two of you, my retinas are now seared with little green V's. Not complaining, mind you, just informing.

I suppose at least you should sleep well tonight.

Yes, I got to sleep in until 10:30 AM. I can't hear a damn thing now either, my ears are plugged and ringing from the flu. Half the people in my family were sick before or during my grandmother's visitation / etc last week and I was the last one to catch it. So far everyone who has got it has lost their hearing for a few days. Really weird stuff.

Ahh well, I don't need to hear to work

internationalfish · Mar 12, 2019

Yikes. Well, way to look on the bright side, I suppose.

Hawkins · Mar 12, 2019

What do you use for irrigation? Drip lines? Also how far apart do you space your peppers? I was going to do 2 feet apart.

TrentL · Mar 13, 2019

Hawkins said:
What do you use for irrigation? Drip lines? Also how far apart do you space your peppers? I was going to do 2 feet apart.

Chinense 2 feet plant to plant spacing, 6' row to row center. We did 3' last year and it was a harvest disaster, couldn't GET to the plants without crawling on your belly (for habanero, reapers, etc). End season harvest on scotch bonnet, fatalli, etc was destructive; there was no way to get in to the rows except by ripping out plants as you harvested.

So yeah, doing 6' row centers this year on them. Otherwise in mid-late September you'll be tearing plants out to get to plants.

Annuums we used 1.5' inter-plant spacing and 3' row spacing which was fine. Although this year I'm changing that up too, I'll do double rows 1.5' apart, staggered plantings, on 6' centers. This is because of our new water wheel transplanter - I've got 5' wide mulch, so I'll set up the transplanter with two water wheels, punching 3" holes every 1.5 feet with 1.5 feet between rows. Then we'll harvest from the walk paths (where the tire tractors rolled during transplanting).

For irrigation we are doing 2x driplines (for redundancy) on each row buried under plastic mulch @ .65gpm each. The tractor attachment has spools for this and will lay the dripline in the raised crowned beds it makes. Because we're running plastic mulch on crowned beds, which is non-permeable, the plants will be nearly totally reliant on irrigation this year. Late season they'll get their roots down in to the 24" water table, but for most of the year they'll only be drinking when we turn the valve. I'm building manifolds with mazzei injectors so that I can give them a booster shot of screened rock phosphate or fish hydrolysate if they show any signs of nutrient deficiency (although, I don't expect them to, since they're going in to where I had nitrogen fixing beans planted on 4,600 row feet last year).

bpiela · Mar 13, 2019

With all that water, you could pick up a Jet Ski and enjoy it while it lasts...

TrentL · Mar 13, 2019

Well, I tried to be loyal as long as possible but think this year's order might be the last one w/ PL. None of the seeds I bought this year from PL have germinated, meanwhile everything else has popped. I've got 4 blank trays still at 10 days, should have seen at least some of the annuums up by now. All of the trays I planted with forum member seeds, stuff from justin, refining fire, and our own saved seeds have popped.

TrentL · Mar 13, 2019

bpiela said:
With all that water, you could pick up a Jet Ski and enjoy it while it lasts...

Haha yeah if I wasn't getting my ass kicked by influenza A I'd have been out there on my kayak this week!

As it is, hard enough just to keep trudging forward. What should have been just another 15 hour work day Monday turned in to an 18+ hour marathon because I'm so worn down.

Arthropods · Mar 13, 2019

TrentL said:
Well, I tried to be loyal as long as possible but think this year's order might be the last one w/ PL. None of the seeds I bought this year from PL have germinated, meanwhile everything else has popped. I've got 4 blank trays still at 10 days, should have seen at least some of the annuums up by now. All of the trays I planted with forum member seeds, stuff from justin, refining fire, and our own saved seeds have popped.

That's pretty consistent with my Anuum experience from PL. Chinense have been fine but in my Anuum tray this year all of the empty spots are PL seeds.

stettoman · Mar 13, 2019

Jeez Louize Trent, this has to be the busiest glog on the interweb! Every time I come back I've missed pages of you!!

We're a few weeks behind you, flooding-wise. Though I'm on high ground here, The superfarmers along the Red River are looking to have a doozy of a Spring. It isn't how much snow accumulates, it's how fast that snow melts without interim freezing. We're having one of those "melt-at-once" kind of thaws coming...

Humanizing your crop....is this a tried and true practice? My daughter liked to name every critter (including the bugs) that graced the back yard. It only caused great wailing and gnashing of teeth when it was either Stripes the Chipmunk or my chokecherry harvest a few years ago...Took my 12 year old two weeks to talk to me again...

TrentL · Mar 14, 2019

Been a week since I took pictures of the girls. Some pics are a little blurry, hard to tell if the camera is in focus up there, lights are pretty bright.