Happy Spring!

I really wanted to post last week on the first day of spring, but I spent all last week hustling to get my hoophouses finished, which they now are. The picture above was taken before I really fixed up the plastic to a more permanent state. I tucked the plastic under on all sides and then buried the frame because yesterday after work, I came home to find the plastic flapping in the 20mph wind gusts like a flag. Now it's all secure. Today after work, I put down black weedblock fabric inside both houses. It was 80 degrees inside around 4:00PM, when the outside temperature was about 50.

Later this week, I'm going to move some seedlings inside. I should also fill it with manure or compost, but I may just do that later, since everything inside will most likely be in trays for now. Once the plastic isn't needed for the summer, I'm going to put construction fence over the hoops and use it as a trellis.

Saturday saw a significant drop in temperatures to the nearly-80 degree highs we had last week. Last night it was in the low 20s, and tonight should be about the same, accompanied by the 20+mph winds again. The rest of the week will be cool, but not as low as yesterday and today.

It's probably a bit too early, but I'm getting anxious about putting out these onion seedlings that I started before the year even began. I may move the trays to the hoophouses, and put some in the ground to see how it goes.

This week, I started trays of spinach, broccoli, cabbage, collards, arugula, chard, basil, marigold, kohlrabi, and spearmint. Some are experiments, like the basil that I didn't even thresh out of the seed pods. I want to see what will happen. The marigolds are really early, but I want to see if I can get them a head start to an earlier bloom with the heat inside the hoophouse. The spearmint will go straight in the ground and I'll worry about it spreading later. I'd rather have something I like spreading than the mugwort and knotweed. I guess we'll have to see what happens. I'm going to start a few more trays of seeds tonight and put them into the hoophouse tomorrow. I still need to do a few things for the hoophouses, like get something to clip the plastic back when I go inside, and some boards to hold down the ends of the plastic so I don't have to cover/uncover out of the dirt every time.

There's also a mountain of manure to spread, and some tilling to do. I'm finally starting to get the no-till message, but the soil needs a lot of work. I'm going to work my way up with cover crops, green manures, and composted manure until I can start to see some progress past the compacted red mess that I have now. I should have planted a cover crop before winter, but it didn't work out. Now that the ground is workable, I've got LOTS to do. Hopefully I can get it all done in the next few weeks, and take a breather to get married.