This morning, I started cleaning one of the fieldhouses ahead of planting next week. ~2 more beds to go, then spread and mix fertilizer into the top soil. Also heard spring peepers for the first time in 2026.

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Morning First round of lettuce mix growing well; will be ready to transplant next week. Enjoying the bright sunshine as forecast is showing an abundance of Grey skies ahead.

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23 degeees last night. Yet it was already a comfortable 76 degrees by 9:30 in the prop house this AM (while it was still below feeezing outside). Our coldest nights at this time of year are typically clear and calm, allowing for radiational cooling. Good news is clear conditions are also great for morning thermal gain in the greenhouse. We’ll run it back tonight. Old school min/max thermometer are terrific for “monitoring the situation”.

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Tucked in for night. Temps dipping back into the 20s this night. We run a hot box; a “gh in a gh” that is simply heated with a few heat mats. Works well on the cool spring nights. Another table just has row cover over flats aided by a heat cord, and then the rest of the tables in the house are unheated and protected with a couple of layers of row cover. Low energy = not too pricey to keep our starts happy.

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Another nightshade has entered the chat… First few early Jalapeños showing their necks. These were seeded last Monday.

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Expression Onions have been our most consistent variety for the last 4-5 years. Early, big, and mild. Cold winter > a touch later start to onion seeding this year. Which means planting out late April - Early May. Harvest will be late July into August

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Friday morning tomato check; looking good here. Fully germinated flat from last Friday’s seeding session. We’ll let them size up with true leaves and then pot them on in a couple of weeks.

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Yesterday. Scratched the soil a bit to check on conditions in this year’s garlic crop. Found a few ambitious sprouts. Should see continued emergence over the next two weeks. Planted last November; will be harvested in July.

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Morning & Afternoon

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Little bit of water, little bit of sunshine, little bit of bottom heat. 10 day old scallion seedlings.

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Cilantro was on today’s seeding plan. Cilantro bolts rather quickly in the summer heat, so in order for us to have a steady supply we need to succession plant through the season. We sow small successions every 2-3 weeks. We don’t grow it for Coriander. Works well direct seeded; yet we’ve found great success using transplanted plugs. Benefit is you get controlled spacing, which is easier for bunching. Seed 3-4 seeds per cell in 128s, 3-4 weeks to TP; tp earlier is better for bolt resistance in summer. We set out at 6” spacing in 3 rows, so each flat can plant 20 bed feet. We’ll seed 2 flats per succession early season and jump to four for height of summer. Yields typically 2-3 bunches per bed foot, per cutting. We’ll get 2-4 cuttings per planting, depending on time of year and heat. So 40’ can yield a couple of hundred bunches per planting. Variety selection makes a big difference for bolt resistance as well. We really like Calypso and Cruiser both available from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Because cilantro is prone to bolting, many home gardeners only get one crop before they go to seed, so it can be a nice niche to sell to a wide range of folks including gardeners. Harvests for our cilantro will start in May from our fieldhouses, late May from the fields and run into mid November. First photo from this afternoon, second photo from a harvest last season. Onward.

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https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article314486736.html

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when you spend all vacation week having fun with the family, get home and put on a headlamp to do a bit of last second storm prep and repair. Our most exposed fieldhouse (to NE winds) has a few tears in the roll up sides, so we scab some poly on, tuck the base in with snow, and hope the accumulation buries the side before winds ramp up. Home & relaxing now….

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Avocado fun fact: U.S. consumers eat on average 9 pounds of avocados a year if they live on the East or West coast. It’s about 3 pounds a year for the middle of the country

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Delivery of our potting soil for the spring today. We have a great ag supplier a little ways away that delivers with a flat bed tractor trailer and has a well equipped all conditions fork. Didn’t even have to swap my bucket for forks on the tractor; which was nice considering said forks are buried in a snow drift at the moment. Will probably start seeding later this week or next depending on rhythms. One pallet not pictured included smaller bags; cause these slings are good and frozen.

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