April 27-May 2 (Day to Day)

Monday: This morning not a lot happened in the field due to the heavy rains over the weekend. The students split up and a few of us went to the greenhouse and started seedlings including watermelon, lettuce, and swiss chard. The rest of the students planted hakurei turnips and mulched the strawberry beds. 

Tuesday: The soil was still really wet today so planting was delayed again, and on top of that something is eating the head lettuce in the field (maybe a rabbit?). To help with this animal problem we covered the rows of lettuce with Reemay (a thin polyester fabric row cover). The heavy weekend rain also uncovered the recently planted pea seeds so we spent the rest of the morning raking soil back on top of the seeds.

Wednesday: This morning we continued to work on the hoop house and prepared a couple of beds for planting. In the afternoon Shawn and I planted a one bed of spinach and one bed of salad mix. After planting we worked on preparing a bed for planting more cauliflower and broccoli, however we ran out of time and hopefully the planting will happen sometime this week. 

Thursday: It seems rain is the theme of this week, and as you might have guessed it rained all day today. So all of the students used the time to catch up on repairs, cleaning and other projects that will be necessary when harvests begin. I repaired a washing station for potatoes and other vegetables (basically a large table made out of a screen). Other students worked on cleaning up the herb room (where we dry and store herbs harvested at the farm).

Friday: This morning was very productive. First of all we planted A LOT of winter squash in the green house, including acorn, carnival and butternut. For the rest of the morning we split up and some of the students worked on repairing the hardening off area(a small hoop house where plants come form the warm greenhouse and acclimate before going out into the field). Mara and I went back to Stella Gardens and began cutting seed potatoes in half to prepare them for planting and increase our numbers. In the afternoon, Mara and I met up with cooperative instructor Dan for beekeeping. 

Saturday: Today was a very busy/productive day of finally catching up. I worked on shaping beds and planted mustard greens (three varieties including red giant, tatsoi and mizuna). After that was finished I moved on to planting arugula. Other students worked on mulching the walkways between onion beds, setting up trellises for the peas and planting pac choi.