Greenhouse Glimpse

Emerging tulips

With bright clear skies and more daylight each day, inside the greenhouses it is spring.  The tulip beds are very active and getting fuller and greener by the minute.  No heads forming yet, but it will not be long.

Tulip bed

Sweet peas

As soon as we begin to heat the greenhouses for the tulips we fill the beds.  First in were the sweet peas.

RT planting stock seedlings

Stock

Ian planting seedlings

Ian, our new help, got up close and personal with work at Bindweed planting several hundred seedlings.  Welcome aboard Ian!

Greenhouse Experiment: Anemones

Every year we do a little research and development on the farm.  This year we converted one of the hoop houses to a heated greenhouse, doubling our early production real estate and heating costs.  Last fall we sectioned off half of one of the greenhouses with a plastic wall and planted anemones, ranunculus and hellebores.  It has been such a mild winter that I have had fresh flowers in the house for weeks and we now have anemones coming out of our ears!

 This is a great shot of the greenhouse division--anemones on the right, ranunculus on the left and RT placing transplants at the back.  He removed the plastic "wall" last week to make ready for new transplants but it was just behind all the greenery.

 We spent a long day in various squat positions last week transplanting over 3,000 new starts.  It looks like RT does all the work here but only because  he is NOT to be trusted with the camera.  I was right there with him--he removed the transplants from the plug tray and placed them and I set them in.  We filled the first greenhouse to capacity with snap dragons, Bells of Ireland and matricaria.

 Then we moved to the newly converted greenhouse and planted a long row, 100 feet, with the same varieties.  The ground in the middle of this photo is full of tulips planted last fall.

RT is demonstrating the most difficult planting position--the up against the greenhouse double knee side stretch.  It's a killer!

Planting

We have such a short growing window that instead of direct seeding all of our plants we order seedlings in plug trays. This gives us a six week jump on some tender annuals and a good head start for perennials. Our plants need to be seeded and started weeks before we plant and there is a high demand for seedlings each spring so we must make our orders in the fall. Second guessing the weather is the real challenge, we check the long term weather forecast (ha--may as well consult the Tarot deck), look at prior years, pick a shipping date and hope for the best. This year has been a real crap shoot and seedlings have been arriving daily in the pouring rain. UPS and FedEx trucks roll up and down the drive leaving boxes and boxes of plants--seedlings, annuals, perennials and shrubs.

A new shipment of seedlings from Bluebird Nursery.

Upon arrival I unpack the boxes, water the trays and hope for a break in the weather. The forecast is good, but the ground is so saturated we cannot work it.

Unpacking nursery shipments is always exciting--I'm challenged by some of the creative packaging, thrilled with the contents of each box and curious to where it will all go!


Plug trays--plastic trays filled with seedlings packed in finger-sized plugs of soil--watered and waiting to be planted. As you can see by the shadows, we have sunlight!

RT, the maestro, gets creative, re-purposing space in the green house and hoop house for some of the new seedlings. Planting plugs is low work--I crawl, squat and duck-walk down the rows planting seedlings in the support netting. (As the plants grow rows of netting support the stems and prevent the plants from foundering.) Carey, our new wonder woman helper, makes the work go much faster. We start out stiff and chilly but soon the sun has warmed the hoop house and the work goes quickly.

An excellent shot of the support netting, the plug trays and Carey, our new wonder woman!

Carey and I are planting snap dragons. The seedlings are very small and the plugs themselves are only the size of the tip of my finger. They must be pulled gently from the tray and then set into the soil. The snap trays hold 250 seedlings. In no time we have set out planted several trays-whew!