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Starting Seeds

We started sowing seeds for transplants this week for lettuce, cabbage, and broccoli. A couple of weeks later than normal.We looked at the weather pattern we have been having since November and decided 2010 would not be a year to try and get stuff transplanted early.

Decided, such a strong word…like we scientifically analyzed the situation and came to a conclusion. More like rolling dice, flipping a coin, or casting chicken bones under the light of a new moon. Just a feeling.

A good transplant is 4-6 weeks old. After that, they start to become stressed. They are running out of nutrients in the starting mix and are becoming root-bound, meaning the roots are searching for additional nutrients and start circling the container they are in.

We succession plant, which means we are continually sowing seeds for transplants and transplanting. We have transplanted 4-6 week old transplants and 6-8 week old transplants of the same variety, which we had to hold in the greenhouse due to the weather, side by side and the younger transplants take off and always do better than the older ones.

So, we are hoping that in 4-5 weeks, the sun will be shining, bluebirds chirping, and we will be able to get in the field.

Potatoes

Our seed potatoes, 825 lbs of them, are inbound from Ronniger Potato Farm in Colorado and we expect delivery early next week.Our most popular potato last year was Bintje and is similar to German Butterball. We ordered 500 lbs of those.

We will be planting 125 lbs of fingerlings that seem to work well for us, Russian Banana, Austrian Crescent, and Red Thumb.

We have two shots in the dark. 100 lbs of a red-skinned potato called Rio Colorado and 50 lbs of Russet variety called Sierra. Russets are supposed to be non-friendly to the southeast and I have never tried to grow any so I thought I would give it a try.

I ordered the 100 lbs of red Rio Colorado for the very worst reason any experienced market farmer orders any kind of seed stock…it looked pretty in the catalog.

Traditionally around here, you should have your potatoes in by St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe in a good year but we have had a lot of seed potatoes rot in the ground following that advice. From our experience, late March to early April is more conducive to a good potato stand.

This is why I have never participated in the North Carolina “Education” Lottery. Not enough risk. We are going to take a thousand dollars worth of seed potatoes, cut them up, bury them along with $300+ worth of organic fertilizer and soil amendments on unproven ground, and hope they grow.

King Rooster and Queen Hen

Beauty the Rooster and Peckers the Queen hen. Both have interesting stories.We have a very small flock of 8 very old non-laying hens in a wagon on pasture. Beauty and and Peckers were part of that flock, even though they are young.  Last Tuesday night, coming home from Levi’s basketball practice, we stopped to check on the chickens and ended up catching and moving Beauty and Peckers to the pullet wagon.

Beauty the rooster came to us last summer. Some friends of ours had a very small urban flock of chickens. They did not know that Beauty was a rooster until the day before they were leaving for an extended vacation and Beauty started crowing. Not good in the city limits. So he ended up here.

Peckers, Levi named her, was also a gift. She was hatched out in a tomato box on top of our walk-in cooler. Her mother got snatched by a hawk or owl when she was 3 weeks old. Levi found her hiding in the asparagus patch.

She slept in the house for a couple of weeks, roosting on my recliner…

Happy Music

Ways to be Wicked

The Plan

When we got our new flock of 8-week old birds, our intention was to place them in the wagon, let them acclimate to it for a day or two and then move them to grass. Between the snow-rain-rain-snow and low’s in the 20’s, we left the wagon parked in front of the barn running a drop cord to it to power two heat lamps for about 10 days. I think the chickens would of been fine without the heat lamps, they were not huddled up under them at night, but we felt better about it.