We entered April with some beautiful weather and put it to good use. In what may be a Fair Share Farm record, on Tuesday we planted 1,200 row feet of broccoli, 600 ft of cabbage, 300 ft of lettuce, 1,200 ft of potatoes, and 600 feet of onions. We were able to do this mainly with the aid of our transplanter. The cover cropping we did on our beds last season, the winter freeze thaw action, and our workhorse electric tractor also played a major role, creating an incredibly loose, friable, weed free soil to plant in.

Lucas cultivating

Rebecca and Lucas transplanting broccoli

Mulching the broccoli and cabbage

At our last Core Group meeting we were asked if we were doing anything new this year. I said no, forgetting that we purchased over 500 asparagus crowns to create a new patch. Our old patch has never been real happy, and last year appeared to be disappearing prematurely. The new patch will be planted putting our 9 years of experience on this piece of land to work.

First we spaded the beds last fall to allow them to loosen up over the winter. Then we limed the beds before cutting trenches to plant the asparagus in. Next step was to help out these alkaline loving plants by spreading wood ash from our stove, before planting the gangly crowns in the bottom of the trench. As the plants grow we will slowly fill in the trench with compost and topsoil before giving the whole patch a layer of hay mulch to hold down the weeds and retain moisture. We are hoping to have a nice bunch of asparagus as a regular item in the first week or two’s shares in a couple of years.

Asparagus crowns laid out for planting

Planting the crowns into the trench