Bok choi, stretching off into the distance. It's a relative of cabbage and collards and tastes similar, but is much more tender and succulent and has a milder, sweeter flavor.
We've finally pulled enough alfalfa out of the upper field to form a halfway-decent bed and get some transplants in! It's a lot slower than using a mechanical transplanter on the tractor, but it's still incredibly satisfying to have those tidy rows of baby plants stretching away behind you. We put in celeriac (which has been in the greenhouse for months waiting to hit the ground), parsely, sorrel, scallions, bok choi and baby bok choi. The baby bok choi is actually just regular bok choi that we planted tighter and will harvest earlier, making for deliciously tender little plants. You can cut a couple in half lengthwise and saute them for a hot second and they're perfect. For bonus points, toss in a little goat cheese after you've turned the heat off and serve as the cheese is melting all across the baby chois.
Cara dropping parsley out for Luke to stuff in the ground. You can see the nicely wetted area in the center of the bed from the buried drip tape... but between the sandy soil and the evaporation, very little got to the outside rows.
Several days of warm, dry weather are doing a lot to dry out our waterlogged lower fields--which have only today fallen below "flood stage"--but it's making our wonderfully well-drained upper field a bit of a sandbox. We hadn't planned on growing in this field at all this season, and we're not yet prepared equipment-wise to push water all the way up here from the river. Our only option was to lay drip irrigation in everything, which does a somewhat mediocre job of wetting the entire sandy bed when it's not protected by mulch. When we finished planting for the day, we had to make a couple of passes with a 100 gallon stock tank on a farm trailer to water the two rows furthest from the drip line.
Once everything was in the ground, we covered up the most bug-prone crops with remay to protect them from pests. This poly material sits loosely on top of the crop and allows water and sunlight to get through, but not bugs. It also raises the temperature a bit. The best way to secure it is to shovel a small amount of dirt onto the edges in a continuous band all the way around. This makes a seamless seal that no pests can sneak under. It's also incredibly time-consuming, and every time you open the remay to cultivate or harvest, you have to re-shovel. The faster but less effective method is to weight the edges down with sandbags. We're trying a hybrid: shoveling in the windward edge, but using sandbags on the leeward edge.
Bok Choi, tucked in nice and safe from the creepy crawlies who would like to eat it and make it unsaleable. We're trying a hybrid of shoveling and sand bags this season--the picture shows the leeward side.
Filling the sandbags is a little back-breaking, but we were able to get two birds with one stone by filling them with sand that had clogged a culvert near the ice house. It's so hard to ever get anything done that we delight in the opportunity to cross two things off the list with one chore. Now if we can just finally get in down below things will be going swimmingly!
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