Sunday April 3 2016. Snowed like hell last night. Got maybe an inch or two and by this evening, most of it is gone.

Tonight we transplanted a bunch of plants that we want to get in the ground early to try to cheat the season. Broccoli, Romain, and Spinach mostly. All cold weather early crops. We split them out from their small initial planters and gave them medium sized individual pots, and now we have about a dozen of each! In addition, we tripled the size of our nursery shelves and lighting. We stole the additional shelves from the tractor shed and lights from the garage.

Here are the plants before splitting them out. Most were started March 8 and we are transplanting to larger pots on April 3.

Carolyn was pretty good at spitting out the young plants using an old knitting needle.

Each individual seedling got its very own new and larger pot.

Then we assembled a couple shelves and lights that we scavenged from the tractor shed and garage. Its only a couple of weeks until we can put them back—we can can put up with a bit less lighting and less shelving until the seedlings are done.

Next week the plan is to make some compost “tea” from our enormous compost pile and fertilize these plants, after they recover from the shock of transplant.

The best way to start seedlings is in mini clay pots. Tonight’s transplanting frees up about 2 dozen mini pots for the next plants to grow.

Also forgot to mention last post that we dug up 15-20lbs of carrots before we tilled last week. Carrots keep well over the winter in the ground. You can harvest them as needed all winter long, as long as the ground isn’t too frozen! You just need to dig them up in the spring before they turn to mush.

We have also been kicking around the idea of expanding in the way of animals. We talked about pigs, but may be too late for the season already. However, it seems we will be getting more chickens and of different varieties. Considering Barred Rock and Black Orpington. Need to build another coop first….

Greetings All! Thanks to the mild winter, we are getting an early start to our 2016 garden. Its been dry for the last week-week and a half and I took the opportunity on Thursday 3/24 to lightly turn/harrow most of the gardens. Got the main garden, old potato garden and the corn bed. Turned in some organic material. Mostly leaves and chicken poop. All of the garden plots add up to roughly 3500 square feet.

Also started some seeds indoors: Giant Roma, two types of onion, lettuce, spinach & broccoli.

Bought a fluorescent fixture from Home Depot and hung it between two mic stands 🙂 Easy to adjust the height!

The chickens have fared well over the winter too. Happy cluckers gives us about an egg a day.

As always, click the photos for FULL SIZE!