This is our amazing greenhouse crew this spring…Leah, Eric, Ashley and Kaila. Chris and I are endlessly grateful for each one of them and they are keeping us on track with spring planting work so that we are ready now as wholesale orders are coming in and the Farm Stand Plant Sale opens in 4 weeks!
Whenever we can manage it with the work load, we try to take a little time each week for a crew plant class. The class above was about Mahonia’s medicinal benefits as an antimicrobial herb and Garlic and all the amazing ways you can use it. We always learn new stuff, me included, and it is great fun besides.
Every week now we are seeding between 200 and 400 flats of seeds, plus some plants that are sown directly into their final pot. Leah and Eric planted in the Plant Barn greenhouse, sowing the Morning Glories, Sweet Peas and Runner Beans straight into the 1 gallon pots that these vines will be sold in at our Farm Stand store.
Meanwhile, Kaila and Ashley were planting 215 flats of Pepper varieties and Eggplant varieties in the Basil greenhouse. They were sowing into plug flats that each hold 128 plants, so do the math…that will be a lot of Pepper and Eggplants available!
In the Farm Stand greenhouse, we are cleaning up plants that were over-wintered in this house. I’m starting to place flats in their permanent spot in the Farm Stand and Hygge greenhouses, in preparation for our opening on April 13th. We are labeling each pot as it is cleaned and placed. The week before we open, we will put up the plant information signs that we have become famous for. I suppose that means I better start finding time to create the new plant signs we will need for new varieties. That is my evening task well into the nightime hours.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Chris has been working outside improving our driveway parking, building a beautiful willow foot bridge that leads our farm visitors to the front doors of the Farm Stand greenhouse, and we have new signs.
Another project Chris has been doing is planting some display rock garden trough planters. We needed big planters that were high enough up that the deer herd wouldn’t walk through them and so that our visitors could easily see and enjoy the small rock garden plants that are growing in these planters. So, we finally settled on some livestock water tanks to be the trough planters.
However, these tank planters are way too deep to fill with soil and still be able to move them into place, so Chris built a false bottom in the troughs with plywood and 5 gallon buckets, turned upside down underneath the false wooden floor. This left him with about 12 inches, more or less, of soil depth when he filled the troughs…perfect for these types of little rock garden plants.
The troughs have been planted with some little native plants, like Townsendia and some wonderful non-natives like a dwarf Columbine. I’ll take a picture of the plantings soon and post them for you to see.
We had an artist in our community, Michelle Taylor, paint the beginnings of our new Farm Stand store sign. Kaila and Ashley were enlisted to help Chris install it in front of the Farm Stand near the front doors. As the gardens grow, Ashley plans to embellish the sign with some of the flowers that will be blooming on the farm.
We have another wonderful sign that Michelle painted for us to put at the bridge entrance in the driveway to guide people to the Farm Stand front doors. It’s not up yet, but once it is, I’ll post a picture.
Chris also added some willow to the sign so that it would match to the foot bridge.
Last weekend found me at Spencer’s Garden Show on Saturday to give a class on growing herbs in containers both for indoors and for patio growing. We had our plants in a booth there and people seemed to really enjoy getting a dose of green springtime as they walked through the store.
We’ve been having day temps in the high 50’s and 60’s all week and then today we have 15″ of snow and still snowing hard. The forecast last night said we should expect 1-3″ of snow here in Canon City, but obviously that changed.
We are both emtionally exhausted, worrying about roofs caving in from the water content in the snow and the power went off around 9am and still isn’t back on. Thankfully, we have a generator that will run the greenhouse heaters and keep the power on in the house. Trees are broken and the snow is so deep that we can barely get a wheelbarrow through it with wood for our woodstove so that we can keep warm. This is an adventure for sure!
Chris has been shoveling snow off of roofs all day long to keep them from collapsing.
The Granny Ducks have refused to go inside the door of the Woodstove greenhouse where they have their own winter retreat area with warm straw, water and food. I guess they prefer to swim in the pond all night and struggle through the snow, even though we made a path for them to get to their grain pan.
Between the greenhouses the snow is piling up high! It will be a long time before it melts enough that we can walk up through the individual greenhouses.
Our rain gauge measured 2 4/10″ of moisture in this 15 inches of snow. We’ll see how much more comes through the night and tomorrow. Wonderful moisture that will bring a green spring and loads of flowers for sure.
We miss Liz very much and in seems a bit odd to not have her here every day working in the greenhouses after 19 years of her doing that with us. That said, we are thrilled that her Farrier business is growing strong and providing livelihood for her. When we see her she is smiling and happy and full of stories of trimming and shoeing horses and donkeys and mules and such. It makes us very happy to know she is doing something she wants to be doing and she loves animals so much. But we still miss her all the same :-))
One of the things Liz was in charge of was doing the Bay tree cuttings, which are very tricky and challenging to successfully do. The mother Bay tree we use for these cuttings is more than 40 years old by now. I’ve always referred to her as “She” or “Her”…she is a mom after all! Last week, Kaila gave her a proper name and christened her with the name of Laurel. Quite nice since her Latin name is Laurus nobilis.
Anyway, Ashley is now the person in charge of the Laurel babies, which she checks often for rooting and if they have rooted, she pots them into their very own 6” clay pot. Kaila took the picture above of me showing Ashley, for the first time, how to check the Laurel babies.
Cedar Update!
Cedar has become like a brother to Volt and vice verse it. When they go on a walk or hike together, it is a non-stop dog wrestling event, chasing each other and romping and having a great time.
Since I got my new knee in mid-December, I have not be able to walk with these two rambunctious doggies for fear that they might accidentally knock me down. This week, I felt strong enough to avoid them if they romped too close, and so I went with Chris and James and the romping doggies for a walk at Oil Well Flats. We had such a great hike!
And look how big my 10 month old puppy has gotten! Holy moley… he still acts like a puppy all the time, getting into mischief, playing hard and putting everything he can into his mouth to chew on it, but he is in a full size 85 pound body! And he still has some more growing left to do before he is all grown up. He is such a sweetheart.
All for now. Stay warm if you are getting this snow storm too.
With Green Thoughts, Tammi
Townsendia blooming at Oil Well Flats. Commonly called Easter Daisy.
