First salad harvest, Small Farm Field Day

How long does it take to grow your own salad greens? Thirty days from sowing? Try three years of soil preparation, experiments, waiting and false starts.

We enjoyed a nice salad last night of lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale and mustard greens. It was heavy on the mustard because those plants are growing so fast. Kavi usually doesn't like hot, spicy or bitter greens, but these were nice and young and mild. Mustard and arugula especially stand up really well to balsamic vinegar.

I like to imagine that the woodchuck who ate my Brussels sprouts and red cabbage last week is settling in nicely at his new home in Litchfield. In other wildlife news, the ducklings were delivered safely to a wildlife rehabilitator.

At the MOFGA Small Farm Field day last weekend I attended sessions on pasture species ID and management, and moveable greenhouses. The pasture talk was not a comprehensive presentation, but I did pick up pointers on what parts of a grass plant to look at when trying to ID it.

The greenhouse talk took place at MOFGA's 30' x 70' unheated greenhouse, and was informative to those of us who think much smaller scale. Primarily we learned that such a high structure is not necessary, or even preferable. Theirs was donated - a former hog farrowing house - and retrofitted to be moveable back and forth over two garden areas. Eric Sideman and the other presenters traded opposing views as to whether a moveable or fixed greenhouse is preferable, with all agreeing that the soil underneath needs periods of time uncovered so that rain can was away salt buildup.

A small hoophouse structure can be homemade out of metal conduit, wood, or PVC pipe, and just has to be strong enough to resist wind and snow load. We were advised that the place to spend our money is on real greenhouse plastic, which is UV stabilized and has anti-condensation coating. There was a lot of "Eliot says, Eliot says" on the topic of season-extension, understandable since Eliot Coleman literally wrote the book(s) on it. One of the session attendees offered this piece of information, which seems to confirm the lower-is-better thesis: in his experience, very young, short plants, covered with fabric row cover, overwinter more successfully than larger, older plants because the young ones are in a smaller volume of air space under the row cover. What little heat the earth radiates on winter nights is therefore concentrated in a smaller space.

Of course the people-watching at Small Farm Field Day was excellent.