9/13: Planting Day

Our beautiful sign, painted by Moriah

The past few weeks Romaine Calm has worked to prepare our CSA plot for growing vegetables. We've started transplants, painted our sign, and chosen our crops. Our plot is marked out, the drip irrigation lines are in place, and the soil is tilled. Today we put our first veggies in the ground!

Empty rows and cover crops

Some team members came in over the weekend and planted cover crops. Cover crops are important for controlling weeds and preventing soil erosion. Buckwheat and flowers are on the ends of each row. Cereal rye and hay cover every other row, and give space to walk between vegetable rows.

Sprouted transplants

We checked on our transplants in the greenhouse. Everything has sprouted except the hot peppers. The sprouts are still a little small, so we'll wait another week before transplanting them.

Available transplants

We planted transplants of jalapeno, sweet banana pepper, bell pepper, tomato, red cabbage, and sunflowers. All these transplants were generously provided to the class. By intercropping lots of different plants, we hope to manage pests and weeds.

Pepper Row

Here you can see Colton, Bryce, and Christian working on the transplanted peppers. We decided to put three kinds of pepper along with tomato in the same bed. Since all of those plants are in the family Solanaceae, they have similar needs regarding fertilizer. This way we can fertilize the entire bed the same way.

Moriah planting sunflowers

We also direct seeded romaine lettuce and sugar snap peas. The lettuce will grow under the low tunnel, which runs along the easternmost row of our plot. Low tunnels protect plants from harsh, drying sunlight and winds. There is still plenty of space in the low tunnel to plant other crops.

Today was a great start, and we can't wait to see how our garden grows!