The sunny, spring-like weather makes the greenhouse the place to be.   That southern exposure could heat the inside of the greenhouse up to well above 90 degrees, making it bikini weather if we chose to do so.  But of course we are growing plants in the greenhouse so we start venting it out to cool it down to a moderate temperature of 75 or so.  Once that sun goes down the temps in the greenhouse also go down very quickly. Without supplemental heat the greenhouse temps would plummit to below freezing.

In the previous years I was always very anxious to get planting into the greenhouse.  I recall the first two years living in MN I was planting peppers and tomatoes as early as mid-February.  I guess my early days of greenhouse planting were guided by the fact that most of the professional greenhouses in the state of MN were selling 6inch and foot high plants by early May.   The problems with planting that early were many.  First, the early planting meant that the heater in the greenhouse was working overtime for a month more than needed.  Second, all of the plants needed much more work because they would have to be "potted on" to larger pots before they went into the ground (this also meant they took up much more valuable greenhouse space in the month of May).    The plants that were planted later were actually stronger, and less vulnerable since they weren't pampered so much in the greenhouse, and their root mass would not have to be disturbed as much as the larger plants. Finally, there ended up to be not much of an earlier harvest of the crop in the end.  So the returns on the expense were none.

Every year since we started we have pushed our first greenhouse planting dates later and later until we usually are not kicking on the heater in the greenhouse until mid-March.  This year we may get ahead of the schedule a little bit because the forecast is looking very mild for the entire month of March.  I will start our leeks and onions by seed next week. 

 For onions, leeks, scallions (all in the allium family) we use a method called, "multi-planting."   Multi-planting means simply that we place 3-4 onion seeds per cell in the greenhouse flat.   On our home page you will see a picture of a greenhouse flat with holes pushed into the potting mix within the cells.  One of these flats has 72 cells and each of these cells will receive 3-4 onion seeds.  When we eventually plant the onions we will plant the cells one foot a part from each other allowing them room and enough nutrients to grow properly.  Normally, if you were to plant each plant individually you would need approximately 4 inches of space between plants.

So, here's a simple math question for you:

We grow 3 main varieties of onions,  Walla Walla, Mars (red storage), and Eagle (yellow storage) and Leeks.    We will plant 44 flats of each variety. All of these will be planted on the same date.  Each seed should produce one onion.  How many total onions will we harvest in a year if all the onions grow properly?  Remember, we grow in a 72 cell flat and each cell receives 3-4 onions.

 In addition, we grow scallions(these are multi-planted with 12 seeds/cell).  We have 4 different plantings of scallions, and we plant 11 flats for each planting.  How many scallions will we harvest?

You can email me the answer. It will be interesting for me to see how many people are actually reading my blog. (no calculators--let your brain do a little work) Also, this may be a fun activitity for your kids to work on and realize how important that math is in real life. 

Gary

I spend the first couple months of the late fall/early winter doing a bit of recouperating.  The season takes a lot out of a person physically and emotionally.  During this time I still spend days packing storage and frozen vegetable shares.   It's not until January 1st or so that I really start looking towards the upcoming season.  This is the time when applications for interns start rolling in and I start interviewing.  Much of the time is also spent dealing with the paperwork and taxes that any small business has to deal with.  I also work on the marketing of our CSA during this time of year getting ads for newspapers planned out and new brochures made up as well as doing website development.   With the new upswing in the internet, I spend some time developing our website and spreading the word about our farm through the newest avenues of facebook and twitter (though I have to admit I am not a routine blogger).
     The months of January and February I also put on my "enterpreneur hat" more often.  In owning my own business, it is important to step back from the entire operation and look at whether or not our farm is going in the right direction. This part of my job is important in order to make sure that our farm is always moving in a direction that is full of vitality, life, and inspiration. I take an opportunity to look at what seems to be working for our farm and try to eliminate those things that just seem to be more work for us.  During this time, I also take more of an opprotunity to read the newest agriculture books that have come out or attend a farm conference in order to hear new ideas in farming.    As a farmer, we too often can get too wrapped up into the day to day work and taking time to look at the bigger picture of what we are doing is important to sustain us for the long run.
       February is the month for seed ordering and field planning for the next year.   I have done CSA long enough now that this part of our operation is pretty set.  I have all our fields set up on various exel websheets.  I joke that where a conventional farmer is dependent on his chemicals, I am dependent on my spread sheets.  But when you are growing over a 100 varieties of crops and need to fill the boxes every week during the growing season there is a lot of planning that goes into it.  The spread sheets tell me exactly how many rows of each type of vegetable I am going to be needing, when each crop will be planted in the greenhouse and then transplanted out, and give me the approximate date when this crop will become available to harvest.  From this I can extrapulate how many seeds I need to order and how much fertilizers, potting mix and other supplies I will need for the upcoming season.  Of course, these spreadsheets are just plans and when the actual season starts we have to constantly work on the biggest variable of weather that can turn everything upside down.
      Speaking of weather...the large amount of snow that we receieved this year has kept me certainly busy.  After having our hoop house collapse a couple years ago I am vigilant each time it snows in clearing off the greenhouse.  This year in MN we have gotten more snow than in the past 10 or so years. Each of the snow falls have come in quantities of less than 8 inches so I was able to just go out each time and push off the snow. Here's what i do... I turn of the blower fan and wait about 10 minutes so the air in our double plastic is out. Then I take a push broom and push from up from the inside of the hoophouse and it slides right off. One of the problems though with accumulated snow is that I now have banks reaching 6 feet on both sides of our hoop house. Our one hoop quansit house goes to the ground with very little straight up and down on the bottom of the hoops.? Because of this. The banks of snow are now getting very heavy on the bottom of the plastic. So i now have to spend a lot of time shoveling 6 feet banks of snow! It is one of the times that I'm thankful that I only have 2 greenhouses 80' long. 
I'll post a picture of the greenhouse online.

This winter our website is getting a facelift.  Our hopes are that the new website will not only make it clearer for new members to find information regarding Ploughshare Farm, but also we want to utilize the tools of internet technology in order to stay connected with those that are already members.  The new website has easy online registration forms to sign up for shares. In addition, it has easy to use recipe and variety pages to help members better utilize the vegetables in their shares.  Finally, the new website includes a blog service that enables me as the farmer to tell the story of what is happening at the farm.  I am using a new service to host our website as well which will hopefully make it easier for me to add, change, and constantly evolve our site through out the year reflecting the ever changing way our farm is evolving.