Typically this time of year I would be starting off this newsletter with, “Let’s Get Ready To Rumbllllllle!!!” indicating the start of the indoor farming season, followed by a description of the opening ceremony and something witty about how this year’s opening is exactly like every year in that it is completely different than any that came before. But I’m not going to do that this year. Instead I’m going to do what we farmers have mastered — complain about the weather.
In researching this newsletter I came across a previous newsletter discussing the opening week of the 2016 season. You can go read it yourself if you’d like but to summerize (yes, I know summarize is not spelled this way but obviously I am subconsciously wishing for summer to get here) there is a picture of garlic sprouting out of the ground and no snow anywhere near the greenhouse. This year as we all know, there may not even be ground under all that snow — has anyone seen it lately? — and I barely found the greenhouse. If I didn’t know where it was I would easily have walked right past it. Actually, the walk wouldn’t be easy at all. More of a slog. But it is quite buried under the snow.
I started the heater though to melt the snow and try to get some light into the greenhouse. I thought about digging it out but I had no place to throw the snow! So I ran the heater for a while then from the inside tried to push the snow off the roof. I got about as much off as I could and luckily it was enough to let the sun shine in. Still, the snow is piled up beside the greenhouse to about six feet high. Good insulation?
The hoop house is in far worse shape. Here is a picture from the inside. I tried pushing the snow off from inside the hoop house but it had no where to go. Since it is an unheated structure we have no way to melt off the snow easily so for now we just hope it can hold the weight of the current snow and that we don’t get any more soon.
Now that the greenhouse is accessible and has sunlight can I start the seeds? Well, yes and no. I can certainly start planting the seeds but it may not be prudent. With forecasted lows below zero I’m not sure our heater is sufficient to keep the trays warm enough to germinate the seeds. When we designed the greenhouse we sized the heater to give us about a 50 degree increase over the temperature outside. The average low temperature for March 1 is around 20 degrees so if the temps were average we can keep the greenhouse as warm as 70 degrees. If it drops to 10 degrees we can keep the greenhouse at 60 degrees, which is still sufficiently warm to germinate the seeds we would be planting at this time.
However if the temperature drops to -10 degrees like some are forecasting we’d only be able to keep the greenhouse at 40 degrees which is awfully close to 30 degrees which is freezing. I’m not convinced we have the heating capacity to keep the trays warm enough to germinate the seeds at -10. So I’ll wait a couple of days or come up with another plan. I don’t think starting a few days later than usual will affect the season much. It only compresses the first week of work into a shorter period of time.
In the mean time, I’ll just have to write overly long newsletters for you to read. Sounds like a warm idea.
By the way, final payment for those who put down a deposit is due this month. If you don’t know what you owe please contact me and I can fill you in.
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You can order add-on items like fruit and cheese.
That is all for now. Do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.