By: Andrea Yoder
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| Transplanting Watermelon plants with the Water-Wheel Transplanter |
Here we are, halfway through the calendar year. We’re
picking beans, harvesting green top carrots, tomatoes are hanging heavy on the
vine and in the watermelon field there is fruit the size of a softball! Every day is filled with a long list of
things that need to be done. Of course
we have a full harvest schedule, but we also have a long list of hand weeding
projects, another list of fields that need mechanical cultivation, other crops
that need water and the attention of the irrigation crew, tomatoes need to be
pruned and tied, and in the midst of it all we need to find time to plant. Plant? Isn’t that what happens in the
spring?
On our farm, spring is the time of the year when we do the most planting, but unlike many other row crop farms in our region, we have a long planting season starting in the fields in April and extending all the way through October or even November if you include planting garlic, sunchokes and horseradish! Several weeks ago, I was met with some questions from inquisitive CSA members while we were bouncing down the road on a tour wagon at our Strawberry Day party. They were asking great questions about when we plant different crops, what we plant, how we plant them and so much more. As I was reflecting upon the day, I realized there may be other members who are interested in understanding a little more about what it actually takes to accomplish all of the many plantings we need to execute in a given year in order to put food on your tables! So, this week I’m going to give you an insider’s glimpse into the tattered 34-page document we call the “Harmony Valley Farm Planting Plan 2023.” This is a document we create each winter as we make our plans for the upcoming season. Once we have our plans laid out, we can use this document as our guidebook throughout the season to help us execute timely plantings.
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| Harvesting Celtuce, one of our unique crops |
So let’s start with a few stats. Within each year’s field plan there are about
67 crop categories, plus or minus a handful from year to year as we trial new
crops and rotate in some of the more unique crops, we grow from time to time (e.g.,
celtuce, cardoon and lemongrass) but not every year. Within those 67 crop categories, we grow
140-150 different crops! Just to make
sure we’re all on the same page, I’ll give you an example. One vegetable category is Beets, but within
that category we may choose to plant Chioggia, gold, and red beets, which count
as three different crops for the sake of this article. Many farms that are not
diversified vegetable farms have a small handful of crops. Perhaps they grow
some corn, soybeans, and alfalfa—three crops.
Our situation is different though. We commit to growing food for the
same CSA families week after week for a 30 week season! We want to keep things tasty and interesting
for you, our members, which means we need to plant a wide variety of crops! One
of the tricky parts of growing so many different crops is learning how to
manage all of them, both in the field and in the packing shed after they are
harvested. Each crop is a little different. Some crops are “heavy feeders” and
need a lot of fertility while others can grow with minimal support on sandy
soil. Some crops require post-harvest refrigeration at a temperature of about
35°F
while others can succumb to chill injury at that temperature and require a
warmer storage environment around 45-50°F.
And then there’s differences in how each of the crops may be planted.
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| Lettuce transplants in the greenhouse...almost ready to go to the field! |
We have a variety of strategies for planting crops. Let’s
start in the same place we start at the beginning of the season, in the
greenhouse! About 50-60% of our crops
are started in the greenhouse. With the exception of strawberry, rhubarb, and
asparagus plants as well as sweet potato slips, we produce all of our own
transplants. We set up the first of our
4 greenhouses in February and start seeding as early as February 15. We plant seeds into greenhouse flats filled
with potting soil and provide a warm place for the seeds to germinate. Then we
water and care for them anywhere from 4-8 or 9 weeks until they are ready to be
transplanted to the field. When they go to the field, we typically use one of
two main types of mechanical transplanters. The first, which we call the “3-row
transplanter,” is used to plant crops that are planted onto “bare ground.” This
means they are planted directly into the soil. These crops include head
lettuce, celeriac, broccoli, cabbage, etc.
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| Transplanting broccoli plants into "bare ground" with the 3-Row Transplanter |
Our other main transplanter is called a “water-wheel
transplanter.” We use this machine to
plant crops that are grown on raised beds covered with plastic mulch. We use
plastic mulch in our production systems for several different reasons. One
reason is to help with non-chemical pest control. We use a type of material to
cover the beds that looks like a giant roll of tin foil because it has a
reflective surface. This reflective surface disorients pests and keeps them off
our crops! We plant our onions on this type of material to deter thrips while
we also use this material for eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, and melons to
deter cucumber beetles! For other crops, the main purpose of covering the bed
with a plastic material is for heat gain. In the case of heat-loving crops such
as tomatoes, jicama, and sweet potatoes, we use a dark green or black material
that helps to trap the heat of the sun and warms the soil to facilitate growth.
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| Planting Peppers with the Water-Wheel transplanter |
Now, back to the water-wheel transplanter. If you cover a bed with plastic
mulch, you have to have a way to poke a hole in the plastic so you can put the
plant in the soil. This transplanter is
mounted on the back of a tractor and has wheels that we set up to turn and poke
holes in the plastic at whatever our desired spacing may be. This machine also
has a tank of water on it and when the wheel pokes the hole in the plastic, it
also puts water (with fertilizer mixed in) in the hole right where the plant
goes (hence the name, water-wheel transplanter). There are seats on this
transplanter for anywhere from two to four people to sit in. They have a flat
of plants in front of them and pull them out one at a time and drop them in the
hole. While these are the two main machines we use, we do have a third style of
transplanting machine that we use for a few specific crops including
strawberries and leeks.
Most of our remaining crops are “direct-seeded.” This means that we use a planter to plant the
crop in the field from seeds. We have several different machines to help us
with this task. Crops like beets, carrots, sweet corn, green beans, storage
turnips, winter radishes and chard are planted with a vacuum seeder called “The
Mater-Mac.” This planter has boxes where
the seed is placed. There are different seeder plates that are
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| Rafael selecting the correct plates before direct-seeding with the Mater-Mac planter |
mounted onto the
machine at the base of the seeder box. We have a set of plates that have holes
of various sizes and select the plate that is most similar to the size of the
vegetable seed we are planting. When the
machine is running, a vacuum system sucks the seed from the planter box and
holds it in the hole on the plate. When the plate turns and reaches the bottom
of the rotation, the vacuum releases the seed and it drops into the seed bed
formed by the machine. This machine helps us achieve very precise spacing and eliminates
the need to thin crops to remove extra plants if the seeding is too thick.
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| Rafael and Silvestre setting up the Vegi-Mac planter in preparation for planting 5-row crops |
We also have a group of crops that we plant nearly every
week from as early as we can in April through September. We label these crops as the “5-Row
Planting.” We plant these crops weekly
so we can have back-to-back plantings to harvest. The crops that are included
in this planting category include baby bok choi, red radishes, cilantro, dill,
and mustard. These are important crops for our farm. While we do include most
of these crops in CSA boxes from time to time throughout the season, these
crops are also very important wholesale crops that help to keep a steady
revenue coming in throughout the growing season. These crops are planted with a slightly
modified version of our Mater-Mac vacuum seeder that is called the
“Vegi-Mac.”
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| Manuel & Juan Pablo planting 15-row crops in the spring using the Sutton Seeder |
Early in the spring and toward the latter part of summer and
early fall, we also do weekly plantings for 4-6 weeks that we call our “15-row”
plantings. These crops include our baby greens (arugula, spinach, salad lettuce
& greens) that are harvested when the leaves are small. We seed very dense
plantings of 15 rows on a bed so we can mechanically harvest these crops. For these plantings we use a machine called
“The Sutton Seeder.” This planter uses a
little different type of technology to plant the seeds and requires us to
calibrate each seed based on seed size and desired spacing for the crop. We use these calibration values to determine
the planter settings which control a GPS system that helps us more precisely
plant the crop.
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| Direct seeding carrots and beets with the Mater-Mac vacuum seeder |
So, as you can see, our planting schedule extends far beyond
spring planting! This week we will be planting our final fall broccoli crop. We
are also preparing fields over the next two weeks so we can start planting our
winter storage radishes (daikon, beauty heart and black Spanish radishes) and
storage turnips. This week we’re also scheduled to plant storage kohlrabi that
we hope to deliver in your boxes in November or December. We typically wrap up our direct-seeding in
mid to late September. But that doesn’t
necessarily mean we’re finished planting!
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| Transplanting tomatoes onto dark green plastic using the Water-Wheel transplanter. |
In mid to late October, before we’re even finished harvesting crops for the current season, we start planting for the next season! We save our own seed for our garlic, horseradish and sunchoke crops. We plant all of these crops by hand, approximately 7 acres in total. The crew is usually motivated to get these plantings finished because once they are completed, it usually signals their return to Mexico!
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