Seed potato distribution

On Sunday, we picked up a pallet of Saranac Valley Farms' seed potatoes from the Regional Access and dropped off West Haven Farm's, then came home and sorted the rest of the 50lbs bags into orders for Muddy Fingers Farm, Kingbird Farm, and ours. Sharon was heading out on a business trip, so she loaded the back seat of the Civic with Kingbird's and dropped them off on her way out of town.  So now there are about 150lbs of seed potatoes adding to the mudroom clutter along with the light shelves and various seed trays.

We're still getting the occasional hard freezes overnight, so they won't be going out quite yet. Some plants, like the leeks and onions, have been out in the the 1/2 hoop tunnel for a few weeks, but the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc are still indoors, or living on the hot bed. What's a hot bed you ask?  It's a pile of fresh horse manure and bedding surrounded by square bales of hay. The composting action creates enough heat to keep the seedlings warm during the cold nights. We pull the row cover off during the day, except over the bin to the right that has some tiny pepper plants that I was worried might get too much sun...Yes, some plants can get sunburned too. Thanks to Muddy Fingers again for being such good mentors. We learned about the hot beds from them, and while Mathew was picking up their potatoes this morning, I quizzed him about a range of topics from high tunnel watering to their potato planting practices. It really helps to have such great resources in the community.

The fields are greening up quickly despite the hard freezes we're still getting intermittently. The 80deg temps we had in late February and March really threw off the trees and many of our perennial crops like the blueberries and hardy kiwis. We'll have to see if we get any fruit set from the plums this year...

Back out to finish running the irrigation lines out to the tunnels and maybe plant some early potatoes before it rains.