Theme: greenhouse

News from the Farm | May 8, 2023

May 8, 2023

For this week’s News from the Farm, a few notes about the greenhouses that didn’t make it into last week’s dive into the greenhouse. If you missed, or skipped, last week’s News from the Farm, you can read it here.

First: seeding. Each planting flat holds a lot of seeds. Most of our trays have 200 cells and each cell needs to be filled, and with just one seed. This can be done by hand, and for many years, we did all of our seeding by hand. But roughly 15 years ago, we got a vacuum seeder and we now use that for as much planting as we can.  [Read more…]

News from the Farm | May 1, 2023

May 1, 2023

As mentioned last week, the major activity recently has been transplanting. We’re still behind schedule, but we’ve gotten a LOT of plants in the ground, including thousands of melons, squash, and cucumbers on Friday. None of that is possible without a lot of behind the scenes work in the greenhouse where we grow those transplants.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | March 22, 2021

March 22, 2021

Andrew at work  —  

The fields and shop are always abuzz with activity, but for six months of the year (January to June), our greenhouses can be included in that mix. On Friday, I got the official tour of the greenhouse from Andrew (Brait) to share with you all this week.

Andrew, Chica, and Ana head up our greenhouse team. This team, along with other helpers, is responsible for seeding, watering, and tending to tens of thousands of plant starts each year to be transplanted into the fields when they’re big enough. This time of year, our greenhouses are full of flowers, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and early melons and basil. Our greenhouses allow us to get a head start on the season; we can start a tomato or pepper plant in the warm, protected confines of the greenhouse long before we could set it outside. And when our transplants do make it out to the field, they have a head start on the weeds too! We direct seed (meaning putting seeds straight in the ground) the vast majority of our crops, and we don’t grow all of our own transplants (more on that later) but these greenhouses are key to some of our important crops. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 26, 2018

February 26, 2018

I love my woodstove. Every cold night in winter, I fall more and more in love with the glow of fire, its warmth, comfort, and protection. So as I sit by the wood stove, penning this note, stoking another evening log into the firebox, I can’t help but wonder how the young and emerging seedlings out in the greenhouse are faring on this rapidly freezing night. With so many young plants, most of which are very cold sensitive, checking in on them like I did with my own children sleeping in the night, is pure instinct. After a week of substantially low temperatures and freezing weather, the safe haven of the greenhouses have been nearly breached, as heavy frost has encased the poly sheathed hoop houses and fatal cold has endangered plants closest to the outside walls. In the past, I have woken up to “frozen and fried plants” many times over the years, so I know that growing plants in a greenhouse is a 24/7 responsibility. Tonight, on this especially cold evening, I will check the greenhouse one more time before I go to bed.

[Read more…]

News from the Farm | April 15, 2013

April 8, 2013

Greenhouse Work

Years ago, when European lords and ladies were interested in botany and agriculture, greenhouses were elaborate, beautiful buildings covered with glass and full of complicated heating, cooling and lighting equipment. If these grand greenhouses at Kew Gardens or the Palace of Versailles form your image of a greenhouse, you might find the four Full Belly greenhouses to be plebeian, practical affairs, covered with plastic films and watered by hand with a garden hose. But despite their simplicity, these greenhouses and Ana Cervantes, our Greenhouse Manager, are unsung Full Belly Farm heroes.

Ana has worked at Full Belly for eight years. This year, she started cleaning and preparing the greenhouses for their busy season in early January, and by the middle of the month she was preparing trays and soil mix for the first planting of tomatoes, lettuce and broccoli.  She explained to me that each tray can hold 200 plants and in one greenhouse there are almost 300 trays. Later, in the other greenhouses, she planted onions, leeks, melons and flowers. For each crop, there are several varieties. Lots of flower varieties are started in the greenhouse before being planted in the field: amobium, statice, lavender, asters, marigolds, globe amaranth, zinnias, and celosias. Luckily, we don’t have to sprinkle the seeds one by one into each cell of the tray – that’s how we used to do it!  Now we use a vacuum seeder that distributes them fairly accurately.  

[Read more…]