April has been moving right along, and here we are just a couple weeks away from our first CSA dropoff and the first week of farmers markets. Everything is growing nicely, some things are taking a little longer than usual, I suspect the cold temperatures at night are not helping.

Some updates on actual vegetable production: We have two high tunnels that are filled with spinach! Our garlic is looking amazing! We planted scallions about 2 or 3 weeks ago and they will be ready to harvest by the time markets begin. Ginger is still growing great as well, they are still in our “germination station” AKA our walk-in cooler, but with a heater that keeps it a constant 80-90 degrees…we have had them in there since February. We also began putting our seedlings in there and have had excellent germination within 1-3 days, which would normally take a week or longer.

Back to the ginger….once the temperatures remains a little more constant, we will be transplanting the ginger into our high tunnel!

All of our tomato plants are looking healthy and happy! Officially we should wait to plant them until May 15th, or right around Mothers Day for our area, this is the average last frost date for Maryland. We decided to play it a little risky this year and went ahead and planted a few hundred tomato and squash plants in the field today, but we will wait until Mid May to plant the majority of everything.  We will be selling some of our tomato plants at the market this year, and they are being nurtured not only by us but also by our Love Dove Potting Mix!

We recently planted another set of asparagus, making the total 2000 this spring. We also planted 100 rhubarb roots and opened up some more ground to continue to expand. We are really excited to be doing some additional fruits and veggies this year, including sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupes, and so much more! I think we are beginning to figure out what works best and how best to manage so many different veggies! Every year brings more challenges and with those challenges comes opportunity! Lets do this!

It looks like it has been a while since I published a Blog, so I am going to be sure to keep up on it this year....If I drop the ball, just let me know and Ill be sure to write some updates! 

Well, its been a slow starting spring, very cold and very wet! It wasn't until the beginning of April that we were able to plant anything in the fields, 

so what have we planted so far:

We planted 180 bunches of Onion plants: Each bunch contains between 50-100 plants...Not sure exactly how many we did, but between 9,000 and 18,000 would be a good estimate! Pretty good range! In 2013 we planted 60 bunches, so we have amped up our onion plants. We also made a cool template that helped with efficiency and sped things up a lot! 

Our Garlic was planted in the fall, and it did very well even through the rough and cold winter! It actually looks amazing! Really looking forward to having a bunch of that as well! For amount perspective: My first year we planted 40 lbs, 2nd year: 80 lbs, 3rd year: around 100 lbs.....This Fall we planted about 250 lbs of garlic, and about 50 lbs of softneck garlic.

In terms of seeds: We have direct seeded:
2 types of Kale, collards, Arugula, 3 types of radishes, turnips, lots of spinach, 2 types of carrots, 2 types of beets, mizuna, tat soi, bok choy, and sugar snap peas. We also transplanted some lettuce, and planted some scallions as well. Our potatoes have been interesting. With such a cold wet spring, our seed potatoes which come from the northern states were delayed for 2 weeks. Then the shipping company had a mix up and our potatoes ended up getting delayed over the weekend. We planted some of the smaller potatoes, and cut the larger ones down to size. Now we have to wait for them to harden on the cuts to reduce risk of rotting in the ground. We hope to be planting them by the end of the week. In terms of scale: Last year we planted 3 varieties and about 500 lbs. This year we are doing 4 types and are going to plant around 1200 lbs. 

New and Exciting products at Love Dove Farms
We have inoculated mushroom spores into some hardwood logs over the winter. As long as all goes well, we can hope to have some mushrooms fruiting by the end of the year, or at least by next season. We are attempting Ginger this year, and it is pre-sprouting great! I have a lot of faith that it will do well this year! We have EGGS!! We have 100 chickens and will be selling fresh brown eggs! We are going to give Sweet Corn a shot this year too! We hope to plant a good amount and have plenty to sell, (whatever the deer don't get too)

New Construction
We built our 3rd high tunnel this winter, this is excellent because now we have a great rotation potential. This also gave us an opportunity to start a lot more seeds, by using one of our high tunnels as a make-shift greenhouse. We actually built a small frame inside the high tunnel, this gives us double insulation and also helps contain the heat in a smaller area, so we have lots and lots of little plants growing great! 

Our CSA signup is still active
We are still accepting applications for our CSA membership. We are expanding our CSA a bit this year, and we may offer an additional drop off location or a different time to help accommodate those interested in joining a CSA, but the details still need to be worked through.  We will be expanding on our website as well, and offer some recipe ideas and hopefully help people with new ideas on how to use their veggies! Maybe even create a way for our members to share how they used their veggies and give some fresh ideas!

All in all, this is going to be a great year ahead! Thank you for supporting Love Dove Farms!