Visual Soil Assessment Day

Last March 1, I dug up squares in our cherry orchard, our apple orchard, and what will be our market garden. It took about 20 minutes or so per site, and I was pretty discouraged. Good soil should have a reading of 25 or more, and I cheated a bit to get my numbers up to almost 10. And in each site, I looked diligently for worms and found none. What kind of dead soil has no worms!?

This March 1, I again did my visual soil assessment. In both halves of the orchard, I was about double: almost to the good soil. The structure of the soil was visibly better. In the cherry orchard I found one worm, and in the apple orchard I found three! Fantastic! The animal impact and the minerals, and maybe just having loving caretakers, has helped our orchard tremendously. (The lower pasture was actually the same, but I didn't do fractional numbers this year to make me feel better, so I think the soil was somewhat improved, though my number stayed the same.)

I went to pot on pepper seeds, and found the 550 little soil blocks mostly unsprouted. I managed only 50 transplants. A few seeds had a distinct mildew smell, so I removed those; a few looked like they had sprouted, but then browned and died. Damping off? Not enough air circulation? (Could be: in the dark, chilly days of last week I would sometimes leave them covered for days.)

Checking a reference book to boost my morale, I found that peppers often take two or even three weeks to sprout when temperatures are about 70. I think the soil mat is set in the mid70s, and I have kept the peppers covered, which keeps them warmer overnight, but I doubt it's 85 in there. So, ten days into it, I will keep waiting and hope that I get more than 50 sweet pepper plants (since I have about 50 jalapenos, we might have a farm really stacked towards the heat!)

Only a month into it, our greenhouse gets more well-utilized all the time. Growing things is proving one of my absolute favorite things. I actually enjoy seeding each block; pricking out each little asparagus sprout; watering each tray; watching which cabbages sprout well (the best of the three varieties is shown below), and which take longer.

Even some of my lettuces, no longer heated, sprouted this time! Third time's the charm!

And the asparagus keeps getting bigger, with still new sprouts poking up daily.

First onions will be ready to plant out as soon as we get the garden beds done.

In other news, one chick died in the night. The others were huddled as close under the heat lamp as could be, so we made them a larger heat shield, and the chicks warmed up.

We think the neighbor's dog killed one of our guineas. It may have been the only female. Perhaps the sole surviving baby from last year is female. Otherwise, at some point we'll need new guineas.

Phil moved Buttercup and the piglets into a different paddock. They had a great time tearing around the new bit of earth. Buttercup must have been in heat, because at one point both little boars were trying to mount her simultaneously, which the two gilts wandered, uninterested. I don't expect babies to result with such young boars, but it is good to know that they all recognize the cues.

Phil took our two-page itemized list of must-do tasks and turned them into a critical path, first do this task so we can do that task, usable guide. With that in hand, he went to pull irrigation line from the cherry orchard, then pulled the loading chute that we used to load the pigs into the truck. It has been a block between the barn and the garlic garden, and I'm happy to see it gone.

After we had finished school for the morning, the boys went up and made an elaborate water park with the well tailings. Jadon used the special sand castle building technique he learned, and Joe brushed channels with a paint brush. They played merrily there together for hours.