Timing of spring work

[dominiquer60]

The dirt road that we live on started to get dusty today, I gave in and hitched the older team to the harrow and worked up the garden (80×100). It worked up well and made the fat cattle tired.

I think that I can chain harrow in the morning and find where they hid my Planet Jr, its time to seed the first radishes, turnips, carrot, beets and salad greens. The key is to tuck them in under two layers of row cover after I am done seeding, otherwise it will be May until they germinate.

This is our best drained ground so I will have to be patient for the other pieces, but we always try to get these few things early, it usually always pays off.

Happy tilling,

Erika

[near horse]

Dusty?!!!! You’re kidding right? I just came back from the plowing at one of the drier regions out here (like less than 8″ precip per year) and even there we couldn’t raise dust.

[dominiquer60]

Geoff,
The ground was not dusty, just the road that we live on:)

I took it as a sign that we had dried up enough for a little harrowing on the gravely south slope. The standing water finally left the flat at the bottom of the valley, but it will be a couple weeks until we get on that for onions.

The little patch that I worked up was nice and mellow, moist but not smearing. I had seeded some late oats last fall, they did not grow much but worked in very easily.

Chomping at the bit to do the rest tomorrow.

Erika

[Andy Carson]

After all that nice weather a couple weeks ago, it got really cold again here. The lows have been 18 degrees or so and I’ve had the go back to breaking ice in the horse trough… March can’t make up it’s mind around here… There’s snow in the forecast, and after that I’ll have to wait until things thaw and dry out… At least I didn’t have a crop up during this…

[Andy Carson]

I got my pea field disced up today so my spring work has officially started! I really didn’t think I would be able to do anything after all the rain we have been having, but today was 80 degrees and windy. Dried things up fast! The disc penetrated very well and it looked like it was doing what I wanted it to do. The disc really doesn’t make any progress on the dozen or so spots of grass that had grown to small patches of sod, despite several trips at different angles. These spots of sod are few and far between, though, so I’ll just go back and dig them up by hand with a shovel. I need to make a few trips and pick rock anyway. Good day. Nice to spend it behind my horse. I am very proud of her for getting right back to work with no fuss after a long winter with only a few jobs for here here and there.

As an aside, I did have a couple spots that were wetter than others so I got to see what would happen if it is really wet. Surprisingly, these disced up just as nicely as everything else. I could see if it was a heavy disc, it could sink deep and bring up deeper layers of soil that could dry out and make the going tough. With a light disc, thought, I just mix up the top 3-4 inches or so. There is so much material in this layer from degrading cover crop, crop/weed residue from early last year, and other organic stuff, that I can’t see this material ever drying out and turning to bricks. A couple inches deeper, and I’m pretty sure it would be another story…

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