Organic Additives

The second greenhouse (or the first cold house depending on how you want to look at it) got it's initial dosage of lime, fish bone meal and feather meal. These are approved organic additives that we are adding to get the soil up to the proper pH level, as well as nitrogen and phosphorus. We determined the soil needs by having soil analysis done by a lab.

Soil blocks inside soil blocks

We transplanted the small soil blocks into bigger ones so their roots can keep expanding. This bunch of happy plants are kale plants that we started on Friday the 13th of March.

Second Greenhouse Covered!

With some help from some friends from Seattle... the second greenhouse is now covered! Technically this would be called a cold frame since we are not going to put endcaps on it. We are going to use it not necessarily for the captured heat, but instead as a place to get some early crops going during the rainy season.

Tomato seeds

When I was a kid, I always wanted to dig up the seeds in the garden to see if they were doing anything. Well, with our soil blocks, the seeds are (usually) not covered. They just sit on the soil block soaking up the sun and fresh Whiskey Creek water until... wow... just one week after they were dropped onto our mini blocks, the seeds have germinated on their toasty warm propogation pads.

Ventilation Test

Greenhouses are an artificial environment that can get their own special problems like pests or mold. In order to minimize that, we built our greenhouses with lots of ventilation options. This is our first test to see how well our design worked. Temperature control is also a concern because even in rainy Oregon, when the sun comes out, it is a powerful force. Yes, the temp inside the greenhouse was 92 degrees... before we opened the doors and side vents.

Kale Emergence

Our first mini blocks of Kale are emerging. The beauty of using soil
blocks is that unlike direct seeding, where you have to plant multiple
seeds in order to guarantee emergence - then thin out the extra if all
seeds emerge, we will only transplant the strongest emerged seeds...
and will not have to thin. These seeds were planted less than a week
before this picture was taken, and have been sitting on a propagation
pad that keeps the blocks warm to encourage emergence.

Our first soil blocks.

We couldn't use the organic compost we bought because even though it
was organic, the seller couldn't prove that they had kept it at the
right temperature for the necessary time. We used dirt from our greenhouse and sifted it down through a 1/4" screen. Eliot Coleman recommends using Greensand for soil blocks, but our dirt is already high in iron, potassium, and trace minerals so we didn't use it.

The bunkhouse

My home away from home on Duncan Island.

Greenhouse Dash?

No, we're not having races in the greenhouse, we're putting organic
limestone into the soil to raise the pH from 4.8 to over 6.

We're farming now

Well, sort of. We tilled up Greenhouse 1 with a hand tiller rather than
with the tractor so we wouldn't have wheel compaction.

Second greenhouse is ready for plastic.