All the crops that were seeded in early February are up and growing with most of them having at least one set of true leaves. The pea trellis is in place and they should be getting close to grabbing on in about a week or so. The radishes are plugging forward and baby spinach has two sets of true leaves on some of the plants. The first harvest of these plantings will be salad mix and, from the looks of it, it should be ready in two weeks.
So, if we look back at our 2011 seeding records we saw that we planted everything for that mix (red and green oakleaf lettuce, mizuna, red russian kale, arugula, and red giant mustard) on February 10. If we plant those in the hoophouse from late March through early May it is 3 weeks to first harvest for the brassicas, and 4 weeks to first harvest for the lettuces. At that time we seed the lettuces, wait a week, and then seed the others. For the earliest planting we seeded all of them at the same time to get things up and growing in empty beds. So, what we see if that when we have lower light levels and colder temperatures we go from three and four weeks to first harvest to seven weeks to first harvest. That's always a big question that we get and haven't focused enough on getting those numbers recorded and useable. We feel like we've got a good system in place to record planting dates, days to emergence, days to harvest and other useful information that we'll be able to share here throughout the year.
We are looking forward to harvesting and mixing up our three different mixes. Check in later this week to see some pictures of the salad mix growing, hear about why we plant each component separately, what goes into each of the three mixes, how we figure out pricing for these and more.
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