Young greens in the hoophouse, nematodes, upcoming events

Young senposai transplant in our hoophouse.
Photo Pam Dawling

After the set-backs with our winter hoophouse greens  transplants that I wrote about last week, we worked really hard and got the whole house planted up. Most of the transplants have recovered from their transplant shock (wilting each day), during the cloudy weather we had.

The new seedlings are coming up fast and calling on us to thin them. We ended up not needing so many of the Plan D plug flat plants, but we’ve kept them for now “in case” .

Young Tokyo bekana transplant in our hoophouse .
Photo Pam Dawling

Ultimately if we don’t need them, they’ll go in a salad mix. I wrote about making salad mix last year. The past two days I have been able to harvest a mix in the hoophouse. The ingredient we are shortest of is lettuce. My first mix was spinach, Bulls Blood beet leaves, a few leaves of Tokyo Bekana, Bright Lights chard, Scarlet Frills, Ruby Streaks and Golden Frills, and a handful of lettuce leaves. Red Tinged Winter is growing fastest, of all the varieties we planted this year.

Ruby Streaks transplant in our hoophouse. Compare with Scarlet Frills below.
Photo Pam Dawling
Golden Frills mustard transplant in our hoophouse. I harvested a leaf for salad mix yesterday.
Photo Pam Dawling
Scarlet frills mustard in our hoophouse. Notice that this crop is frillier than Ruby Streaks.
Photo Pam Dawling

The mix I made today had fewer ingredients. I left the frilly mustards, the lettuces and the Tokyo bekana alone to grow some more. I used Bulls Blood beets, spinach, tatsoi outer leaves and a few Bright Lights chard leaves and stems.

Cucumber roots with nematodes (see circles).
Photo Pam Dawling

I have a new Mother Earth News blogpost, about the nematodes in our hoophouse. And I’m preparing a new slide show for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference. See my Events page for details

For those of you on other social media, here are their handles and links (use the hashtag #CFSAC2018).

This week we will be popping garlic for planting and having our Annual Garden Crop Review meeting. Next week I’ll tell you more about garlic planting as part of the Alliums for November post.

Popping garlic cloves in preparation for planting
Photo credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

2 thoughts on “Young greens in the hoophouse, nematodes, upcoming events”

  1. Oh, not at all! Wait till the soil is 50F (10C) at 4″ (10cm) deep at 9am for a few mornings running. The goal (here in the south) is to get small tops, but not big ones, before weather cold enough to kill large tops. Planting too early leads to large leaves, which get killed more easily than small leaves. Sit on your hands! Pam

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