
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” .

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.

Photo Pam Dawling

Photo Pam Dawling

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.

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).
- CFSA Facebook: @carolinafarmstewards http://
ow.ly/3qzS30m2E4b - 2018 SAC event page: http://ow.ly/YL3h30m2E9u
- Twitter: @CarolinaFarm http://ow.ly/
COPG30m2Edn - Instagram: @CarolinaFarms http://ow.ly/
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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.

Photo credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
I am in the southern part of NC. So, I am not too late for planting my garlic?
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