The month of May was a pretty good month for the most part. The best part is that the entire field got prepped this month. Quite a difference from last year when we were still pulling plastic mulch up in late June. Or who could forget 2011, the year it wouldn't stop raining, when the field looked like this on June 29th.
But lo and behold the first plow went in the ground on May 2nd of this year.
And by May 20th, the entire vegetable field was prepped and some sections were even planted. It really helped out that we switched to using biodegradable mulch last year for the most part and only had a few small sections of plastic mulch that needed to be pulled up.
Some of the earliest plantings were the onions and shallots. Mike had been brainstorming over the winter to figure a way to put the onions on plastic since they always grow with so many weeds around them. He came upon a yard aerator that was on clearance. With a little shifting of this and that, the aerator is perfect for poking lots of evenly space small holes in the plastic mulch perfect for planting onions. All this was accomplished on May 9th.
Next up was getting early sweet corn and green beans planted under plastic. Last year Mike grumbled a lot about the learning curve of planting and laying plastic over sweet corn as the clear plastic has the consistency and tangle-abilty of plastic kitchen wrap. This year I heard a lot less grumbling. On May 9th we had sweet corn and green beans in the ground. A new record!
By mid May, Mike was able to go down to southeastern Ohio to bring home the tomatoes and early broccoli that his mom had started for him in her greenhouse. Our yearly rotation of hay wagons filled with flats of plants sitting in our yard has begun.
A few days later most of the tomatoes and some peppers were planted in the high tunnel. This picture was taken on May 20th. They look a little scraggly in the picture because they were just newly transplanted, but today they are growing and all the tomatoes have been staked. I suppose I need to wander back in my spare time and take a more up to date photo. Might be awhile.
Also on May 20th (or actually the day before I think?), the plastic was cut off the corn and the beans. At this point in the month the fields were really dry and we were hoping for a tad bit of rain to help things along. I checked back in last year's blog and the early sweet corn is a few days ahead of last year's schedule.
Shortly after the pictures from May 20th, we started getting some rain. The last two weeks have been a lot of start and stop. All the lettuce got planted right before Memorial Day weekend. Then we had three days in a row with freeze warnings posted. (Yes folks this is a fairly common occurrence for us to have frost right up to June 1st.) For 3 days we had frost and were kind of worried about the beans and the corn. They got a little stressed, but they did survive. Mike was able to get a bunch of plastic laid and now we are on hold due to some fairly heavy rain this past weekend. We've had a couple days of dry though and so fingers crossed that planting will resume tomorrow.
There is the month of May in a nutshell. Way ahead of schedule compared to the last 2 years. Onward to June!
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