Ananda Valley Farm Blog: 2016 Planting Has Begun

We have started preparing the fields and planting for the 2016 CSA Season.
First delivery is scheduled for the first week in May.
This year we are planting enough to double our subscribers,
but we still expect to sell out, so signup early!

Here the cover crops are being tilled into the soil.

We are trying different methods of cover cropping to help improve the soil. This shows where we planted fava & bell beans in the beds and oats in the pathways (also shows many volunteer weeds!). We'll probably use this method for the entire field next year.

On some beds, we just let the broccoli keep growing. We were able to harvest side shoots all winter from these beds. Now it's time to start fresh so they are being put into the soil.

We use a low-till approach and only till 3" deep. But that's enough to chop up the plants, so the worms in the ground can feast on them.

The seedling tables have been increased and the first seedling trays seeded. Here's the first trays on the old heating mats we used last year. They are way too small for the 150 subscribers we expect this year.

So we got some new professional ones, that can hold up to 12 trays. Our most common tray holds 338 seedlings. Here you see 4,732 seeds planted! They first sit on the heating mat for 5-7 days until they germinate.

After they germinate, they get moved to the unheated table inside, next they'll go to the outside seedling table.

How's this for an "infinity photo". Sahadev was teaching me to make photos more mysterious, show bends, don't show beginnings or endings,...

Oops! What happened here, only 1/2 the seeds germinated? These seeds were from last year. This shows why professional farms always use new seeds every year. We are learning.

Everyone asked for more carrots this year. Last year we planted each seed by hand, very impractical and unsustainable. We brought this precision seeder, with it we planted over 3,000 carrot seeds in less than an hour. By hand it would have taken over 10 hours.

We'll use this Jang Seeder for planting carrots, beets, and bok choy directly in the field. All the other plants will be transplanted from trays.

With our expansion, we need more growing fields. Cain here is working late at night to plow up another field for us to grow in.

In order to help improve the soil, when preparing this new field, we plowed in about 3" of wood chips. This adds a lot of organic matter that will break down over time and they greatly increase the worm population.

We bought several park benches to put around the farm so people can sit outside and enjoy the beautiful serenity of the farm. We carefully choose the benches so you could sit back and relax in them comfortably, while also you can sit up in them straight and meditate comfortably.
Here you see Cain and Saha getting the fork lift stuck in the mud. It took a tractor to pull it out.