Hey everyone. Been a while again since I've been on here. Busy, busy busy. We've had a super mild winter up here in Missouri. The only real cold we had was that week of below freezing temperatures back in January, and I think we saw maybe -6 one time. It was cold, but it didn't last. As I'm sure it has been for the rest of you, February has been mild and often warm. I've only seen a handful of freezes in the entire month! Now I'm showing mostly 50's for highs in the forecast with a few 60º days. Mild, but not really abnormal for March.
What I am praying for is more rain. We have had hardly any rain since May of last year. We had a few storms back in August that brought us some much needed moisture, and then it shut off again through the fall. We didn't see much measurable rainfall up until January, and even that was very minimal. We're back to being very dry again. Unfortunately none of the wet weather creeks are running, and any time rain is forecasted, it goes around us. So anyways, we could use some rain.
This is one of our best springs a couple weeks ago after we did receive some rain. I've yet to see this spring quit flowing, no matter how dry or hot it gets. It's a good clean source of water for our cattle when we move them down to this field in the summer. This is located right below my garden field.
I'm up to 3 acres in produce this year, and I'm selling most of it in the Springfield area, about an hour and 30 minutes south/southwest of us. Right now all but 3/4 acre is under green, growing cover crop at this moment in time. I just plowed that 3/4 acre with my 1940 Ford 9N tractor a few weeks ago right after it rained. Then I quickly disced it to get that moisture sealed off. I'll try to show a picture of that below.
I also received a truck shipment of rock phosphate a couple days ago, and I have to drive up a couple hours northwest of us to pick up about 1200LB of pelleted chicken manure next week, and then I'll have everything I need to start planting my early spring crops very soon. I've also been busy setting up irrigation lines and building new electric fence to keep those pesky deer out. Thankfully our neighbor has nearly 120 acres of alfalfa bordering us, which keeps the deer busy during the summer months LOL.
I work out a crop rotation that allows each of my "plots" to see one cash crop where tillage is necessary, and then they turn back to cover crop and sometimes see up to 2 years of rest with continuously growing cover crops throughout the entire cycle. I try to apply most of my soil amendments while the cover crops are growing, so that the cover crop and properly utilize them and grow healthier root systems to feed the soil while, at the same time, paving the way for future cash crops.
Pictured right below here is an spring oat/rye cover crop mixture as I was mowing it down last June. This is a good example of what the cover crops will look like depending on the season. All this green organic matter contributes a lot to feeding the soil life during those no till years in between the seasons that I have to use tillage to grow my cash crops. I also let all of the weeds grow in the cover crop as they please. Flowering "weeds" in a cover crop can look like pretty, and they attract a lot of beneficial insects and pollinators to my garden space. Oh, and the birds LOVE these tall cover crops. We have a healthy population of quail on our property that spend a lot of time in my cover crops each season.
Last year I took this picture up on top of our neighbor's property, overlooking part of our property below. You can kind of see my hillside garden plot down there, in the middle of the picture. What you can't see here is how it wraps around the hillside below the trees in the picture. We're in a north-south valley, so it gets COLD at night, and we get fairly late killing frosts for our area most springs, usually sometime towards mid May. We'll often see our first light frosts around late september/early October. For the area, the 50% "average" is more like April 21st/October 16th.
Then of course, I've got lots of plugs for transplant growing in my little heated greenhouse right now, including sweet onions, bunching onions, beets, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, parsley, kale, collards, Japanese turnips and leeks. Today I'm starting the spring broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage transplants, as well as Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi and another succession of everything else mentioned. I'll probably be starting *some* peppers in another week. I'm planning on sowing about 2 200' rows of snap peas out in the field as soon as I get my chicken manure next week. I'll follow with a couple more rows in a second succession a couple weeks later :-). As warm as it's been, I may also get a head start on my first carrot succession, and maybe a few other cold-hardy crops. From here on out, I will be planting something every week until probably mid September, in order to keep crop successions flowing for market. There is a real learning curve to proper succession planting. Fun times!
I'm also currently building a bigger high tunnel solely for propagation, as I'm quickly running out of space in my smaller greenhouse. The new one will be 30'x72'. I actually tore this one down last year at a neighbor's place up north of us. They had moved here from Montana, and they wanted this high tunnel removed. They said that if I could take it down and get it out of there, I could have it, which I quickly did. They even had 2 brand new rolls of 6mil plastic for it in their garage! I'm hoping to have it up within a few weeks, as I will desparately need the propagation space by then.
I think that's all for now. Have a good day everyone!
Oh, and one last picture. Check out this picture I took outside our house right after sunset last winter. In my opinion, wintertime sunsets can not be beat. Winter is my favorite season, as it has always been. I'm sad that wintertime sunsets like this are starting to go away for the season lol!
But soon our pastures will hopefully look like they do in this picture that I took last April, which is pretty as well I guess. What can I say, I LOVE winter, and I often wish it would be colder here. Most people do not agree with me AT ALL on that haha.
Q