Patchwork Green is a hillside and ridgetop farm overlooking the beautiful Canoe Creek Valley several miles north of Decorah, Iowa. Our family grows five acres of vegetables on a farm near Decorah, Iowa. We grow a wide variety of high quality, chemical-free vegetables using sustainable techniques.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Waiting ……


The Patchwork Green Farm garden crew starts this week.  The calendar and past experience would have us transplanting onions and dropping seed potatoes into moist but warming soil by mid-April.  The pea seeds are usually germinating and little radish and spinach shoots are thriving under row cover.
Today, we had another inch of snow, with more rain, snow and cold weather in the forecast.  We have a backlog of transplants in our heated greenhouse, just waiting to get their roots into some ‘real dirt.’  We’re getting a little anxious and bored with the constantly cloudy weather, but there is reason to be happy.
I’m trying hard to maximize this ‘extended winter’ to get unfinished projects completed before the rush of spring planting (bunk beds for the kids, cleaning out the garage, working on the hoop houses).  I’ll have a chance to talk through our operating systems with our employees and outline our goals for the season.  After last summers’ drought, we are appreciating every inch of spring rain (and snow), knowing it will result in healthier, better-tasting vegetables for the next three months.  And when the warmer weather does arrive, everything is going to pop, from the flower buds to the bird songs to the spring planting panic mode of all the farmers!
So, in this mid-April lull, we’ll keep busy, keep a weather eye out for sunshine, and reserve our energy for the launch of the next season.

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