Spring comes early at gardendwellers!

Saturday Barry and I spent a good portion of the afternoon getting the high tunnel ready for planting.  Seems like fall flew by last year and we didn't make our goals for tilling and laying plastic.  As you can see in the photos, Barry started off with a winter jacket but it wasn't long before we were both in our shirt sleeves and sweating up a storm.  It was 40 degrees outside and you can see the snow piles on the outside of the tunnel but inside it was toasty!

It was great fun to play in the dirt again and see sunshine.  I think I even got a little bit of sunburn!  You can see we had to incorporate a little organic matter into one corner as there is a little more clay there.  We also used an organic certified product that helps to break down clay particles in hopes of bettering the soil in that corner.

The soil was warm and thanks to the watering we did a few days earlier, just moist enough to make a fine seed bed.  We put down the black plastic to warm the soil even further and deeper in anticipation of an early seeding of Basil.  Basil likes really warm soil - 55 degrees or more - to germinate and the warm soil bed will help to keep the air temperature warm during cold nights.  Now granted, we won't get the seeds in for another month (maybe) but we're still shooting for having our first crop in the grocery stores and restuarants by July 4th.  That's a two week advantage on other years.  If we're lucky and Mother Nature plays nice, we might even be in to our customers sooner!

Spring really is here - at gardendwellers at least!