Hello everyone! 😎
Finally, I have some time to write about what is happening in my field. I'm so busy with some offline activities that I can't even edit the photos.
Anyway, it's been raining all week, so there's nothing going on there right now, it's just that we need to wait for the soil to dry out at least enough to continue planting because we're really not going to get into the mud.
My first post this year about my field was about a month ago, when I cleaned it a bit of old dry rubbish and got it ready for ploughing.
Anyway, I am writing this for those who commented on the post, which means they will follow my further activities. The next step after cleaning was to be ploughing and I had arranged with a colleague who has a tractor and a plough, but I still had to wait for more than a week because not only did he not have the time, but it was raining again and the soil has to dry out before ploughing and there must be no mud.
Ploughing is supposed to be ploughed at a maximum depth of 20 centimetres, farmers say because ploughing deeper destroys the micro-ecosystem that retains moisture and nutrients to make it easier for plants to grow.
Some more modern farmers even say that it should not be ploughed at all. Well, I don't know, here it has always been ploughed before sowing, now with tractors, and a hundred years ago with horses and oxen.
Last year we didn't plough, I just loosened the soil with a motor cultivator, but my wife thought it was necessary this year and I listened to her :)
Then we waited a couple of days and I loosened the soil with the motor cultivator, the soil in our field is clay and there are big chunks left, and it is not good to plant in soil that is too coarse.
And we went out as a family one Friday afternoon, two weeks ago, to plant potatoes. We planted about one-quarter of the field with potatoes. Almost half as many as last year. We still have about four crates of last year's potatoes. And because it has started to sprout we planted two boxes, we didn't buy seed.
I made furrows with a motor cultivator and we planted it there.
Well, here is a picture of the younger son already covering the furrow with soil. But the soil is still quite lumpy and rough. Potatoes can be planted in this soil but for other crops, and for different seedlings it needs to be finer and looser.
We waited a day for the soil to dry out even more and then I loosened the soil again with the motor cultivator.
While I loosened the soil with the motor cultivator, my wife planted cucumbers, zucchini, and chickpeas.
Then we planted onions.
Finally, I sprinkled a piece of the field with ash I got from the wood stove my mother has for heating. Ash is also a fertilizer.
And what's green in our fields at the moment? On the right you can see two rows of garlic, my wife planted it back in February, she didn't think anything would grow, but now it's like this.
Before we go home, we'll pick our asparagus. I'm really excited about them. Five years ago I planted ten seedlings on the edge of a field, one year nothing, and now we have up to five kilos of them every spring.
They just keep growing and growing, and we pick them regularly. After the rain, they grow like mushrooms :)
Neighbours were sceptical because they supposedly don't grow well in clay soil and don't thrive in anyone's soil, but apparently, ours are tough.
They started to grow right after the rain, even through the hard clods of ploughed soil.
This week, as I mentioned at the beginning, it has been raining again since Sunday, so we will be waiting for the next round of planting - corn, Hokkaido squash, soybeans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and more. Otherwise, we are already late this year.
Thank you for your attention.
I'll report back when there is something new. :)
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