Two Fridays ago I learned an important skill. I learned how to drive the two row vegetable planter. At first it seemed a little overwhelming, there were so many things to remember. There was a bunch of things that needed to be done at the start of the row, and then a bunch of different things at the end of the row. Most importantly I had to remember never to back up with the planter down.
However after a few rows I started to get the hang of it and it no longer seemed so difficult to remember all the things I had to do. It was going pretty well considering I’ve never even really driven a tractor much before. By the end of the day I had planted more peas, beans, and beets.
Monday I once again went to work planting, I planted a whole bunch of spaghetti squash and a bunch of different types of pumpkins. By the end of that it got to the point where the process almost began to feel repetitive.
Later that week we got most of the transplants in the ground, the only ones that haven’t been done yet are the ones that need to be done by hand, the tomatoes and watermelons. In the ground already we have onions, eggplant, kale, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, and kohlrabi.
Transplanting is a lot of work, you have to put each individual plant into the transplanter by hand. It takes an awful long time when you have thousands of onions to put in the ground. It goes a lot faster when you have lots of people doing it, then you don’t have to stop as much, and you can go down the rows faster.
Hopefully this week we will get tomatoes and watermelons in the ground and then I can go back to planting pumpkins and squash.
~Victoria, The Summer Student