fava beans

The first crop to be sown in the field this year is the fava bean. While Nikki was at the Exeter farmer's market selling Spring-plants, I planted two 100' beds, or 600' in rows of fava beans; that's five pounds of seed.

This week, we'll also be sowing carrots, peas, spinach, mesclun and arugula. The seedlings that we've started in the greenhouses are looking healthy, and eager to one day enter the soil outdoors. I'd still like to see our onions bigger at this time, so we'll have to continue to experiment with seeding mediums and fertilizer rates. Two trays of onions are bigger than all the others; they were planted in a different medium than the rest, which means next year I'll be looking into purchasing this more expensive medium for our starts.

I've been able to till about half of our field, and wait, a little anxiously, to till the rest as I watch the weeds grow. The bottom half of the field is still too saturated to get the tractor into it. Let's hope May and June aren't as wet this year!