Surprise, it's summer!

April Fool's Day brought a surprise end to spring with a record-breaking high of 83'.  April 2nd was more of the same.  The past week has been fantastic for working outdoors and I've taken advantage of it as much as possible.  Construction of the raised slab wood beds continued on Thursday evening.  And by the end of Friday the north beds were finished, about 4 weeks after I began.  Hopefully the southern beds won't take as long.

On Wednesday March 30th I planted 24 Rose Finn Apple fingerling potatoes in one of the raised beds.  This is approximately how much I planted last year which I then kept for seed.  Yesterday (4/3) Will and I worked up three 100' rows at the farm and planted it all in Rose Finn Apple potatoes (saved seed).  I used the Farmall to plow and then disc the area.  Will ran the rototiller up and down each row once.  Then I followed behind with the David Bradley 2-wheel tractor with the potato plow.  The wind started to blow just as we finished planting and a band of storms blew through the area for the rest of the afternoon.

The peas I planted two weeks ago just broke the surface yesterday, greens too.  Yesterday I bought another 3-shelf living room greenhouse from Drug Mart and last night I started 200 tomato plants.  So far I've begun:

50     Costoluto Firoentino

50     Roma

50     Rutgers

25     Black Plum

25     Small Red Cherry

With a heat mat on the 2nd shelf the soil is around 85'.  There is no more space in the living room for additional greenhouses so I'll probably rotate the plants from greenhouse #1 out of the living room and into a cold frame.  The warm temps are expected to continue throughout the week so hopefully I'll have plenty of opportunity.