We had a fairly productive week on the homestead this week. We got some firewood put away, and we are patiently awaiting the arrival of our bee packages coming next week. We will have a blog post about that next week about the installations.
In the greenhouse we were pretty active caring for more seedlings. We are experimenting with some microgreens, arugula, and doing lettuce in flats to see if we are more successful with that. So far, the experiment is working:
We are also playing around with some hydroponically grown strawberries. I was able to get some really nice everbearing strawberry starts from a grower in Massachusetts called Nourse Farms. We are attempting to grow them in our hydrostacker system in the greenhouse. This system allows us to grow a large volume of plants in a small space. The plants grow in towers filled with vermiculite and perlite for media irrigated at set times through the day. They will be irrigated with a special organic solution and probiotic. We are really hoping this works and if it does, I would anticipate us expanding this. I’m planning on trying to propagate the runners as well so we can keep our own production going:
Finally, we constructed a potting bench to use in the greenhouse for potting up flats of plants and containers around the house. This bench allows us the space to add our ingredients to the soil, mix it well, and pot up the plants we are growing. Every greenhouse needs a potting bench:
Well, that’s it for this past week. As the weeks go on, I will be updating you all on our strawberry and greens experiments, and other things we are doing around the homestead. Gotta go out and check the stove. Can’t let those seedlings get too cold. Bye everyone!