High Tunnel Report

The obvious disadvantage of creating blog posts when time and the weather allows is that you're going to get some content that is 'dated' when it comes in the form of a farm report.  But, since that's never stopped me before - here we go.

The Genuine Faux Farm high tunnels are usually our happiest places on the farm when it comes to successful growing.  This year we have to admit that the success levels have not been where we usually want them, but there have been some good things so far (and more good coming).  The pictures and commentary shown here applies as of about June 8, so things will have changed dramatically by the time this June 15 post comes online.

Eden

We have named our high tunnels (in case you hadn't read about them before) and our first (and smaller) high tunnel was called Eden soon after our first Fall harvests in 2010.  This is the building where we learned new things about cold weather and metal structures. 

Eden is a 72 foot by 30 foot building and it can be moved between a west and an east position.  The plan is typically to move the building in the Fall to cover the late Fall and overwintered crops.  We did do that last Fall, but we are discovering more problems with a high water-table in that position, which reduces production significantly.  As a result, we moved the building AGAIN this Spring.

Every decision of this nature has a domino effect.  One of the dominoes is that the planting in Eden for the Summer crops went in later than we wanted.  They'll be fine, of course.  Just not the schedule we hoped for.  There are tomatoes on the far left with lettuce next to them.  Beets are seeded next to peppers.  Onion and melons in the center.  Peppers and green beans next followed by lettuce and tomatoes on the right.

Our bean and beet germination has been disappointing, so we need to address that quickly.  Otherwise, plant development is moving rapidly for the other crops.  Even as I write this and look at this picture, I realize that the inside of the building no longer looks like this.

The issue with the West position of the high tunnel will be addressed before we move the tunnel to that spot again this Fall.  The plan at present is to create semi-permanent raised beds on that end to get the roots up out of the wet soil.  A secondary item may well be to put some drain tile in.  If we can manage to find the time, etc we will do both.  But, we're pretty realistic about how much we can do and we'll be happy if we can manage one of the two before Fall.  Well - we'll have to be happy, because we really don't see how we could do both this year.  Even a slight improvement should help here, so we'll go for it.

Valhalla

We don't always remember what brought us to certain names for things on our farm, but once a name sticks, it sticks.  We consider ourselves warrior farmers of a sort since it takes a bit of battling every year to get things to go. Therefore, it makes sense to have a place for the warriors to go and reap a little reward... hence Valhalla.  It doesn't have to be completely accurate with Norse mythology - we just needs to be happy with the name.  Check.

Valhalla went up in June of 2015 and our blog post commemorating that event even includes a neat time elapse of the process.   This building is bigger (96 feet long by 30 feet) and it has water hydrants for each of the two positions.  We even had a ditch cut in next to it to keep the inside from getting too wet (see the issues with Eden we are now addressing). 

Valhalla is scheduled to house our late Summer crops and we target late May for a move date.  As of this writing, we hadn't gotten to it yet.  But, by the posting of this writing, we hope to have it done.  Remember those dominoes?  Well, the time energy for moving a high tunnel got moved on Eden, so we still need to create new time and energy for the Valhalla move.  Yay?
 

In the Spring, Valhalla is used to house trays and pots of plants awaiting planting in the fields.  We also grow Spring crops in there that we anticipate moving the building off of before they bolt.  This year, things got pretty hot pretty fast after being pretty cold pretty late.  That made our window for this building PRETTY short.  Ah well.  It will even out in the end, right?

There is some very nice lettuce in there still.  The kale looks fine and should be ok for continued harvests.  The early broccoli is healthy as well.  The tatsoi and komatsuna have been harvested.  The spinach didn't have a chance this year, so it is already gone.
Once Valhalla is moved to the West position, it will house more tomatoes, peppers, green beans, melons, carrots and other tasty things.  We are anxious to get this done and get those plants in, just as we very much want these plants to go 'outside' so they can finish off successfully.

Maybe this Summer will be the Summer BOTH high tunnels break some of their own records.  We can always dream - and then do what we can to make those dreams come true.