twice the farming

weed eating the clover

 The vegetable growing space at Blue House Greenhouse Farm just doubled in size!  Last week, after a a dry spell, we tilled in the clover cover crop.

How did we know it was time?  The clover was just beginning to flower and we needed to take advantage of the weather because who knew when it would rain again!

On Wednesday I rented a weed eater from Interstate Rentals to cut the clover down a couple inches.  On Thursday, we rented a tiller. I owe a big thank you to Marc, at Amaranth Organic Gardening, who let us use his truck to haul this beast of a tiller. After a few tries of tilling in the cut clover without luck (the stems were getting caught in the tines), the lovely volunteers, Adam and Amanda, raked up the clover and moved it into a large pile to compost.  And then the tilling really began! Adam and I made two passes over the area to try to chop up the clover stubs. Although the tiller was a bit unwieldy, it did the job and we were able to finish that afternoon.

Adam wielding the tiller

 This spring I debated whether I would dig in the clover by hand or rent a tiller. I weighed time spent digging versus depth and quality of digging.  In the end I chose both!  Now that the tilling is done, we dug pathways and are using a digging fork to loosen the soil deeply in the newly made beds.

In other news, the farm now is also selling to Pizza a Go-Go.  I tried a slice of pizza with our red russian kale-delicious. I also applied for a cost share program through the Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District for a drip irrigation system and was accepted! In the next few weeks I'll be installing the system- this should be really fun.