Living the Dream - Planting

Sorry folks - it's been awhile!!  Why did things get so busy all of the sudden?  Oh, right - it's planting time!!

Work on the farm this past week has consisted almost entirely of planting.  And when we're not planting, we're weeding.  Planting, wedding, planting weeding - repeat!  As you can see from the pics below, we plant some crops by puncturing holes in plastic.  The plastic does a variety of things - it prevents weed growth, it retains soil moisture (here in CO moisture literally gets sucked out of the air) and it increases the temperature of the soil.  The soil temperature increase is great for crops like eggplant, tomatoes, and all varieties of peppers.  And believe me, come August, when you need ANY of these things, we'll have plenty :)

After the plastic (and the irrigation tape below the plastic) is put into place, it's time to plant.  We have a sweet setup at Isabelle - the water wheel attachment on the tractor!!  The wheel simultaneously punches holes in the plastic, drips a fish emulsion mixture into the hole (an organic fertilizer), and then the folks riding on those comfy chairs drop in the the little baby plant.  Having ridden the tractor all week, I'm now like a human planting metronome (if that even exists..:)

Steve and I planting baby peppers

This may look easy, but if you get behind in the slightest - PANIC - just think of the assembly line episode from "I Love Lucy"

an artistic view of the beds before planting

what, more eggplant??  I'll be making my fair share of babaganoush in September...