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  • From: "Liz Pike" <liz AT laughingbrookfarm.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Bumps on the hoophouse learning curve
  • Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:24:56 -0500

I'm posting for a member who couldn't get this message to go through due to
excessive formatting, which I asked him to remove. I assume he doesn't
understand because it didn't go through the second time either (it makes the
list server hiccup.) I cleaned it up, and unfortunately had to remove the
soil test results...

Here's the post from glenecofarm AT planetcomm.net:

Last fall, after the summer tomato crop had finished and my summer
workload had started to diminish, I pulled the largely spent tomato
vines out of my small hoophouse, dug out several cubic yards of soil in the
root zones of the tomato rows, and replaced it with an equivalent
amount of partially composted poultry house litter. I then spent several
afternoons double digging the beds, picking out small rocks,
breaking up clay clods, thoroughly mixing compost and soil, and
reshaping the beds. Though I had better than expected results growing
summer tomatoes and then winter salads during the first year, considering
my inexperience and the initial poor quality of the soil, I noted that
the second summer's tomato crop didn't do as well and I was still
dissatisfied with the tilth of the soil. I lamented the fact that
despite all of my hard work, the soil in my hoophouse still consisted of
an aggregate of hard gravel sized clay lumps and "not quite finished"
compost material. Nevertheless, I went ahead and raked it off as smooth
as I could and planted a variety of winter hardy salad greens and some
homemade mesclun mix in two beds and I transplanted some late planted
Red Sails lettuce and several herbs into a third bed.

Most of the stuff I planted simply has not grown nearly as well as I
hoped compared to my first winter's salad growing experience. Both the
first winter and this past winter, I got the greens planted late because
of the time needed for prepping the soil in the fall and was not
surprised to see very slow growth during the low light and cold
conditions of December and January. However, I did see good growth in
February and March of last year and had some to sell during those
months. This year is quite different. Aside from some of the Red Sails
Lettuce which has been enjoyed in the house, just about everything is
just sitting there not growing and there has been little worth the
effort to harvest and sell.

Of course some of the problem is probably due to the colder winter we
have experienced compared to the previous winter. Suspecting a possible
soil fertility imbalance problem, I decided to take soil samples in my
hoophouse and have a nutrient analysis done on the compost I used. This
is a summary of the results:

~~~~~~~~~
Liz Pike
Laughingbrook Farm
Westfield NC
http://www.marketfarming.com
http://www.laughingbrookfarm.com







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