Notes from the Garden
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Midland School
Farm Notes Winter 2007-08 Most of the fields were cover-cropped in the winter months besides the areas winter-producing carrots, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, spinach, beets, garlic, onions, and potatoes. We experimented with a Fava Bean cover-crop to break up the hard-pan in some of the fields. The Fava grows fast and is ready to turn in as green manure in early March. We will let some of the Fava produce beans and eat them, but in general they will serve as nitrogen suppliers and soil builder. This year we fixed an ancient grain drill bought from Howard Sahm to seed the cover-crop. After a great rainy stretch in early January that started the creek running we are now experiencing a nice dry stretch in February to plant lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage. The soil dried enough to allow a short window to prepare beds. Our friends at Plantel in Santa Maria continue to donate left over flats from their organic division. We have our own green house and shade house, but the starts from Plantel are insurance. We will soon plant Roma tomatoes donated from their Geary, greenhouse. The spring season in the garden is being supervised by Marguerite Graham. Students are mulching garlic beds, spreading compost, weeding, and harvesting carrots, broccoli, spinach, and pea greens. We are finishing pruning work in grapes, fruit trees, and clearing out the dead leaves from strawberry plants. We added pigs into the garden the previous year and repeated the experiment with large piles of horse hay/manure brought into the garden by Nick Alexander, current head of the Midland School Board. By layering grain into the piles we encourage the pigs to root though and aerate the pile creating compost that we spread on the fields. Currently it is a student’s job to bring the slop to the pigs in the morning – regardless of the weather. Click Here to see a list of produce we're currently enjoying from our garden.
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