After two straight weeks of rain the sun has finally peeped out for long enough that we can start on the real work of spring: planting. Apparently spring planting is always a big rush as well as a bit of a gamble. You don’t want to start too early because a late frost might come and wipe everything out (remember the Easter frost last year?). You don’t want to wait too long though because every week you put off planting is another week between you and harvest. A late harvest not only means that other folks who planted earlier can outsell you at the market, but also that the tail end of your harvest might get cut short by a late season frost. As Barbara Kingsolver put it in Animal Vegetable Miracle, “The standard advice on potato planting time is the same as for onions and peas: “as early as the soil can be worked.” That is a subjective date, directly related to impatience.”

We started with potato planting because potatoes take a very long time to grow, around 100 days. Cutting potato sets makes me feel very old. Not old in my own chronological age (my first three days on the farm did that as I hobbled around the house every day after work clutching my back and aching worse than my 93 year old grandmother after a water aerobics class) but old in time. Cutting potato sets makes me feel like I should be wearing a bonnet and waiting for a buggy to take me to church.

 

Last week I cut potato sets from one hundred and fifty pounds of seed potatoes. In case you’re wondering, as I did for years without asking, a seed potato is just a regular potato. Potatoes evolved in the equatorial regions where temperature is not a factor in their seasons. Instead of having seeds that are ready to wake up as long as the temperature or the amount of sunlight is correct they simply go through a predefined “rest period.” So, a seed potato is any regular potato that has been stored in a cool, dry place for a season or two and is now ready to send out eyes that will become new potato plants. Unless you have purchased grocery store potatoes that have been treated with chemicals to keep their sprouting dormant any potato you buy for food can be stored and once it begins to send out eye sprouts it can be planted and will become a potato plant.

Our seed potatoes came in many shapes and sizes. They were from the Seed Savers catalog and were shipped to us from Maine and boy were they interesting to look at and cut up. First I did the little potatoes. I cut French Fingerling potatoes and Purple Peruvian potatoes and little red Spanish potatoes. Next I cut up the romantically named Rose Apple Fingerlings and the ugly sounding Russian Banana potatoes which look nothing like bananas and hopefully taste nothing like them either. Finally I got out the big bags and cut hundreds of All Blues, Cranberry Reds, King Harrys, and finally Yukon Gold potatoes. I cut so many potato sets that it took us three days to plant them all and I managed to get a fantastic Michael Jackson tan from wearing a single gardening glove and a short sleeved shirt for the entire operation.

 After the potatoes it was time for the onions. Joe (one of the other interns on the farm) and Jamie planted the onion bulbs (a very similar process to seed potatoes) while I took care of the transplant onions that had been started in the greenhouse to give them a head start. I must admit that at first I was smug about my job being the transplants, which at first seemed like the easiest thing in the world. “Just dig a little trough, lay the onions in it, and mound the dirt up on both sides so they stand up when you’re done. It should be an hour long job,” Jamie informed me that first morning. By the end of the night I was incredibly dusty and smelled strongly of onion, but at least all the Cipolinis were planted.

Finally I got to plant the carrots. The carrots had been started from seed in the green house. The teeny-tiny seeds were planted in little trays that were gridded into eight by fifteen one inch squares. By the time I got to them each one inch grid square was growing an itty-bitty carrot in it. These baby carrots came out of the trays with a cheese spreader and each one went into a little hole I had made for it in the earth. I then covered each one with dirt and planted the next one until I had planted four of those trays full of carrots. All in all I planted 480 carrot plants and next I’ll be doing the seeds.

 

There are many other things that have been getting planted such as fig trees in the orchard, squash and cucumbers in the big garden, and blueberry bushes along the main road. The thing is, there are just so many things to plant that I can’t even tell you all of them. All day long between chores like feeding the animals, gathering eggs, and moving the cows and horses we plant plant plant. This time of year, I’m learning, you plant until you drop and then you get up at dawn the next morning and plant some more.