Micro Farming

Harvesting Swiss Chard

Cindy is getting ready to plant her vegetable garden for this spring.  There are still some things growing that she planted last fall, including the Swiss Chard, radishes and some carrots that have grown large and lumpish, but that still taste pretty good.

We've decided that what she has is a micro-farm.  Not as exciting as a micro-brewery, perhaps, but probably a lot more nutritional value.

Right now she's nurturing her tomato and basil plants, raising them in the garage, but getting them accustomed to being outdoors during the days when the weather's nice.

We're currently working on revamping the varmint repelling shields around the raised beds.  Cindy attached  3 foot tall plexiglass panels to wooden stakes and installed them all the way around the original bed when she got tired of finding half-eaten tomatoes on the ground just before she was ready to pick them.  The panels worked very well at keeping the critters out of the vegetable beds, but the panels themselves made the interior of the beds too warm for some of the plants she wants to grow.  The tomatoes seemed to love the heat, but other plants thought they had their own private sauna.

The solution she came up with is to cut the plexiglass panels in half and attach hardware cloth to the lower part when she reassemble the panel.  That should increase the air flow through the bed, but still keep the squirrels from getting into the vegetable beds.

Unfortunately, that means cutting a whole lot of plastic.  And hardware cloth.  Always such fun.