A mystery elucidated
23 June, 2010
There is an important difference between planting and sowing. I don’t know if it’s news to you but it really was to me. Shows how much of this farming business I actually have a grip on, hey?
Sowing is when you put seeds in the mud. Planting is when what you have sown have started growing and is transplanted elsewhere. See the difference?
Tiny cabbages about a week old.
The light enters the north around April time, before then it’s depressingly dark and wintery. By this time of year, the week of Summer Solstice, the sun spends less than two hours away from the sky, but it doesn’t ever get dark. The disadvantage of the lower temperature is made up for tenfold. “It grows so quickly you have to move off the field” as the Farmer’s father used to say.
This is how you move the plants from the greenhouse onto the fields:
the Farmer does farmy things to the field beforehand.
Two trustworthy people hop onto a little wagon made for this purpose on the back of the tractor. They load up with plants- lots of plants.
A dreaming M and a focused Jorun getting ready
The plants are then pulled out of their planters and put root-down in between two spinning wheels.
A furrow gets dug in front of the wheels, and a spatula covers it as you move forward.
If you set up the tractor and drive if off to the field you have to make it worthwhile by planting LOTS. This is broccoli and cabbage.
The plants are then ready to rumble, in neat rows and with equal distances.
Of course… sometimes you may as well do it the old fashioned way. This is me planting Calendula in the pick-your-own-bouquet field. Seems amazing there will be flowers in about a month!
Like always it varies quite a lot as to when the Farmer gets to harvest. Weather, wind and frost all plays their part. In other words, I may well not be here for all of it. From a learning point of view I’m happier to see the planting, though.
Tomorrow morning I am off on the bus (like a peasant… or student… of WWOOF:er) to Stockholm for Midsummer celebrations, the second biggest holiday of the year! See you beyond pickled herring and vodka in tiny glasses.
