Root Bottom Farm: Seeding & Weeding. April Week 4.

Root Bottom Farm is staying busy: seeding and weeding. We planted 65 raspberries to replace the ones that died in the initial 2013 planting. The strawberries are going strong and the first sign of fruit has appeared. The starts in the greenhouse are almost ready to transplant in the fields. The microgreens are looking good and we are excited to start delivering to restaurants for the 2014 season. This Saturday is our first Madison County Farmers & Artisun Market in Mars Hill from 9-1.

On the flower side of things: The second wave of tulips and daffodils are in full bloom. I finished reclaiming all the existing beds, mulched the red hot pokers around the house and filled in missing dirt and leveled the beds. Kathleen seeded all the annual flowers (300 plants total). We still have 13 varieties of sunflowers to direct seed in the fields and all of the perennials to seed in trays. This week, I will measure and graph out all of the new perennial beds and finish designing. Over the next few weeks, I will build and design 4 large perennial flower gardens and fill in holes in the existing 10 beds.

In other news, we have had a random chicken find her way to the farm. She was badly injured and is currently being pushed around the property in her own personal chicken tractor. We named her “Yuns”. We went out of town for the weekend and were so excited to be able to leave the farm in Kathleen's hands. She opened and closed the farm, took care of the watering and seeded microgreens. She even weeded the rest of the asparagus! When we left the farm, the asparagus was barely ankle high...and now it's mid-thigh high! Magic.