Improving Soil Health

It’s hard to describe the excitement, hope and anticipation leading up to the first day of planting out in the field. It’s true that I’ve been planting seeds indoors, in the tunnels, and in trays since February but it really feels like the season has begun when we get outside in our fields.

This year brought a heightened sense of excitement, hope and anticipation. We purchased a new attachment for our tractor called a field cultivator pictured below. It’s purpose is to loosen, smooth, and make the soil soft and easily workable for both our direct seeders and for transplanting into.

One of our biggest goals from a soil health perspective is to reduce our reliance on our rototiller. Rototillers are notoriously destructive to the soil and since healthy soil means healthy plants means healthy people then anything we can do to reduce rototiller use will be a huge benefit for our soil, our farm and ultimately you. I’m happy to share my initial impression of our field cultivator is that it does a MUCH better job in less time and using less fuel while also being less destructive than our rototiller.

Once our fields were prepped it was onto seeding. I planted sweet corn, snap peas, snow peas, radish, salad turnips, spinach, potatoes & cilantro. The next day, we transplanted cabbage, broccoli, scallions, broccolini, shallots, pearl onions, kohlrabi, lettuce, & bok choy.

We’re off to the races as they say and we are SO excited to be bringing healthy, sustainable produce fresh from our farm to your table!

This tool, called a field cultivator, is our primary seedbed prep tool.

After using our field cultivator we have loose, smooth, soft soil that’s easy to work with for both planting and transplanting.