Seasons Eatings Farm is located in rural Washington county, Maine. We own 45 acres of mostly forested land. The market garden is one acre of intensively grown land. To make a liveable profit I need to replace one crop with another as soon as the first crop is done. Our growing season outside starts in April and ends in late October or early November. We use season extenders heavily. Our growing season starts in February inside the four season, unheated greenhouses and continues into mid December when the days become too short. I have about month off before I start the next seed order, work out the crop rotations and update the business plan.
We start seeds in late January and early February for the four season greenhouses. In May the seedling house opens for sales to the public. As the first batch of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings are going out the door the next batch is seeded for a second planting. We offer a pretty good variety of seedlings: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, several varieties of tomatoes and peppers, pickling and slicing cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, pumpkin, Swiss chard, pac choi, eggplant, corn and a few herbs.
The vegetable stand opens with beet greens in early spring and closes in the fall with pumpkins and cornstalks. Most of the time the stand is self serve.
Great info Robin, I had not realized your greenhouses were unheated.
Have you got pics of your veggie stand on the blog? I will have to look around to see….
Annie
what zone are you in? i just built a hoop/green house over the weekend and I’d like to ut seedlings out there, but we are expecting colder temps later this week (lower 30’s) but I’m nervous about them freezing, went and purchased heat lamps to keep warm (not sure how this will work) but was wondering how you do yours unheated and still able to grow things in the colder months…..I live in zone 5 in Nw PA.
Zone doesn’t matter this time of year. The only thing USDA hardiness zones tell us is the average annual coldest temperature of that area, Since we past the coldest part of winter it no longer matters.
The plants growing the greenhouses now have been there since they were seeds. They’re grown specifically for cold weather. Seedlings put out now would die. Heat lamps on the seedlings could easily cook them. There’s a tab at the top of the blog that says Cold Greens. Those are the plants in my greenhouses from October into April. They don’t need any additional heat or light. They become dormant in the middle of December when the days are short and temps are cold. Dormancy breaks in my area after February 2, Imbolc, and growth slowly starts again. I’d keep your seedlings in the house until the days are warm enough to set them out. Then bring them back in at night so that they don’t freeze.