Challenges – Spring Forth Farm of North Carolina

Our New Hoop House

on February 14, 2015February 15, 2015 By Jonathan 9 Comments

We have taken a short break from the house this month to build a small hoop house for ourselves. The main purpose of this 12×28 structure is to give us a place to start seedlings for the farm. However, we also built two 2-foot wide raised beds to grow winter vegetables for us to eat. We drew a lot of our design from Alberta Home Gardening (1, 2), but made a few changes. The main change was to build each hoop out of a single piece of PVC, since the hoop house we were borrowing last year broke at the joints. We tried building a caterpillar tunnel without any joints.

If the first version of the PVC caterpillar looks too weak, well, it was. The day after we finished we had a wind storm with gusts between 40-50mph and two of the hoops broke. We doubled the hoops and added purlins. We’ve had windy days since then and the reinforced hoop house stood up just fine. That was a HUGE relief. Here are step-by-step photos in case you want to build something like this.

1) We laid out the edge of the beds, staked them down, and put in rebar to slip the PVC over.

2) We put a 2-foot leg on each end of each hoop to give us more growing room at the edges, then put the hoop over the rebar and used metal straps to attach the hoop to the frame. (We didn’t want a joint at the top where it would be weak, but there is a lot less stress on the joints at the sides.) Each hoop is made of a 20-ft section of 1″ PVC. 3) Designing the end walls was a challenge for us. We based the end wall design on the design from Alberta Home Gardening (1, 2) and we are pleased with how sturdy the end wall is. The solid end wall does cast shade, so we’ll have to see if that is a problem or not. We used a hoop to trace the shape onto the plywood and used pipe insulation on the edges of the wood to protect the plastic.

4) We bought energy-efficient IR/AC (Infrared/Anti-Condensation) plastic from Farm Tek. The IR/AC plastic is only marginally more expensive than standard plastic and can have a big impact. It was breezy, almost too much to get the plastic on, but we did. We attached the plastic to the end walls using plywood laths.

5) We created the “caterpillar” by pulling 3/16″ polyester rope back and forth in an “X” pattern. It took two ropes, each running the length of the hoop house. We used eye bolts at each hoop to pull the rope through.

So here is Version 1 of our hoop house. It may not have been strong enough, but dang, the caterpillar tunnels look neat and nice. Sadly, it wasn’t rigid enough. With 40-50mpg gusts of wind, the hoops bent all the way down to the ground and broke where they were strapped to the frame.

Lesson Learned: A much more rigid, stronger material is needed for a caterpillar-style hoop house without any purlins connecting the hoops. 6) In order to reinforce the hoop house we added two purlins running the length of the hoop house. We also doubled up every hoop. (We’re not sure if the purlins would have been enough on their own, but we couldn’t take any risks with the wind wreaking more havoc.) We added rebar for the extra hoops and connected each hoop pair with several zip ties. The purlins end in Ts which are strapped to the end walls. The purlins are attached to the hoops with 2″ drywall screws and zip ties.

7) We built doors out of simple frames and ends of plastic. 8) Once the doors were on, we began filling the beds. The beds were sheet mulched with cardboard and newspaper, then filled with layers of leaf mold, top soil, and compost. Mr. Bingley loved having piles of earthy black piles lying around the farm in the winter sun. zDSC_0096 Now the hoop house is finished. It has survived strong winds at least once since we reinforced it and done well. We will build tables and a heat mat to start our seedlings (we’ll post about that soon). For now, we are excited to have completed this, look forward to starting a bounty of spring flowers and veggies, and can’t wait to eat out of our two new beds, and are eager to get back to working on our house. yDSC_0113

If The Flowers Can, Then I Can Too!

on March 13, 2014March 23, 2014 By Megan Cornett Leiss

Brrrrrrr, it has been a frigidly cold winter (for us southerners) with temperatures in single digits, inches of snow, ice and so on and so forth. The snow caved in the hoop-house and the ice knocked over trees onto our deer fence. The deer are STILL getting into our fence, so we beefed up the brush around the garden to deter them. The brush might be a bit unsightly, but it seems to be working.

Jonathan and I planted a whole bed of flowers in October to winter over until early spring blooming. We covered the bed with 2 layers of frost cover and left them for the winter. I have been worrying about our little flowers for months on end. With such unusual temperatures and heavy snow and ice making the hoops cave in on top of the flowers, I thought that surely the flowers were dead or suffocated. But no! We opened up the bed the other day when the row cover had defrosted enough to not tear when removed. The flowers were not only alive they were thriving! They love the cold! In fact, more learning has taught us that some cannot even bloom properly without the cold. We gave the bed a good weeding and left it uncovered to get more sun and rain. This bed of flowers includes larkspur, nigella, bachelors buttons, agrostemma, bupleurum, red sail poppies, tulips, and matricaria (a flower in the chamomile family).

Will I continue to worry about the flowers even though they clearly love the cold? Yes indeed. I can’t help it. I want them to succeed. I want us to succeed. Yet in the darkest and coldest times of the year, the flowers are happy and thriving, promising a lovely spring crop. I take heart in that realization.

These past few weeks I got started on seeding for our spring flower crops. I seeded over 1000 flower starts into trays including snapdragons, lavendar, ammi majus, dianthus electron, flowering kale, black-eyed susans, zinnias, gomphrena, herbs, and more, plus some vegetables for us. The “gardner” at Orchard Hill Children’s School has been helpful in watering the starts with me as part of their rotating weekly job. Today I managed to work in the garden beds, seeding carrots, turnips, beets, onions, lettuce, and arugula. Just as I was finishing it started to rain, sometimes the timing is just perfect!!

The recent warm weather has left the taste of spring in my heart, but with nighttime temps back in the mid 20’s my hopes aren’t too high yet. Sigh… I guess we have a little bit of winter left. Maybe it will leave our little farm alone.

But I know that if the flowers can survive this cold and busy winter… then I can too.

A New Plan

on March 5, 2014March 23, 2014 By Jonathan 2 Comments

Things don’t always go the way you’d planned.

This year, we applied to four area farmers markets, confident that we’d at least get into one. We didn’t. Perhaps it was an unusually competitive year? Hard to say. Our day jobs stopped us from applying to a mid-week market. Maybe that did us in? Whatever the reason, this new information has left us scrambling to find outlets for our beautiful flowers this 2014 season.

We need to have at least two days a week we’re selling flowers, so we’re considering all our possibilities. Farmers markets we may have overlooked? Increasing our marketing for wedding flowers? Reaching out big-time to area businesses for weekly bouquet deliveries and calling every florist in the phone book? A roadside stand? Some sort of CSA? We are still figuring out what the future holds, but as soon as we know where we’ll be this season, we’ll post it here.

In the meantime, we’re looking on the bright side. We were each embarrassed to be the first to admit it, but we both felt just the tiniest bit of relief: This will be a busy year for us as we build our house, and maybe God is looking out for us by reducing some weekly pressure on the farm so we can focus more attention on construction and learning to grow our flowers well. Our investment in alternative marketing strategies this year may pay off down the road in ways we can’t yet see. After all, what’s the rush? I would rather grow well and grow into our business slowly.

A few things we know for sure:

We are busily preparing for a successful 2014 season. (Megan will be starting hundreds of flower plants this week.)
We will have beautiful flowers for sale this spring. Our tulips are coming up and the poppies, bachelors buttons, and larkspur are getting bigger.
We will be persistent in applying to markets again next year.
And growing flowers and creating bouquets brings us JOY!!

Farmers never know what their season will hold. We are open to each new possibility and the different challenges it brings. Farmers must be flexible. A life lesson there, perhaps? I think so.

Stay Tuned!

Snowstorm, February 2014

on February 15, 2014March 23, 2014 By Jonathan 2 Comments

The snowstorm gave us a bit of a scare. Miraculously, all of the seed trays that Megan planted last week were spared. We give thanks and look forward to tiny green shoots germinating.

Pest Control

on October 23, 2013March 23, 2014 By Jonathan 4 Comments

We were taken aback this year by the pests feasting on our garden. We’ve laid out the list before: armyworms, cabbage worms, cross-striped cabbage worms, aphids, and several unknown caterpillars. We even saw a wooly bear caterpillar, the cute harbinger of winter, devouring our salad mix. Such a small caterpillar, and the leaf was disappearing before our eyes! But by far the worst pests have been deer and cutworms, and this week we took steps that will help us control both.

The cutworm is a grey-brown caterpillar that lives a couple inches below the ground. It emerges at night and immediately begins mowing its way through your garden. Unlike other caterpillars, which eat leaves, the cutworm snips off the stem. For plants such as greens, which only have one stem, this kills the plant. For plants that make a rosette of leaves, such as carrots, this may set the plant back severely or it may kill it. Because a single cutworm can do so much damage, and because they hide underground and blend in with the soil, cutworms are serious pests, and they did a huge amount of damage to our garden.

But while we were raking up our beds, we discovered that cutworm pupa are in fact easy to see: they are orange cocoons that lie a couple inches underground. So it was with some excitement that we picked out and squished dozens of them. I’m not at all ashamed to say they made quite a satisfying “pop.” This may not have saved this year’s veggies, but we’ve already taken care of many of next year’s cutworms by squishing them now.

Deer of course are a scourge for all gardeners in the southeast, and although we had a fence, it wasn’t keeping the deer out. We wanted to build an inexpensive fence that works by taking advantage of deers’ poor depth perception. So we did some research by visiting our friends at Whitted Bowers Farm in Cedar Grove, NC, who have that sort of fence. The main problem, we learned, was that our fence was not baited and electrified. (For more information about the low-costs 3-D fence and how it works, visit Premier Fencing.)

Our first deer fence: Not up to the task.

Our original fence was also too short, and the step-in posts didn’t work for the corners. .So we beefed it up. Our new corner posts are taller and stronger and hold our fence high. We’re also pleased with our solar charger, which was putting out its full 8,500 volts along the entire fence.

Our new fence is five feet tall. The chicken wire in a hasty anti-rabbit measure. We’ll install it properly when we have some time.

The corners are T-posts which hold it taut.

The two layers confuse the deer, which have poor depth perception.

And when they touch this apple-scented caps with their noses, they learn to stay away from the strands.

We’re still learning and still have a lot to learn, but we’ve done a lot to reduce the pest burden we’ll have to deal with next season.

Rain, Rain.

on July 12, 2013March 23, 2014 By Jonathan

This summer has been the wettest in memory. May was cool and damp. Then June thunderstorms dumped ten inches of rain – seven more than normal. And the rain has not let up in the first weeks of July. Severe thunderstorms have caused damaging flash floods, and the wet weather has hit NC farmers hard, causing major crop losses.

Farmers must just make make the best of the weather, and we’re no different. Clearing land for Spring Forth Farm has been set back. The trees that grew in or next to the field are gone, but their stumps remain. It was too wet for the tractor last week, and it is too wet again tomorrow. So for now the land looks like this, empty but not clear. We’re praying for dry weather so we can get to work. In the meantime, we’ve ordered some of the seed, we’re collecting materials and equipment, and we’re continuing to work out some of the business details that are part of the start-up process.

The land, mostly cleared, with a few stumps to pull out and some tilling to do.