Readying the Field

This last week has been pretty brutally hot, sunny and humid - it's summer time! It feels good to be dirty and sweaty after so many months of staring out at the field waiting.

At the same time, I'm realizing that I should have worked a little harder to get myself in shape this winter.    We laid down black plastic mulch the other day over the bottom 6 rows in the garden. That's where we're planning on planting the tomatoes, pepper and eggplants, and the black plastic warms up the soil and suppresses weeds. After a full day of bending, standing and squatting my legs were screaming.

The black lines along the rows are drip tape, part of the irrigation system we bought at Brookdale Farm in New Hampshire. Each row has a line of tape that will slowly drip water throughout the day. They all connect at the end of the rows to a main line that we'll run down the side of the field and will hook up to a garden hose. This system uses much less water than hand watering would and will save us a lot of time  and effort.

Rolling out the plastic mulch

We dug a trench and buried it on either side of the row

Notice the drip tape lines going under the plastic

Finished!

Meanwhile, our tomato, pepper and eggplants are hardening off outside, getting ready to be planted tomorrow. We'll just cut a hole through the plastic and put them in the ground. It's good they're going in the ground, they've gotten really big.