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May is a great month on the farm. Perhaps it’s
the brilliant green of the grass which seems so unique to spring. It’s very satisfying
plowing down the cover crops which have held the soil and nutrients all winter. Winter
rye is our most common cover crop and it grows incredibly rapidly during May. It
can grow from 6 inches high to 30 inches high in one week. It’s important to plow
it down before it gets too large or the large proportion of carbon in the larger
plants will tie up all the nitrogen in the field and leave nothing for the vegetable
crop. The fields start really filling with crops in May. The potatoes are planted in late April or early May. We’ve been planting weekly plantings of spinach and beets since late April and the first few plantings of lettuce go out into the fields as well. Early to mid May we seed our first plantings of sweet corn at the same time the dairy farmers are planting their field corn. In late may when the dairy farmers start thinking about their first cutting of grass, we put out our cucumbers and tomatoes. We plant over 10,000 tomato plants! May is a chancy month with respect to frosts. Sometimes we’re OK as early as May 10th, |
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