What Happens on Gaining Ground’s Farm During the Winter?
Winter on the farm may appear quiet to the casual observer, but this season is an essential period of maintenance, planning, and growing. Yes, we are still growing!
While our last official weekly pick-up of the growing season occurred in November, we’ve heard from many of our partner organizations that greens are among the most challenging produce for them to acquire during winter.
We’re planning to help meet that need by increasing our winter growing space from 33 beds to 53 beds, including 12 with additional season extension, which will increase our yield this winter and in winters to come. We plan to grow in all five of our high tunnels, five of our caterpillar tunnels, and we’re using four field beds to experiment with low caterpillar frost cover tunnels. Growing in tunnels allows us to maintain warmer temperatures, extending the growing season, and also shielding crops from harsh winter weather conditions such as heavy rain, wind, frost, and snow. Additionally, with our new greenhouse space, we’ll have the capacity to grow microgreens in a larger quantity and for a longer season than in past years. We’re on track to grow:
- 2,088 pounds of spinach
- 136 lbs pounds of watercress
- 1,850 pounds of carrots
“We will plant 2.25 times as much spinach as we’ve planted for past winter harvests. Spinach is a nutritionally dense crop that our partners love, It is hardy enough to grow through the shortest and coldest days for a continual harvest,” said Gaining Ground Director of Agriculture Mark Congdon.
We first trialed winter harvests in 2020. This December, January, and February, Gaining Ground will provide two to three produce distributions to our select partners each month. That’s an increase from one distribution per month in the winter season in past years.
While we’ll be busy with that winter harvest, activities on the farm will shift a bit from fieldwork to tasks that sustain the farm through the colder months and prepare for the upcoming growing season.
With less pressure to tend to crops, winter is when Gaining Ground often tries to complete maintenance and repairs. As a no-till farm, healthy soil is key to our mission. During the winter months we prep our non-growing beds by using cover crops, silage tarps, and mulches to protect our soil. We also add beneficial bacteria to the beds to help break down plant debris. Equipment is cleaned, inspected, and serviced to ensure it is in optimal condition for the coming Spring.
Finally, we get to geek out over seed catalogs. Once those catalogs arrive, the real planning for next year begins. Our farm crew reviews what worked and what didn’t from last season and discusses if there are any new varieties they want to plant in the upcoming season. A lot of math happens during this period. The farm crew has to figure out how much field space we’ll use for different crops, how many seeds to order, when to plant, and how to organize the planting schedule overall.