Winter Update

Baby spinach, which should be ready to harvest in about a month

To begin, a big thank you to everyone who has made the Warehouse Market a part of their shopping routine. We are enjoying this adventure in neighbourhood marketing. I hope that we can continue to find ways to develop the warehouse into the best food outlet and community hub it can be.

A primary goal for this winter has been to grow as many greens as possible with our new greenhouse. While we had some nice crops, it’s obvious that we can improve on this next year by having plenty of greens every week through the winter.

Until our overwintered spinach is ready in about a month we won’t have any fresh greens except pea shoots. Everything else is sold out or too cold-damaged to harvest.

Next year we are planning to fill our unheated hoop houses with only the most cold hardy greens: spinach and kale. In the heated greenhouse, we are going to focus on growing salad mix, mustards, arugula, dandelion greens and parsley.

This year we used a lot of space growing bok choy, cilantro and sweet turnips. These crops did not hold up very well due to the cold and didn’t sell as well as expected either. If there are cold hardy greens or root crops that you would like us to grow for next winter, please let us know. Now is the time to order seed and adjust our plans.

Now is also the time to sign up for your 2018 season farm share. You don’t have to pay anything until May 1, but signing up now helps us plan for the coming season. We will also be doing farm share deliveries in downtown Halifax. If you work or live downtown and you have 10 or more co-workers or neighbours who are also interested in signing up, we will deliver to your door on Thursdays!

Here are a few photos from the last month on the farm and at Warehouse Market: