Wintering STOGROW North site 

Farm produce from last year in the compost pile 

Wintering STOGROW field 

Transplants and a greenhouse!

After our successful planting party and a few other planting sessions, a good third of the table space in the St. Olaf research greenhouse is full of our trays of sprouting plants! Some of the brussel sprout transplants are a little leggy (long and spindly) because we had to start them on the floor, but the rest are looking fine. Dan and I have been checking on them every day during chapel. Tonight we are meeting to make the biggest purchase yet - a greenhouse! We are out of space in the school's greenhouse but we have TONS left to plant, so we need more greenhouse space ASAP. When it arrives, we'll probably need some people power to help us put it up, so watch for an email soliciting a little help from everyone on the alias. Not on the alias yet? Email farmers@stolaf.edu, and we'll fix that right away. : )

Spring Planting

The snow has melted, the trees are budding, and the birds are back - in short, spring is here in full force! The STOGROW Farmers and four excellent volunteers (thank you Mary, Berit, Kate, and Thomas!!) got our hands dirty for the first time and did part of the spring planting in the greenhouse today. Everything up until today had more or less been on paper, so it was a great feeling for us to finally have something REAL to work on! We got together at 3pm today, and two hours, 4 different kinds of cookies, and many good tunes later, we had planted the following:

Eggplants
- Random mix, 48 plants
- Nadia, 56
- Kermit, 48
- Orient Express, 64

Tomatoes
- Yellow Pear, 48
- Moskvich, 56
- Roma, 60
- Granny Smith, 32

Onions
- Big Daddy, 64

Chiles
- Hot Ancho, 76

Brussel Sprouts, 56

We used a mixture of rectangular flats (in which we could start about 32 transplants), styrofoam planters (which had 24 cells), and a few square planters that fit 16 transplants.

Now that we have plants in the greenhouse, we have to keep them watered. Dan and I have worked out a schedule of checking on them - I'm checking them MWF during Chapel time and Dan will be watering TThSat. If anyone would like to help with this, let us know! (farmers@stolaf.edu)

Next on the ever-growing TO DO list: plant more eggplant and tomatoes, order and plant more peppers, purchase and set up a greenhouse (we'll really need people power for this!), and work the details with Bon Appetit (delivery schedules, pricing, food safety rules). More pictures soon, stay tuned!