Our greenhouse space is leveled and the first arches are up, and our irrigation pieces have arrived after 5 nail-biting days being lost in the bowels of FedEx. There's officially nothing but work standing between us, microgreens and consistent production of our core crops. The irrigation goes in tomorrow, as well as our first succession of core crops and the floor on the greenhouse. Hopefully the rest of the arches will go up Thursday. With any luck we'll have the thing covered and shelves up by early next week.
I'm hoping to see a flush of strawberries with the irrigation, but I think the chances are 50/50. I'm really not sure what the plants are going to do. Production is usually weighted towards the beginning of the season with a long tail of declining yields. I've been successful at extending that tail in the past. We were seeing increases in yields when the hail hit, and then we had that lovely long stretch in the mid 70s... except it was the low 70s on the farm. We're in a frost pocket, so we're running 3-5 degrees lower than the rest of the city. The sweet spot for strawberries is the mid-80s. So they just hunkered down through the abnormally cool May that we had. Last year I was able to harvest strawberries through the first week of July, so I'm hoping we'll see production pick up and get a good long tail of strawberries. Send those plants good vibes!
