Wintertime “Fun” at Fixettwell Farmlet: An Ode to Spreadsheets

Our front steps have disappeared!

Hoophouse held up decently under the snow

This past week we got our first major snowstorm of the season.  This storm wasn’t especially ferocious or anything, we didn’t lose power and our pipes didn’t even freeze this time – but the storm brought cold temperatures and the kind of snow that has a hard crust of ice on top and sticks around covering everything for a week or so, making it hard to walk off the porch or get a car out of the driveway (we still don’t have 4x4).

Too deep!

Chris has bravely donned his warm coat and boots each day and wandered to the back of our property to continue his battle to save our small stand of trees against the invasive brush.  More on that another day!

Bea has less bravely donned her slippers and joined the cats by the fire, drinking cup after cup of hot tea, and playing with spreadsheets to plan out our crops for the 2014 season.  We are still about a long day’s work from being able to close in the hoophouse so unfortunately at the moment all of our gardening is still being done in the electronic/hypothetical format.  We are getting very uncharacteristically organized though, and appreciate these cold winter months to provide the opportunity to sit still long enough to plan things properly!

First, we sorted out all the seeds we already have on hand, which is a kind of ridiculous amount due to the fact that Bea was “paid” for a past internship in free seeds [she literally worked for peanuts!].  While seed companies aren’t allowed to sell seed packets past their stamped sell-by date, most seeds actually retain their viability 5-10 years past this date – so you can use old seeds, you just might want to double-seed to anticipate lower germination rates.  We split all the seeds up into families and then types, then varieties, and then catalogued these in a spreadsheet as we Ziplocked them together for way better organization than Bea’s previous method (throwing everything jumbled together in a single large bag).  Ultimately, we figured out that we hardly had to order any seeds compared to which crops we wanted to grow – yay for knowing (and using) what you have on hand!

Spreadsheet I made back in 2000

Bea’s aside: thank goodness for Microsoft Excel!  Once upon a time, I thought that Excel was a tool only useful for making calculations that you might just as easily use a calculator for.  It might be helpful if you needed to make a graph or as a makeshift contact database, but otherwise I didn’t really ever have any reason to open this software.  Then a few years ago while working on a project together, a good friend asked to see my contact spreadsheet; I wasn’t prepared for his eyes to bug out in embarrassment for me and my poor Excel skills!  He quickly taught me about borders, shading, formatting, and the importance of having your documents actually appear presentable & understandable “just in case” you’re asked to share your data.  Now Excel is just about my go-to application for any purpose I can squeeze out of it – in this case, after cataloguing all our seeds and crop list, it’s now serving as my graph paper!

Our planned Hoophouse 2.0 layout -- click for larger version

So here’s our floor plan for our hoophouse, which will feature 136 square feet of bench space where someday we’ll be able to start way more plants than we intend to grow to maturation ourselves (i.e., for sale or trade).  The benches will be built atop a series of 55-gallon barrels which will also serve as our primary water source for the hoophouse.  The open space near the barrels will be where we park our stationary bike which will be hooked to a water pump, with irrigation lines being distributed to each side of the hoophouse.  The beds along the sides are designed to maximize the amount of in-ground growing space while still being manageable for one person to tend by hand.  For now, we’re also going to have a compost pile and some storage shelving in the other end of the hoophouse, although in future seasons we’ll most likely find less prime real estate for these purposes elsewhere on our property.  This first growing season is admittedly an experiment, so we purposely wanted to leave some space underutilized so we can grow into it in case we find there is in fact a market for our veggies or plants besides ourselves.

Our in-ground growing area in the hoophouse will be home to our spring crops:  Leeks; Onions; Broccoli; Brussels Sprouts; Pac Choi; Cauliflower; Cabbage; Kohlrabi; Kale; Asian Greens; Mustard; Shiso; Swiss Chard; Lettuce; Spinach; Arugula; Mizuna; Peas; Fava Beans; Carrots; Turnips; Parsnips; Radishes; Beets; and a variety of herbs.  We’ve done a lot of math to figure out how much of each crop to grow and how to stagger the planting dates so in theory we will spread out our harvest – Bea’s getting really antsy for more warm weather to get here so we can finish the hoophouse, start some seeds and actually implement any of these plans!

Our new garden site with all its various obstacles

Meanwhile, once it warms up again, we’re also going to be installing a large kitchen garden over on the other side of our house – our plan is to enclose a little more than 1800 square feet in deer fencing and then fill that area with our summer crops.  This area is not the absolutely ideal spot for a garden, although it’s the spot that will get the most consistent hours of sunlight and is closest to the kitchen where it will be convenient to turn our harvests into sustenance.  So what’s not ideal?  The area is constrained on each side by various obstacles: on the north side we have a large potentially dead tree, on another side a shed, a laundry line running through the 3^rd side, and a power pole on the far side.  For this first year, we’ll be using temporary fencing so that we have the option to move it and expand the garden in future years if desired.  For instance, in winter, it’s impossible for us to tell how much of the tree is actually dead and we don’t really want to take it out if it’s still partially alive.  We’re also not really sure about the legality of enclosing a power pole inside of deer fencing even if our property line goes past that.  For now we’ve decided to make a bit of garden art out of the laundry pole and use the natural run of the laundry lines as diagonal pathways to break up the growing beds.  And the shed will be enclosed in the fencing too and house the garden tools, so that works decently.

Anyway, this space will allow us to grow: Artichokes; Broccoli; Brussels Sprouts; Cauliflower; Cabbage; Corn; Pickling & Slicing Cukes; Cantaloupe; Honeydew; Watermelon; Beans; Dry beans; Soybeans; Lima beans; Tomatillos; Sweet & Hot Peppers; Eggplants; Tomatoes; Potatoes; Okra; Summer Squash; Winter Squash; Pumpkins; Peanuts; and Sweet Potatoes, plus an herb spiral of sorts installed around the laundry pole.

Basic crop layout for our 1st season's kitchen garden

We’d love to install more fruit, herbs, and perennial flowers as an entry garden into the hoophouse, but we’re trying not to plan more than our budget or our muscles can sustain for 2014 – and we think we’ll already be pretty busy in turning all these colorful pixels into fertile soil and thriving plants in the two spaces we have cut out to tackle this year!