Planting in the Greenhouse

At the moment, in the beginning of September, we are still able to harvest fresh vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and mangold from our greenhouse.

Nonetheless, autumn and winter are coming and we want to continue harvesting greens in a few months. So now was finally the time to plant some new vegetables in the greenhouse.

As the tomatoes and cucumber plants are still growing, we let them in the soil and they can continue growing. But in between these plants are some free patches that we now prepared for the planting of the autumn-vegetables.

First, we needed to loosen up the soil because the natural, regional soil beneath the greenhouse is clay, which makes the soil heavy and thick. So we added a thin layer of sand on top of the soil before we loosened it up with a spade. Like this the vegetables can grow better.

Making the soil looser is also beneficial for the earthworms as it makes it easier for them to move. The earthworms are very important because they improve the soil structure and nutrient availability for the plants.

The next step was to mix the ‘’old’’ soil that was already in the greenhouse with new, nutrient-dense soil. We get the good soil from the horse manure of our two horses, Peppi and Rada. A while ago we collected the manure from the horse paddock and the earthworms transformed it into new soil that nourishes the plants so that they can grow easily.

To make the planting more fun we turned on some music. This created a nice atmosphere and we had a great time planting different seeds like kale, radish, rocket and spinach.

Lastly, we watered the freshly planted seeds again so that they are provided with everything they need.

Now, a few days later I already noticed the first small leaves of the greens coming out of the soil.

AR