Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
The air is redolent with the scent of cherry blossoms; the three trees we planted a decade ago are in full bloom in the garden, and the pollinators are enthralled by their glory. I too, am captured by their scent, the rapturous feeling of flowers a delight to my senses. As time goes on, I become more passionate about flowers, about the joy their sight brings to my eyes and soul, and the deep succor ensconced in their scent.
One of my great ambitions is to have the smell of flowers around me as much as possible. They start with the profound daphne in February, carrying forward into the hyacinths, narcissus and cherry blossom. Soon the wisteria will begin, and not long after will come the roses. I’ve purchased a climbing jasmine to plant in front of the house, and as we get into the hot months the clary sage will offer the resinous scent that has me rubbing the flowers between my fingers to inhale deeply.
As fall arrives, the many forms of cannabis flowers will bring delight when I step out my door in the morning, and I’ll lose (or spend wisely) much time basking in their full expression, sampling the odorous terpenes as they ripen in the autumn sun. But autumn is yet far away, and spring is here in all her lusty greens and abundant growth.
The sun is once again warm upon my skin, and the successions of plantings march out in steady order from the propagation house into their final homes. More than half of the heading brassica are planted out, with two more successions to go in the coming weeks. Four successions of beets and scallions have been planted, one awaits with more to be sown this week. Turnips and salad mixes are sown every 7-10 days, many successions already come and gone with many more to go.
Almost everything is started in the propagation house in trays. I do as many varieties as possible in the Paperpot trays: kale, collards, bok choy, tatsoi, mizuna, arugula, salad mix, lettuces, scallions, leeks and beets. For larger brassica I use the 72 cell trays and then we up-plant to 3” pots, figuring 225 cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower to a bed with 3 rows on 18” center. Spacing is tight, but they yield well enough to make it worth growing them.
Cukes are popping up in their six-packs and will soon be planted into the center of a hoop house bed that has turnips on one edge and radishes on the other. The cukes will be trained upward onto the trellis and will sprawl to occupy the whole bed as the turnips and radishes are harvested in a few weeks. This type of shoulder cropping is essential in high-value hoop space to justify the longer season cucumbers and tomatoes. Basil will be planted on the edge of the tomato beds, which are still a couple of weeks from planting after just being up potted into 3” pots.
Summer squash are germinating; I sized them down to 3” pots this year instead of the 4” that I have used in the past because space is at such a premium in the propagation house. It means they’ll need to go out sooner, but the beds are already prepped and waiting under old dep tarps that will smother weeds and hasten decomposition of the previous crop’s detritus.
Squash grows so fast and gets so big that I haven’t found a shoulder crop yet that I felt worked in my context. Last year the scallions did great but impeded the squash, the year before bok choy did OK, and the year before that lettuce got completely shaded out. Seems like any squash shoulder crop would need to go in several weeks beforehand so that it would finish up within three weeks of squash planting to make room for the rapidly growing cucurbits, and I have yet to be far enough ahead on my bed prep game to pull that off.
Today I’ll start basil in 4” Paperpots, more lettuces and salad mix, salad turnips, beets and scallions. Basil has become a star of the summer show, slowly gaining ground to move from shoulder crop to occupying a full bed in one of the hoop houses as peppers find themselves relegated to low tunnels in outdoor beds. I’ll do at least three successions of basil as the warm season wears on, selling bags and bunches and utilizing the inevitable excess to make batches of pesto that we freeze for winter use and sale.
The puzzle of bed space and crops is one of the great challenges and delights of my life. Each year I refine my methods and practices, implement new tools and varietals and see the choreography become more elegant and exact. The turnarounds are as fast as five weeks from planting to clearing for the fast growing salad mixes, which requires a constant supply of fresh starts and a continuous focus on clearing and prepping beds. As I’ve taken to saying, “Lotta work, lotta fun.” As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
Casey O’Neill owns and runs HappyDay Farms, a small vegetable and cannabis farm north of Laytonville. He is a long time cannabis policy advocate, and was born and raised in the Bell Springs area. The preceding has been an editorial column. The Mendocino Voice has not necessarily fact-checked or copyedited this work, and it should be interpreted as the words of the author, not necessarily reflecting the opinions of The Mendocino Voice.