It's been another few busy weeks here in Westby. Tiffany and I have moved into a new home. It feels great to finally be in a space we can call our own that is separate from the greenhouses. We also grafted tomatoes for the first time about 3 weeks ago. Grafting is the process of cutting two different plants at an angle, and putting the separate halves together. The idea is to get the strongest roots, with fruiting body that is tastier (or has some other benefit) than the rootstock plant. Grafting is very common in fruit trees, and has been in practice in orchards for thousands of years. There is evidence of the practice dating back to 2000 B.C. in China. We are only doing a few plants this year as a trial. We are hoping to see increases in production, disease resistance, and better over all fruit quality in these grafted plants do to their more robust root system.

grafting with half a razor blade.

I was definitely nervous cutting the little beloved seedlings in half when I started the process. I honestly thought I had killed the whole lot! Now that it has been a few weeks though, it seems that all of them survived except for one which I cut at an improper angle. Phew!

Clear line where the Scion and Rootstock meet

We are also getting back from the MOSES conference this past weekend. It was good to meet some fellow organic farmers, and go to lectures to learn about ways we can improve our farm and our practices. We have big plans to encourage native pollinators and beneficial insects around the farm we will be implementing soon! We also learned about building energy efficient cold storage, purchasing a tractor, farm finance and employee management. We also got to meet a few people we have been working with over the last year at DRAMM, Purple Cow, and Four Season Tools.

We moved the soil into the greenhouse to thaw, and flowers are coming in starting this week. The tomatoes need to be transplanted (already!) soon, and the organic compost is en route for them. We are very excited about the coming weeks and it is starting to feel a little bit like Spring at the greenhouses despite the still frigid weather.
We have also announced the first class at Deep Rooted, so be sure to check us out on Facebook, and sign up!

Thanks for checking in!

Jim and Tif