Update From the High Tunnels

Hello everyone for those of you who missed last week’s blog. My name is Megan Letendre and I am a student participating in Farm to YouNH.  Currently we have a lot happening by the conventional dairy barn in our high tunnels.

So far this semester we had been producing salad mix in the heated tunnel for the Dairy bar and several different crops in the unheated tunnel.  We are propagating all our transplants, including head lettuce, pollinator attractor plants, and many herbs in the heated tunnel.  Swiss chard, salad mix, and spinach are currently growing in the raised beds of this tunnel.
 

          Also, I am conducting a study comparing two methods of salad mix production.  The study is comparing the cost, labor, days to maturity, and yield of broadcast sown lettuce mix versus head lettuce transplants of  'Salanova'.  'Salanova' is a new line of varieties of head lettuce produced by Johnny's that are well suited for salad mix.  Johnny's claims that the new variety of head lettuce is more efficient by being more productive and less labor intensive than broadcast lettuce mix.  Our normal lettuce mix production consists of direct seeding using a multi row seeder.  The lettuce mix is harvested 2-3 times whereas head lettuce can only be harvested once.  This study will give us results on which type of lettuce mix is the more efficient production method.
           The unheated high tunnel is very full and we are growing an assortment of cold hardy crops including onion, carrots, beets,head lettuce, radishes and salad mix.  In class we recently studied irrigation and learned how to buy and set up drip tap irrigation systems. We have been planning out what crops will be grown during the spring and summer and planning for the produce that we need to grow for upcoming events with UNH dining.  Although we are growing plenty in the high tunnels with the cold weather we are excited for the warm weather so we can start on summer crops and work in our outside field!