Remember all those spring pictures?....

... Well, we take that back.  On Sunday, April 22nd we checked the weather at 11pm and went to bed, expecting a 30% chance of rain.  When we woke up Monday morning, this is what we saw: That would be 8 inches of snow crushing our hard-working caterpillar tunnel.  Which had all our plants in it that were hardened off and scheduled to go into the ground (which is why they weren't in the larger greenhouse (it was totally fine in the snow)... you can see the corner of it at the right).

We dug them out... some looked fine, some seemed totally crushed, and put them all into the big greenhouse to see who survived.  After a day, we realized that we were fortunate.  The tunnel probably collapsed late in the night (right before we got up), so none of the plants were burned by the snow, and after 2 days recovering in the big greenhouse, we were amazed that our losses ended up being zero!

What's more, as a week of nights in the lower 20's blew into most of NY, we realized that perhaps my back injury (which kept us from transplanting all those caterpillar tunnel plants out into the field on schedule), was a total saving grace... because if those plants had been in the field, the bizarre weather would have likely caused a lot more seedling damage!

Instead, now that the weather has evened out (and seems like it will hold... knock on wood... for the next few weeks), we are putting the happy little plants into their new homes:

Since it's been so cold and dark, the plants were fine hanging out an extra week in their flats in the greenhouse.  And this week is PERFECT for transplanting:

It was so misty up here, we couldn't see each other 100 feet away!  Here's Matt putting in more kale.  Cloudy, damp, and misty days are the *best* for transplanting, since they minimize pretty much every plant stress.  With this whole week looking to be humid and cloudy, transplanting is flying by... kale, chard, lettuce, leeks, and most of the onions are already in the ground!

I'm even getting bonus physical therapy for my back with these great mud weights that form on our boots in the field!

While it was so cold... we finished potting up all the remaining hot-weather plants (eggplant, tomatoes, etc).

On the docket for this week... irrigation system installation (pics to come), and finish getting all the spring seedlings into the field!