winter wonderland

12’x50′ tomato house on the left, 16’x100′ lettuce house under construction on the right.

Happy 2024! Hope everyone had a lovely holiday season. We’ve been enjoying having our Saturdays back during the off season in-between markets. We’re still growing lettuce in our hydroponic pool for our restaurant customer Hidden Julles in Haymarket….

Hydroponic lettuce still underway through winter

The water is heated to maybe 74 degrees, but we don’t have any sort of air heater, and have had some losses this past week due to the recent cold snap. But we’re experimenting with supplemental light and that has seemed to help yield numbers. I think the ideal scenario would be to have an air heater, but set the thermostat to a hair above freezing. Hoping to add supplemental heating in our next lettuce house, which you can see currently under construction in the top photo. Trying to make progress with that when the weather cooperates.

In other news, we’ve applied for the main season Manassas Farmer’s Market, which is scheduled to start the second week of April. First Saturday market will be April 13. We had considered selling at the Manassas Park market during the month of March, but are currently leaning against that idea. We’re hoping to get our same tent location as last year at the Manassas market, but we’ll have to see what sort of feedback we get from our application. We’ll keep you posted on all of that as we get nearer to returning to the market.

All for now! Stay warm! Longer days ahead…