DON'T WAIT! Plant These 5 FAST GROWING Crops In January!

Quick Overview

The farmer plants five fast-growing, heat-tolerant crops—arugula, turnips, lettuce, kale, and carrots—in succession within a high tunnel starting January 6th to ensure continuous weekly harvests through late March and into the summer, utilizing frost blankets for root crops like turnips to survive cold nights.

Key Points: The farmer plants five fast-growing crops: arugula, turnips, lettuce, kale, and carrots, starting January 6th. Arugula (Astro variety) is planted first because it is heat-tolerant and matures in 21-30 days, allowing for immediate weekly harvests. Turnips are planted with a 2-inch spacing using the Y24 seed roller, and are covered with frost blankets for winter protection. The succession planting strategy involves staggering plantings every one to three weeks to ensure continuous harvest availability, avoiding gaps in production. The farmer uses the frost blanket method to protect root crops like turnips from cold snaps, ensuring soil stays moist for germination. The farm supplies high-quality produce to local chefs and restaurants for top dollar. The video features an indoor grow setup with Barrina LED grow lights, offering a 15% discount code "CHEFMIKEY" for related gear.

Context: The video features a farmer, Chef Mikey, who transitioned from being an executive chef to an urban farmer operating out of multiple high tunnels (hoop houses). He details his strategy for growing fast-maturing, high-value crops during the cold season to maintain a continuous supply for local chefs and restaurants. The context revolves around early-season, protected cultivation techniques designed to maximize yield and cash flow starting in January.

Detailed Analysis

Chef Mikey outlines his strategy for achieving continuous high-value harvests from his high tunnels, starting as early as January 6th. He focuses on five fast-growing, heat-tolerant crops: arugula, turnips, lettuce, kale, and carrots. For root crops like arugula and turnips, he plants them directly in the soil inside the high tunnel and covers the beds with frost blankets to protect them from cold nights, ensuring 100% germination. He uses a Y24 seed roller for the turnips, setting the spacing to 2 inches for the larger root variety. For arugula, he uses a seed roller attachment with a brush adjusted to drop fewer seeds, aiming for a 1-inch spacing. The core of his strategy is succession planting, staggering plantings of lettuce and other crops every one to three weeks. This staggered planting ensures that as one crop is ready for harvest (e.g., lettuce and arugula weekly, root crops in 45-90 days), the next batch is already established, preventing gaps in supply for his restaurant clients. He also shows seedlings started indoors under purple grow lights (offering a discount code for Barrina LED lights). The video concludes with him preparing to sow the carrot and turnip rows inside the tunnel.