Seeding as we go…

This post is Part 9 of 24 in Stories: Starting seeds

Seeding into plugsheets

It’s spring! The ground is clear, hasn’t snowed in a while, but it’s still cold, and the tiny farming action remains mainly indoors. We’re steadily filling up the racks (here, Lynn populates a plug sheet with Red Russian kale; under the lights, parsley and onion). I’m spreading things out a lot more than usual, instead of starting a whole lot on one day. We’ll see what difference a few days or a couple of weeks make to the various veg… It likely won’t be much, but some interesting things could happen if we get really drastic week-to-week weather changes around transplant time, like we did last year.  An experiment!

7 thoughts on “Seeding as we go…”

  1. Hey, Tiny Farm, really love what you are doing! You are a good photographer (important to me) and I am also from the north–as a former Michigander, I can relate to much of what you write! Keep on keepin” on–Janet

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  2. Lynn: You should know, you can never beat the weather!

    Kim: I also keep an eye on the phases of the moon, although I have haven’t so far gotten that together. I only have the most simple idea: above ground crops planted in the two weeks before full moon, root crops in the week after, and nothing in the week before the new moon (just pest destruction). I intend to learn a lot more about this…soon. Meanwhile, I always mark up my calendar with the four quarters, and feel like I’ve got an extra edge when I’m planting in the right phase. :)

    janet: I visited your site and spent quite a while. I love photos of hand work and harvests on farms, I examine every detail, like, how big are those broccoli, what hoes are they using, how are they set up at market, what’s in a share. You seem to do a lot of in-field harvest sorting, we’ve started doing that more the last couple of years, we used to gather and bring everything into the barnyard to sort… I still haven’t really toured another market garden in season. Last year, we half-planned a couple of road trips that didn’t happen–this year for sure!–but it’s amazingly easy (for me, at least) to get tied to the field right through the growing months. Sounds like a great farm that’s really built the people side in a natural way. So, REAL winter’s just a memory, huh!

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  3. You have a really nice setup there. We justed moved into this house and we have to remodel it as we go so the garden will have to start out slow this year. We have a couple of weeks before the last frost here so we have some time to plan.

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  4. I’m doing something similar.  This is my third year in my new house, second year for a full summer.  Last year was my guinea pig year of making a garden.  I’m in MN and I have to start my stuff indoors if I want to reap a full benefit of the summer so I have about 80 seeds, 30 of them have emerged – it’ll be survival of the fittest, my garden is 10×20.  I’m finding something interesting with my stuff.  I have a tray of 3 types of tomatoes, acorn squash, eggplant, dill, watermelon, and peppers.  95% of them have emerged, it’s been 3 weeks now, but  my second tray done 2 weeks ago, nothing has come up.  I planted more peppers (different kind), lavendar, and roma tomatoes and nothing has come up yet.  Same prep, same sunlight, etc…I wake up each morning now hoping for an emergence. 

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  5. Mike: Seeds can take a while to sprout, but two weeks is kinda long for NONE of those to’ve come up. Especially the tomatoes. Not too wet or too cold (under 65F)? You could wait some more, but maybe consider starting some backups. Also, if Minnesota conditions are anything close to here, you won’t be planting out till sometime in May, and that’s a long time to keep squash and watermelon seedlings, they only need 3-5 weeks. So you could think about starting a second set closer to your planting out date, in case the first ones get too stretched or pot-bound or whatever. Hope that helps!

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