Wed, Apr 11, 2012 · Filed under Seed starting, Spring, Veggies
It doesn’t get simpler than this for seed starting in controlled conditions: the bare root approach. Spread seeds on paper towel, place another paper towel on top, mist with a spray bottle, roll up (don’t forget to mark the rolls if you are doing more than one), and place in a ziploc-type sealable plastic bag. Then, put the bag in a warm spot, light not required. Be sure to check on the seeds daily, as they can use the oxygen! Within a few days, you will see the little white radicle tip emerge, and from there it is root growth in action. When to take them out is open to experimention: all the veggie seeds I’ve come across are pretty tough and wanting to grow, given the minimum reasonable conditions, so you can plant right at germination, or a couple days down the line with more root. As always, there are lots of variables to consider, play around with, and so forth, but you should be generally fine no matter what. Since I usually only do this for germination tests, I don’t actually plant them (cruel, huh?!). Other materials than paper towels (they shred easily when wet, an advantage when separating if roots start growing into them) and plastic bags could be used—kinda interesting, a while back I checked the book and called my certification agency to see whether there were organic standards for the paper towels used with this method, since they are in such intimate contact with the seeds at such an early stage and who knows what’s in the paper, but no…this is not covered, anything goes, if you’re certified, this would be, well, certified organic. Anyhow, this year, these seeds are for production: here, it’s sweet peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes! We’ll see how it goes!
NOTE: Yeah, I am still messing around with my phone camera and the sometimes cheesy photo filter effects in Instagram for Android…
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Wed, Mar 31, 2010 · Filed under Indoors, People, Seed starting, Spring, Veggies
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? That’s how it seems, in a soothingly familiar way, as seed starting 2010 really gets in gear at this new farm location. A little over two weeks since we set up the seedling room, and the fairly intricate task of managing dozens of crops and varieties and thousands of seedlings is on!
It can be a little complicated, keeping track of all the details, but it’s also…simple. Kendall, trying her hand at tiny farming-style veggie production for the first time, shows no fear with the sharp, little snips, as she learns about thinning onions (above). We’re multiplanting this set of onions, aiming for four per plug sheet cell. Since I used seed from last year—a common rule is that you should get allium (onion family) seed fresh each year to ensure good germination, but why waste?!—we went a little generous in the seeding. Germination was great, and now we need to remove the extras.
Next, Kendall’s on to another kinda critical seed-starting task: taking inventory of what exactly we’ve got going. That means a lot of counting and note-taking, and making sure the markers in the trays don’t get pulled out. Below, she tallies some of the 20 or so varieties of sweet and hot peppers that’re on for this season. For the new girl, it’s business as usual!
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Fri, Jul 10, 2009 · Filed under Farm lab (research!), Fieldwork, People, Seed starting, Summer, Tools, Veggies
Here’s one of the more extreme displays of crazily labor-intensive tiny farming technique. Andie surveys our work, the result of deciding to try landscape fabric in place of burlap to help carrot seed germination. It’s actually a double experiment, because one of the beds is green onions.
The burlap method has been the way to start carrots around here for the last two seasons: tried and true. The main purpose is to preserve moisture in the seed drills, and the increase in heat helps as well.
After a good run, the first round of burlap expired, and I couldn’t find rolls of it in time for this season (I know it’s out there, somewhere). But, I spotted this gear, landscape fabric, a porous plastic mulch used to permanently suppress weeds in…landscaping. It’s light, and just wide enough (3′/30 cm) to cover 4 rows of carrots (that’s a little closer than usual for the bunching onions). I tried it on two beds earlier in the season, and it works fine!
One little problem: it tears easily, so how to hold it down? With the burlap, we made wire staples out of heavy gauge wire. Here, we placed a LOT of heavy rocks, close enough together that there’s no room for the wind to get under and start really pulling. This does the trick for now, but overall, it’s a little TOO intense. The hunt for burlap: still on!
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Tue, Apr 28, 2009 · Filed under Fieldwork, People, Seed starting, Spring, Tools, Veggies
Direct seeding is going ahead at a careful pace. There’s a fair amount of broken up sod in the mix, and it would be nice for it to have more time to settle in and decompose, also for any bits of live grass to start poking up so they can be disrupted again with a light tilling… But we can’t just wait around. Spinach, beets, and radish went in a few days ago, just after the first peas. More peas went in yesterday (Connor for the first time wrestles with the kinda heavy and unwieldy Planet Jr., above, and ends up doing fine on a trial row). Now, the watching and waiting is on for the first plants to emerge in the field…
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Mon, Apr 06, 2009 
Filed under Farm lab (research!), Seed starting, Spring, Veggies
Tomato seedlings are suddenly everywhere! We planted out the whole of this year’s line-up in a couple of days, starting a week ago. The first tray (above) started popping in just 4 days! There are over 60 varieties, including around a dozen cherries. Except for half a dozen hybrids, they’re all heirloom.
Heirloom tomato seed seems to be more quirky than the hybrids, with noticeably different germination speeds and rates from variety to variety, and year to year. Here, we’re waiting on Cherokee Purple from some leftover 2006 seed—one’s up, there in the distance, the rest may come along soon, or not. Meanwhile, right beside, three rows of 2008 CP are up and at ‘em, so we’re covered either way.
I haven’t really looked into all this—setting up more efficient storage than my current airtight-bags-and-cool-place method, whether the plastic lined packets from the big seed companies do better than the plain paper ones from many smaller seed houses, presoaking seed for some crops in a kelp solution or whatever, and so forth—because there isn’t much older seed, and most seem to do just fine. So much to try, so little time… Luckily, it always works out!
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Sat, Mar 28, 2009 
Filed under Farm lab (research!), Seed starting, Spring, Veggies
At first, it looks like some sort of horrible, fuzzy mold, about to devour your newly germinated seeds. But when you get really up close, it turns out to be superfine, hairlike extensions growing from the radicle. These kale sprouts pushed themselves right out of the seedling mix, probably because they weren’t pressed in and covered deeply enough.
Kale, broccoli, cauliflower and other brassicas do this in a very visible way during a surface emergency, sending out a mass of fine root hairs in search of water. Root hairs are normal below ground, but I’ve only really noticed them growing exposed on brassicas, other newly emerged seedlings with bared roots usually seem to just dry up. An unusual glimpse of what plants are up to with their vast root systems down below.
Given half a chance—a little surface moisture—these guys can actually manage to burrow down and root themselves. Pretty cool trick.
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