Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

Many things are going on at once, and one of them is potting up seedlings and moving them out to the greenhouse. Already, onions, leek, parsley, lettuce, and the first trays of cauliflower and broccoli are out there, all of them hardy enough to take whatever cold comes along. What’s really going to use up space once they’re potted up are the tender tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. I’d like to’ve had them all done by now, BUT, there’s going to be a cold snap for 4-5 days starting early next week, a couple of nights may go down as low as -8°C (18°F), and I’m concerned that row cover and the kerosene heater may not be enough protection in the unheated greenhouse. So I’m waiting, potting up a few every day and finding room for them under the lights. I started with the Chosen 100, my earliest 100 tomato starts, 25 each of Big Beef (above), Juliet, Striped German and Stupice (in order, two hybrids and two open pollinated heirlooms). They’ve gone into 3″ peat pots, with a mix of peat, compost and soil, and I’m also hardening them off outside. The rest of the toms were started a couple of weeks later. They’ll move from 72- to 38-cell trays, all part of the spend-less-time-on-transplants experiments… Waiting on weather forecasts is a bit of a risky way to work, it’s really not a good idea to delay anything at this point in the year, I’ve found it’s generally better to get on with things and deal with problems as they come up, not try to second guess the future. But I have so much else to do, I’ll take the chance and wait a couple more days to finish them all…

The weather’s been warm, sunny, essentially FANTASTIC for the last couple of days, and the forecast for the next few looks just as good. Indoors, many of the earliest seedling starts are putting on growth spurts, quite suddenly crowding each other and grabbing for the light, like these Gypsy sweet peppers. That means hundreds of seedlings have to be potted up, hardened off a bit, and headed out to the greenhouse, NOW—it’s not good to constrain their growth in small cells, and once they’re in bigger quarters, there isn’t room for them all under the lights. It’s no coincidence that, just as you’re driven to seed a dozen crops into the field RIGHT AWAY, the transplants are ALSO blowing up and demanding immediate attention—it’s the miracle of the garden plan working. They’ve been timed to be at this stage right about now. This is the way it goes. I’m so completely swamped with things to do, not just planting, but building and repairing things, working on the new farmers’ market stand, setting up the irrigation, and on and on. It can be quite overwhelming. Often, it doesn’t seem possible to get it all done in reasonable time. But you plug away—if you’ve done it before, you can do it again!—and eventually things ease up, and you get to survey your first crops setting up in the field—not to mention, EAT STUFF, like a perfectly crunchy spring radish…just brush off the dirt—and at that point, the deep feeling of satisfaction and simple happiness at having done it all is really, truly, have-to-experience-it excellent. MEANWHILE, that’s a good six weeks away, and until then, it’s the full-on SPRING RUSH! :)

Seedlings are everywhere. The first set of tomatoes is putting on its hairy true leaves: that’s a Striped German in the pic. With Lynn honing her new putting-seeds-in- plug-sheets skills today, the early seedling starts are just about done. From the top (the end of January), that includes lettuce, rosemary, leek, parsley, peppers, eggplant, onion, celery, celeriac, tomato, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, collards, tomatillo and Brussels sprouts. Between the Milkhouse and the greenhouse, there are about 40 trays of plug sheets going. Most have 72 cells, and there are a few 128’s and 200’s. The seedling grand total so far is somewhere around 3,000. Actually, that’s the cell total, and many have two or more seedlings per, some to be thinned or divided, or else transplanted together. So, maybe 3,500 seedlings. I’ll start a few more veggies tomorrow, another 500 seedlings on the way, and that’ll be it for now. The most ever, although the number is kinda meaningless, except as a measure of the space they take up, since one tomato will produce for the season, while a cauliflower is off with its head and it’s done… Timing wasn’t great on a bunch of the starts, I waited in some cases 2-3 weeks later than I could’ve, which means transplanting out smaller or…later. This wasn’t meticulously planned, I was just playing off the weather (cold April forecast…that doesn’t seem to be happening anymore) and not wanting to be stuck with lots of overgrown seedlings. And, I’m always trying to reduce overall seedling time by seeing how late I can go… Anyhow, it’s about five weeks to average last frost. In another week, I’ll start the last wave, the CUCURBITS: summer and winter squash, pumpkin, cucumber, melons. They go directly into 3″ pots, usually take 3-4 weeks to get to transplant stage, and absolutely want HEAT, especially, toasty soil, when they hit the field. OUTSIDE, it’s getting warm!!!!

A couple of days ago, I moved out four trays from the Milkhouse to the greenhouse: parsley, leek, onion, leek. I made a quick frame to keep the row cover off the alliums. Although it’s been just below zero for the last couple of nights, they probably didn’t need the protection. They’re doing fine. All around, it may look a bit of a mess, but everything is actually sorted out and ready to be put away… Soon. Everything seems to be going in slow motion lately. Maybe it’s the extra attention from blogging—writing about waiting and reading about waiting—that makes all of this waiting on the next turn of the weather seem so painfully slow. And right now, there’s LOTS to do… Life imitates blog? :)

Here’s the very first tomato seedling to emerge and spread its seed leaves: a Striped German (a big, bi-color heirloom, one of my top 3-4 favorites over the last couple of years). This is six days after seeding. I don’t usually keep track THIS closely of the seedling action, but with the unusually slow, uneven emergence of most of the peppers and eggplant—new ones are still just breaking out, two weeks after seeding?I’m watching every little move right now with the toms as well. And there’s that fine MACRO feature on the new camera, always happy to take notes…

The main tiny farming action is with the seedlings now; even if the snow melted off tomorrow (which it won’t), it’d still take a sunny, windy couple of weeks, give or take, for the field to dry out enough to fully work. Indoors, with the new grow rack, there is still space, but there’s also quite a bit left to be started, including most of the tomatoes. And some of the seedlings are beginning to call out for MORE ROOM. The rosemary (above) did really well, germinating steadily over several weeks, to the point where there are up to four and five crowded in 1.5″ (3.75cm) diameter cells. And the celeriac (celery root; below), a trial crop this year and the only one started in flats not cells (I sprinkled a packet of seed across two fibre trays), is healthy, dense and stretching. Transplanting tiny seedlings is fun at first few, but can get tedious, especially if you have hundreds to do in a session. To save on time and tedium, I try to avoid potting up by sowing into final locations whenever it makes sense. One way or another, the trays inevitably start adding up, until there’s not enough LIGHT to go around. Into the equation, there’s the barely heated seedling greenhouse and the WEATHER: as soon as it’s reasonably warm enough at night, I can move the hardier stuff out—this month, at least every other night has dropped down to around 5°F (-15°C)… And that’s what this stage of the action is all about: adjusting lighting, timing and starting cell size and, as always, gambling on the weather…!

Hannah dropped by today to check things out. She’d gotten in touch through the farm web site, wanted to volunteer for a day or two every week through the season, to learn about small-scale farming and how to grow stuff. No garden experience. We spoke briefly on the phone, but the only way to see is to meet in the field and get hands dirty! It’s amazing how easily people can take to tiny farming when given the chance to dive in. So, a quick tour, and then, to work. She weeded, forked and raked a bed in the greenhouse, transplanted a couple of dozen lettuce, seeded a bed of all-lettuce mesclun using the Earthway seeder (tightly spaced rows), tried out the mini-cultivator (a rototiller attachment on a heavy duty weed eater), drove the Kubota compact tractor and worked the bucket on a big snow bank, trimmed a couple of trays of onion seedlings, checked out the production standards and paperwork for organic certification, and seemed fine with my mildly intense stream of background info and general microfarming explanation. All in three hours. Everything for the first time. She did great, no problem! Just as important, at least for this tiny farm, she seemed to have FUN, had a cool energy, and didn’t make me WONDER when handling machinery, tools and plants! After last year’s great crew, standards are pretty high. Will this season of people in the field go as well or even better? There’s no real advertising or recruiting plan, I’m trusting that, through general word of mouth (and maybe, good karmic energy!), things will…pleasantly unfold. We shall see!

Inside, in the increasingly GREEN Milkhouse, this year’s artificial sun set-up is done. It’s about fitting in as much area-under-lights as possible, while making sure all of the trays are easily reachable, for watering, rotation, thinning. So, there are the four grow racks, and the lightbox (that’s leek, onions and parsley under there), with its second level (why waste a flat surface that comes with chains?!). For now, this extra space is the new spot for the rescued-and-passed-along decorative plants (the heather was too dried out and didn’t make it, the winterberry are doing fine, and the orchids seem OK…), but they’ll eventually be crowded out and moved somewhere else. The shelves are filling up fast… MEANWHILE, outside, it’s snowing and snowing, again. That’s a lot of snow. Around here, we’re definitely off to a later start this year than at least the last couple, but I’m still not particularly put off, not just yet. Although, it’s not supposed to warm up for another week, maybe two…

This is today’s peaceful but uninspiring view of the garden from the north-facing Milkhouse window…

New lumber turns into new grow rack. This adds a fourth to the set, a measure of tiny farm growth. I started with two in Year 1, built another one last year (Year 5). It’s not like the focus here is on rapid expansion…this is the speed of staying tiny! ;) Although I don’t build these often, it seems to get quicker every time. Well under a hundred dollars of wood, wheels, screws, bolts, brackets, hooks and chains, plus a chop saw, a drill and a couple of hours, and there it is! Light fixtures are extra. In the pic, the shelves still have to go on. Lying across the middle supports is one of the four old fluorescent fixtures, given to me instead of being tossed in the trash. Not only free, they’re BETTER: the tubes are spaced further apart than in the standard shop lights I’ve been using, the light will spread more evenly over a larger area—for the seedlings, a lot less leaning and stretching…