Making space and saving space

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Hanging the lightbox is again this year part of the spring time set-up in the seedling room, when gear comes out of storage for seasonal use. In late winter, the fluorescent lights are put on the light racks, and removed after seedling production is over, usually in June, so the racks can be used as overnight harvest storage. And the lightbox, with its 4 fluorescent tubes, adds extra plant space when it’s need. I put it up today…

At the old farm, in the Extended Milkhouse, there was no space to waste, and it’s the same here in the new seedling room. That means clearing and converting the layout to fit the needs of the moment.

Tight quarters has a lot to do with the weather. Building a space insulated against our fairly brutal Canadian winters, and then keeping it warm enough for seedlings, is relatively expensive, and construction tends to be limited to the minimum you need.

In summer, the same insulation keeps the seedling room cool. It’s good to have a chill-out spot near the field, with phone and Internet (all the modern telecoms conveniences!), tea and cold drinks, chairs and a table…The more room the better. So, the lightbox goes up, and soon it comes down…

Tiny cultivation

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Tending seedlings on this tiny scale is pretty much literally fieldwork in miniature, especially with the pesky GREEN MOSS. The seedlings have to be watered, of course. And with the green moss, they have to be weeded as well. I use something pointy to stir up the surface of the peat-perlite seedling mix…

It comes back quickly, in a day or two, whenever the surface is wet.

I’m not even sure it’s moss, could be algae? Mold? Lichen?! I haven’t been able to ID it for sure, but I’ve often seen it called…green moss.

Not too appetizing to look at, the green moss has been quite harmless. At the old farm, I wondered if it came from the well, but here, we’ve been using filtered water and there it still is. It could be from the peat.

In any case, no worries, just a quick scuffling once in a while to keep it from sealing off the surface while the seedlings are small, which it looks like it would eventually do. I suppose I could find some clever, NATURAL way to kill it off, but I really don’t mind it. Once the mix dries out, the green moss is gone. At least, it disappears…

A brief return to winter

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It snowed fairly steadily yesterday and today, transforming everything with that pretty but kinda unwanted winter wonderland effect. Looks like around 4-6″ (10-15cm) so far… (I don’t keep track of snowfall the way I do rain!) This isn’t forecast to last, it should warm up and be all gone in 3-4 days, and then the temperature is supposed to jump. Drying out time…

That first day of being able to actually work the field is always so different each year, especially the last 4-5 crazy weather years. Two years ago, peas went in the first week of April. Last year, it went from too-wet-to-work, to needing irrigation, in one mid-April week. Who knows how it’ll go this time around.

With the new garden, extra steps like disking, rototilling, and waiting a bit for the grass to break down some more, not to mention, prepping the ground for and putting up the greenhouse,  make timing particularly critical. The farmers’ market officially starts in less than FOUR WEEKS. CSA shares begin second or third week of June. I can feel the adrenaline bubbling up just writing about it: timing and the WEATHER! :)

Tomatoes galore

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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!

Grass vs moldboard

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The hay fields were plowed late November, the sod sliced and flipped over by the moldboard, burying the grass so it gets no sun and exposing the severed roots to winterkill. A quick, bold, chemical-free first step in preparing a large clearing for crops. In the couple of  garden sections I’ve started like this, it’s been quite effective, but given the slightest break, the grass is ready to come back…

Moldboard plowing—peeling back the land—is usually big-tractor work these days. It takes a lot of energy. If you happen to of soil as a complex living web, an intricately choreographed dance of life taking place mainly in the top 6″ (15cm) or so—sounds good to me!—one look tells you that moldboarding is pretty intense and destructive. Done excessively, with big, modern machines, it is a proven soil killer, encouraging erosion and other unhelpful things. For the tiny farm, this is a one-time-only deal, to start off a new garden area. It’s just the beginning…

Advanced lighting automation

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It’s “just” an ordinary C$15 AC timer, but a sophisticated automated lighting control system to me! It’s Heavy Duty for the three months of indoor seedling production in late winter-early spring. After that, this little unit is out of the picture as the transplant action moves to the greenhouse and the sun.  Until then, it’s set for 15 hours, turning on and off a total of 30 fluorescent lamps, right on time. (That’s four 3-shelf, double-lamp light stands, one 4-lamp light box, and an extra fixture hung up somewhere…) It’s really quite foolproof. Of course, it’s not…essential. But since we’re critically relying on ELECTRICITY anyway, why not a handy controller? Removing a couple of things from the tiny farming daily to-do list is always good…

Eggplant check

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Around 10 days since they first appeared, a little over two weeks from when they were seeded, and the eggplant are doing fine. A few of them already sport the tiniest first true leaf. I imagine they’re as hungry for light as any of the veggies, but eggplant are a little more restrained than some others when it comes to stretching: where every millimeter farther from the light counts, there’s not that much difference between the edge of the tray and the center. It’s kind of intense, the little details you track when you’re raising seedlings under fluorescent lights. Even the eggplant lean isn’t too extreme… These are two of the three 72-cell trays of eggplant for this year. Off in the distance, it’s PEPPERS!

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