Plastic cling wrap is everywhere. I tried it out last year as a replacement for clear tray covers and it seems to work fine. The method so far: fill the plug sheets with seedling mix, place tray in water so mix is soaked from the bottom up, drop in 2-3 seeds per cell, cover lightly with more mix, soak surface with spray, apply plastic wrap (it sticks nicely to the wet edges of the plug sheet), fill out label marker with variety/date and plunge through plastic (those labels are all that stand between you and variety chaos!), then it’s off to the racks. Now, the trays don’t have to be watered for a week, the mix retains more heat, and you can check moisture by looking at the condensation on the plastic. At first, I wondered about adequate air circulation and whether the fairly closed conditions would encourage algae, but the seedlings emerge on time with no unusual algae problems. As soon as the first couple of seedlings appear, it’s off with the plastic. I re-use the plastic as well, over the 4-5 weeks of seed starting, and the bit of waste in the end, well, I think it’s moderation in everything that counts. (In the top right of the pic, the Vittoria eggplant is tenting its cover, having pushed up vigorously in just six or seven hours overnight. It’s a feisty one!)
eggplant
Eggplant emerges
A tray of Fairy Tale eggplant suddenly begins to break out after six days under plastic wrap. In just a week or two, I won’t have time for this sort of…intense observation, watching for the very first signs of emerging seedlings. In a month, there will be a couple of thousand to keep track of. The micro-view is fun for now!
Grow racks in action
The grow racks are starting to fill up. First trays of eggplant and peppers, seeded yesterday, sit up top where it’s warmest. The lights run 14-hours a day, on a timer, with an extra hour or so of early morning ambient sunlight from windows on three sides of the room.
Seed starting station
The seedling workstation… This high and narrow table is where I put seeds in cellpaks. The triple sink, a leftover from the dairy days when this was the sterile milk collection room, work out well for seed-starting, with all of the soaking, rinsing and draining involved. Today, the first eggplant and peppers.
Fuller share
By mid-August, the CSA shares are nearing their peak. Here we have eggplant, carrots (including a new purple addition, Purple Haze), onions, beets, potatoes, yellow beans, summer squash, tomatoes, rosemary, plus salad mix out of sight. Still waiting on melons, winter squash, main season broccoli, fall cauliflower. And there’s more! :)
To the greenhouse
Tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings heading out from the Milkhouse (seedling room) to the unheated hoophouse for some real sunlight and a taste of the harsher field conditions, before transplant time in a couple of weeks. The small riding mower does double duty, mowing the paths and ferrying around seedlings, tools, harvests.
Hundreds of seedlings
Some of over a thousand little tomatoes, eggplant and peppers living it up, warm, well-watered and basking under the fluorescent light, in the comfort of the seedling room. Fluorescents as a plant light source don’t hold a candle to the Sun, but in the cold of early Spring, they do the trick.