There is really no one absolute moment when a new growing season begins, so I guess today is as good as many to make the call. All the familiar gear is in a new farm home (there’s a bit of backstory here, that I’ll eventually get to in the About…), and right now, we’re setting up the light racks and getting ready to seed. This will be my eighth season of tiny farming, and it should be an interesting one!
light rack
Making space and saving space
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…
Parsley pops up
Parsley, seeded 11 days ago, began popping up over the last couple of days, so that’s the second crop of the season, underway. Four varieties this year, two each of flat-leaf (Plain Dark Green Italian, Hilmar) and curly (Forest Green, Green Pearl). They’re 18 cells per variety, in a 72-cell plug sheet, around 4-6 seeds per cell—I’ll eventually thin them down to two. They’ve already started to stretch because they’re sharing a light rack shelf where the lights are set higher to accommodate a tray of onions. Parsley is easy to start, I’ve had no problem with transplants, but my seedlings have always tended to stretch and tangle in the trays before transplant time. Last year, I snipped them back quite a bit so they wouldn’t tie themselves to each other. They seem to like their light strong. These are just early season details that I won’t be much concerned with a little later on, but I’ll see what I can do. I’m gonna hang lights on another shelf for them right now!
Seedling room settling in
Things are moving along on all fronts, some less visible on the farm than others, like calls to locate various local suppliers, supply runs to the nearby village (pop. 2,400) and the bigger nearby town (pop. 70,000), and so on. The actual UNPACKING is going at a steady pace. The photo above pretty much sums things up so far for the new seedling room. There’s still a fair bit of finishing to do, and for that, we’re going to have to work from one side to the other, moving things back and forth. The computer is online, which is good, being able to check things out on the web is a big part of my tiny farming this time of year. I set up a couple of light rack shelves for the seedlings that’ve been started, but most of the lights are still packed away with the composting toilet. Around 25 harvest bins, doing moving duty, are still stacked, contents waiting for shelves—I labeled each one, so it’s not too hard too find stuff needed now. And the calendar is getting ready to flip again!
Grow lights on again!
It took a day to sort things out after the move on Sunday, and now the onion seedlings are back in the light racks in the new seedling room, soaking up the cool white fluorescent light. Three trays in all of onions, along with a still-to-germinate tray of parsley, made the little old farm-new farm road trip, and that’s the season’s start so far!
Seedlings stack up
With the cold snap about to break, the final potting up is fully underway, a few days later than last year, but no worries. Even with the new, fourth grow rack, things are tight, with four trays to a shelf instead of the ideal two—better to give ’em all an equal ration of light for a couple of days until the first wave is out in the greenhouse, than leave some of them on unlit tables. At the same time, started the cucurbits: several varieties of cucumber and summer squash, with melons, winter squash and pumpkins soon to follow. The rain so far has been good, over an inch (25mm) in the last couple of days, and a bit more apparently to come. OK, cool. Then, bring on the heat!
Seedlings everywhere!
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!!!!
