Three weeks old, and the parsley is already well past its seed leaf stage, where everyone pretty much looks the same, and is busy expressing its true nature. On the left, Green Pearl, a curly variety, starting to pucker and…curl. On the right, Hilmar, of the generally stronger-tasting flat-leaf type. Curly, straight, plants, people…we’re all bobbing around in the same big boat! (I’m still WAITING, holding back for a few more days before starting the next wave of seedlings… :)
seedlings
Lead bean, Part 2
I ended up putting the sprouted fava beans in a pan of water, instead of discarding them after the mini-germination test, and put the pan on a south-facing windowsill. A few days ago, a little natural selection happened: the pan got knocked to the floor, and the kinda brittle main root snapped on three of them, leaving only the biggest, healthiest one in one piece. I put it back in the pan… Amazing what a plant can do, in a few days, with nothing but water and some sun. Tiny hydroponics!
Last-frost countdown begins!
Today I marked the official farming wall calendar with the weekly weeks-to-transplant countdown: 11, 10, 9,… I do this every year, and usually a lot earlier than this! Because so much is kinda, well, UNKNOWN this growing season as far as overall production conditions on the new farm, my reaction is not to overplan and not try to anticipate every last possible potential problem. I suppose the approach varies by the person! Anyhow, having those numbers finally up there on the wall somehow really gets the adrenaline going…
What that “11” represents is 11 weeks to average last frost date, which around here is May 18 (I actually backed it up by one day, to start on a Sunday, just felt like it). This is a pretty arbitrary number, weather conditions have consistently varied SO MUCH in the last few years, last frost is ony a loose guideline. It’s something to base the gambling on.
So, it’s now 11 weeks until the odds are even that there’ll be no more frost, the soil has warmed up sufficiently, and it’s reasonably safe to transplant. From this, I can figure the timing of seed starts.
It goes like this… For tomatoes, I aim for about 6 weeks from sowing the seed in plug sheets to transplanting, so I still have FIVE WEEKS before starting toms. But, I usually want to have at least 100 tomato seedlings ready to go 2 weeks earlier than that, in case the weather’s really good, and for that I have to start in 3 weeks. Peppers I aim for 8 weeks, so that’s start in…3 weeks.
Broccoli, cauliflower and other brassicas are only around 6 weeks, BUT, they’re quite cold-hardy and can be transplanted out 3-4 weeks BEFORE last frost, sometime in the last half of April, so that means the first wave starts in a week or two! Onions and leek can also go out early, and are indoors for around 10 weeks. Some onions are already started, and the rest have to be started right about NOW.
And so on, for around 20 veggies that start as transplants…
The scratchy “11” on the calendar was originally a “7”—at first, I accidentally started numbering backwards from April instead of May. For a moment there, that was a shock! :)
Fava beans test OK
It’s that time of year again when obsession with seedlings somehow takes hold for a short while. I wonder if I’ll ever get over it, that almost overpowering early spring feeling that you don’t want to waste even a SINGLE seedling. Here, I germination tested a few Witkiem fava beans (broad beans) from an overlooked four-year-old supply. Bean seed viability is often rated at three years, but I didn’t doubt that these were fine, they looked and felt great. I tested some anyhow: wrapped them in a paper towel, misted them with water, popped them in a clear ziploc plastic bag, put them in a warm spot. That was about three weeks ago. Sure enough, a week later, the not-so-little white radicles were poking out of all of these big beans. Excellent! So I put them back in the bag and kinda forgot about them, moved them and all. Today, they were unpacked, and even without any light for at least a week, the seedlings were lustily struggling to break free. Now the kinda obsessive part is, I FEEL BAD ABOUT THROWING THEM OUT! This is pretty crazy. There is no good reason to pot them in February and have ’em hanging around for months until it’s warm and dried out enough to transplant. After two-three months in a pot, they’ll be useless as proper transplants, anyhow. Meanwhile, in a couple of weeks, there’ll start to be so many seedlings around here, and this keep-’em-all urge I’m having now will be gone without a trace. So I stuck ’em in some water, just for now… I thought this beginning of the season hang-on-to-every-seedling thing would wear off after a few years, but apparently not yet. Maybe I don’t take this business of tiny farming seriously enough! :)
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!
Onions emerge
Four days from seeding and the first Red Wing onions are popping up. A fine sight to see, the first new on-farm veggie greenery of the season! These guys will be transported to the new farm on Sunday… So many things going on at once—seed starting while moving the tiny farm—if you’re a fan of the slightly surreal (I am!), this is just great!
New seed started!
This is it, the official start of the new growing season (since there wasn’t time to plant out garlic in the fall at the new farm)! I seeded a fresh packet of 1,000 Red Wing red onion seeds in three 72-cell plug sheets. That’s 4-5 seeds per cell—after the good results last season, I’m going the multi-plant route again, 3-4 onions in one spot, instead of singles. There are lots more onions and leek to come, including sets, this is the beginning. I’m still at the old farm, the new seedling room is not quite ready, so I’ll be starting a few more things here in the next couple of days, and take them along on the move! For the Red Wing, I hung a couple of lights on one of the light racks. As usual, the trays are covered in plastic wrap to hold heat and moisture. This tiny farm marches on!