Saved Heirloom Seed to the Rescue

Yesterday was the day to start 700+ eggplant and pepper seeds. we like these seedlings to be about 7 to 9 weeks old when we transplant them out and since we transplant such warm loving crops out at the end of May/early June, April 1st seemed like the perfect time to start them (plus our biodynamic calendar, The Stella Natura sez it was a fruit time which is a great time to start fruiting plants).

In order to start seed you need to know a couple of things. How much space has been allotted in the market garden and how many varieties will be planted. I knew that there was a total of 40 50'x 4' beds reserved for all the night shades (tomato, potato, peppers, eggplant) and out of that 2 beds were reserved for eggplant and 16 for peppers. The next step was to go get the seed packets and see what we had to plant.

The eggplant was easy-we had a total of 12 different packets of seed. 6 of the packets were 6+ years old and so assumed dead so I tossed those seeds out (by tossing out I mean putting the seeds in the compost and saving the packets for other uses such as seed saving). This left me with 6 varieties-Dancer, Nadia, Casper, Galine, Rosita and Oriental Express. Since Galine was bought to replace Nadia and Rosita to replace Dancer (probably because these varieties come from Peto Seed which is a part of Semenis which is Owned by Monsanto, but I would have to look this up to be sure) and both those seeds are 3+ years old, they were not planted.

The peppers were also easy because most of the seed we are using this year we bought this year. So it was a matter of going through the pepper seeds and picking out all the brand new clean, unopened seed packets and putting them aside. I chose 7 varieties, Valencia, an orange pepper we have done for years and years because it is a great pepper, Islander, a purple pepper, Revolution, the best red bell pepper out there as far as I am concerned, Lipstick, a red pimento pepper that is new to us this year, Flavor burst, a yellow Italian type reputed to have great flavor (this is also a new variety for us this year), Jalapeno and Cayenne because, while we do not sell a lot of hot peppers, these two are pretty essential to have around for personal use.

I also used this time to figure out what tomatoes will be planted this year but that is another blog post for another time...

After I figured out just what varieties I would plant I than figured out just how many seeds needed to be started to cover our asses. There is a bit of an art to this. You do not want to run short and find you don't have enough plants to fill beds and you do not want so many that after you are all done you have many flats of seedlings sitting around that Eugene refuses to kill for months on end, getting bigger and bigger. You may ask why we don't sell these plants? We don't because by the time we know what could be sold (the leftovers after transplanting) it is so late in the home garden planting season that it is hard to sell vegetable seedlings, so we make a very feeble attempt at doing so. And we are not at all set up to do seedlings for sale. We need a lot more seed starting space and a proper greenhouse that can be heated and that takes $$$.

When I figure out how many seeds to start I take into account the germination will not be 100%, more like 80% for new seed and for seed that is 3+ years old much lower rates of germination. And at least 20% will die for some reason before transplanting. Our first year here we have had 90% die off due to mice decapitating most of the pepper seedlings. So I like to start around 50% more seed than is needed as it is always better to have it and not need them than to need them and not have them. And because we do a lot of heirloom and specialty hybrids it is not as if we can trot off to the local TSC or Wal-Mart and pick up packets of the varieties we need (actually when K-mart had the Martha Stewart seed collection I found for several things like Chioggia beets and Costata Romanesque zucchini were in stock). For most things we have to order through the mail which takes extra time (as I will not pay $50+ for over night delivery for a mofo $10 packet of seed).

Okay, so with all this information I went out to the barn and made 700+ tiny soil blocks, took a break and than came back with Eugene in tow to get all these seeds started as well as finding/making tags so we know what's what. This is simple and yet amazingly important step-all pepper and eggplant seedlings look a like, never ever think you can tell one from the other. And when it comes time to prick the seedlings into 2" soil blocks there will be trouble. There will be even more trouble when it comes time to transplanting the mystery seedlings as one would have no idea what goes where. The problems get even larger when harvest time rolls around 90 days after planting the seeds.

So we started sowing seed and find we did not order enough seed for many of the peppers. This is in large part because both Fedco and Johnny's have gone nuts on using very confusing and changeable units of measurement for their seed sales. Some seeds are measured using English units (oz, pounds, etc..) some use metric (grams, Kilograms, etc..) and some are sold by the thousand. So this means you have to have the ability to convert from measurement to another and it seems we are not great this ability (nor are many market growers, judging by the bitch fest about this topic on the market farming email list in Jan and Feb). Also Eugene's eyes are weakening and the boy is too vain to wear glasses (I am talking cheaters, not prescription) so he missed a couple of crucial decimal points and thus instead of ordering 400 Revolution pepper seeds (4 grams) he ordered 40 (.4 grams) - but we got lucky and Fedco sent 65, about 1/3 the amount we need.

This pisses me off because 2 years ago he did exactly the same thing (but that was the year of the terrible pepper season for western Ohio so it really did not matter in the end, we would have lost them no matter what). The good news is I can still order this variety through Fedco because after years of resistance they have on-line ordering and now will take seed orders until September, instead of shutting down the orders in early spring and I see they have Revolution seed in stock. So I have just ordered a whole gram of seed (Woo Hoo!!!).


Any Hoo, we found, in the end, we were short on a lot of pepper seed variety (due to the confusion of changeable metrics) and thus ended up with not enough potential plants to fill the space allotted. So I looked to see what we had in saved seeds from years past and found Chinese Giant in red and yellow. So I planted enough of those to fill up all the small blocks. these are older seed so they may not germinate well, if at all. And these are not my first choice as the fruit tends to come on late and the peppers tend to not ripen without getting hit with something, so low yields of usable fruit, generally. Still we did have these heirlooms on hand and they did save the day.

But now that additional Revolution seed has been ordered and should arrive in less than a week we should be all right for red bell peppers and probably won't need many of the Chinese Giant.

Seedling Madness

Yesterday was spent dealing with seedlings, lots and lots of seedlings.

The first round of lettuces went out to a hoop house where they will be transplanted in the next couple of days. The first round of onions and leeks went into a cold frame because they grow better in such conditions than under lights in a too warm and humid for them grow room.

I was good to see all those flats and pots of seedlings going outside because the second round of lettuces germinated and had to be put into 4 flats of 2" soil blocks (49 per flat). This round of lettuce includes two of my favorites-lollo rosa and cracoviensis, both heirlooms. Also did with 3 flats of kale-winterbor, Holona (aka Dinosaur kale) and Russian white. the winterbor we have been growing for years and the other two are new to us.

I still have to do up another 3 or flats of large soil blocks for the celery and celeriac that is just beginning to germinate. Hopefully, I will get to that today after harvesting the leeks for the farmers market this Saturday in Oxford. otherwise they will wait until Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

I also did another round of onions yesterday as the Stella Natura indicated it was a good day to plant root seeds. We thought we had enough planted with the first go round but two pots of red onion seed failed to germinate (well one had a whopping 2% germination rate, the other zero) leaving us with 6 pots of onions. So I prepared 6 additional pots and planted more Ailsa Craig, Boulder belt Sweets and some older Copra seed which had fairly poor germination but needed to be used up or thrown out so I sowed them very heavily in hopes of getting 2 full pots of seedlings. I also did a pot of some red onion seed Eugene saved last year that has been doing well for us.

While I was doing that Eugene made soil mix, trimmed the blackberry canes, carried lettuces up to the hoop house, tried to dog proof the fence only to find while he was fixing one part, Nate was wiggling out of a new hole he had created further down the fence line so he could run across 127 to see the dogs on the other side of the road. Damn Dogs.

And it is still early in the season. I have not gotten into the thousands of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, etc., seedlings that will be started in the next couple of weeks. Or all the seedlings that need transplanting or all the perennials that need mulching or the fruit trees that need pruning. We have a lot on our plates but it will all get done as it does every year.

Things Are Picking Up

Things are beginning to pick up here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm. We have several crops started under lights in the germination chamber (which is a room in the barn that has heat so we put all the seed starting equipment in there). We have broccoli, leeks, onions and lettuces growing at the moment.

The onions are germinating very slowly which has me a bit worried but I think the problem is the growing medium has not been getting enough moisture and has been allowed to dry out on top (these seeds are in rather deep pots so I am pretty sure there is water in the soiless mix just not where the seeds are). I noticed yesterday evening that the Copra onions are germinating fairly well as are both kinds of leeks but the rest of the onions are pretty hit and miss. But all the alliums seemed to respond to getting the soiless medium they are in very wet. I have not checked on them yet today (it is not even dawn yet). I am curious to see if they are growing better with more moisture. Or if I over did it and have started a mold problem.

The broccoli was started 4 days ago and within 48 hours had germinated. I am hoping that using the Stella Natura and planting the broccoli on a flower day will mean big heads this spring. last year we had a huge failure with the broccoli and in reading the How to use section in the Stella Natura I think I found out why. We planted the broccoli on a leaf day which means few broccoli heads and a lot of leaves, which is what we got. I did check to see when we planted the broccoli last year and sure enough it was on a leaf day. We also planted cauliflower on the same day and got spectacular (for us) cauliflower. It was the first time cauliflower actually worked for us and made beautiful heads and everything. It was a horrible seller (because the heads were not nearly as big as the chemically induced heads one sees at the grocery) so it will not be grown by us this year.

The Lettuce was started 10 days ago and is about 15 days away from being big enough to be transplanted into a hoop house. The plan was to do 200 heads of 6 kinds of lettuce, Simpson, (green leaf) Amish Deer Tongue (heirloom, green), red sails (red leaf), Marvel of Four Seasons (red bibb, heirloom), Lollo Rosa (red and green frilly lollo type, heirloom) and Cracoviensis (green and purple asparagus lettuce, ancient heirloom and one of the best tasting lettuces we have ever grown).

When we start most seeds we use tiny soil blocks. A seed or two is placed onto each mini block. When the seed germinates it is moved to a 2" soil block that has a square hole that is the same size as the mini block. Basically, I take the mini block and drop it into the hole in the larger block and I am done. Repeat the action several hundred more times. The large block is big enough to hold the seedling for 4 to 8 weeks which is about all the time that is needed before it is transplanted.

Squash is an exception, with squash we have no more than 3 weeks to get them transplanted. They grow big quickly. So starting early zucchinis can be tricky if the weather does not cooperate. This happened last year. We got squash started in March so it could go into a hoop house in early April and we got the Easter Freeze which made it way too cold for the zukes to go into a hoop house so we ended up tossing the plants into the compost, having no early zukes for the first time in about 5 years and starting over. hopefully we will be able to do early zucchini this year, that the weather Gods and Goddesses will smile upon us and allow a fabulous crop of specialty zucchini to come early to Boulder Belt and the Oxford Farmers Market and the SW Ohio Locavores.

Now that we have some crops started the next step is preparing a couple of hoop houses to receive the crops and than hardening off the seedlings and transplanting. Lettuce will be the first to go, than broccoli and than all the onions and leeks (which history tells us will take the two of us several weeks of transplanting to get everything in, unless we get some help). And of course, in that time we will be starting more seedlings in the germination chamber. Soon things will get a bit complicated, though nothing out of the ordinary.

Gentlepeople Start Your Gardens

Yesterday we started our 2008 growing season by planting onions and leeks in 6" to 10" pots.

We planted 2 kinds of leeks-Lincoln and King Sieg. Lincoln we have been growing for years. It is a very nice slender leek that comes in early (for a leek). King Sieg we grew for the first time last year and really liked it. This is a huge fat leek with great flavor. We still have most of a bed left from the 2007 season in a hoop house that is doing terrif.

We also started a ton of onions (okay, not a ton yet but if all goes well all those seeds should become 2000 pounds of allium goodness). We are doing several heirloom onions including Boulder Belt Sweet (from Walla Walla seeds), Ailsa Craig (another sweet onion), Red Weathersfield (not a good storage onion as almost all from last year have sprouted. But we had seed and lots of it so they are being sowed again this year. they are a popular seller, I believe because they are a weird shape and an heirloom) and some red onion seed Eugene saved in 2006. And we are doing many hybrid onions including Copra, my favorite yellow cooking onion. Great storage onion with fantastic flavor. This will be the 10th season we have grown these. Last year I was going to drop this variety because it was a Semenis variety and Semenis was bought out by Monsanto but Johnny's Selected Seeds found a non Monsanto breeder of Copra onions and is getting the seed from that source so all is good with me and my Copra onions (I really did not want to drop this variety but I also did not want to give any money knowingly to Monsatan so it was a major issue with me last year). Other hybrids include Varsity, a yellow onion we trialed last year and than forgot exactly where they were planted so I am trying them again this year. I believe they are the huge yellow onions that are storing better than the copra and taste almost as good. This year I will do a far better job of writing down the location of the Varsity onions. We also will be growing Mercury red onion (a very nice red onion that replaced another Monsatan/Semenis var we were using called Mars. We grew Mercury for the first time last year and liked it. And like the Red Weathersfield we had a lot of seed from last year.).

We should have started the leeks and onions earlier but we did not for two reasons. One, we did not have all our seeds until early this month and two we use a biodynamic planting calendar called the Stella Natura and it indicated that Feb 14th would be the best day to plant roots of the entire month and we have learned from using this calendar that if you can wait to hit a most auspicious moment it will pay off greatly. Thus we waited for the great root time to plant root seeds. We will likely have better germination and less damping off and other fungal diseases than if we had planted a week earlier.

Next we will start lettuce and brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbages).

Here's too a great 2008 growing season everyone. Cheers!

It's Colder than a Witch's..

A cantaloupe from last summer. A reminder that things
will warm up and plants will grow again.

It's cold today, colder than a brass monkey's balls.

Awoke to temps below zero and all the school's closed or at least on a 2 hour delay. I am wondering if the school's were closed/delayed because of cold or because of Superbowl flu? I doubt we will ever know the real story.

The plumbing is slowly freezing up which is a major bummer. So far the toilet has gone-we can manually fill and flush but the lines the bring water to the tank are frozen. the shower keeps trying to freeze up even with a drip going. The sink in the bathroom is the only thing that has not tried to freeze up in the bathroom. The water in the rest of the house seems to be A-OK.

Eugene has been in the crevices of the house making sure there are no holes bringing in freezing winds and has found several such holes both in the basement crawl spaces and in the attic. He also found a roll of insulation stuck back beyond the bathroom pipes and did stuff it into the the cracks and holes causing the pipes to freeze. He's also been trying to heat these recesses using electric space heaters and fans to blow heated air back into the crawl spaces where the water pipes are.

At this time last year we were heating with electric space heaters. Man, that would be brutal this year. We were barely able to keep the house at 59˚F last winter and had no weather nearly this cold. I know we would have had 100% of the water freeze on us if we were still heating with the space heaters as we believe the whole reason for the bathroom freezing partially is two fold.

1) We had a rat in the wall that has since become a frozen rat-cicle toy for the dogs (and he was a big sucker too) who moved the insulation around and chewed a hole in the wall near the pipes
2) We have not been keeping the house quite warm enough to stave of freezing of pipes. We like it around 60˚F. We now have the thermostat set to 64˚F which we are finding too warm but it seems to be keeping any more freezing from happening.

Soon enough the weather will warm up enough to start thawing things.

Eugene is planting some leek seeds today in 6" nursery pots as the Stella Natura tells us it is a good time to plant root crops and even though a leek grows above ground, because it is a close relative of the onions and garlics of the world, it is considered a root crop.

made a nice lunch from salad that we brought home with us from the party (most did stay at the Ferrario's, they do appreciate good salad greens, unlike too many Americans who think iceburg lettuce is good lettuce), snow peas from last spring I found in the freezer and a applesauce/yogurt/banana salad I made from applesauce I made this past fall, yogurt Eugene made from the raw milk we buy and consume, salad dressing made from dried herbs and fresh garlic we grew, local honey, plus olive oil, balsamic and rice vinegar I bought at Jungle Jim's and organic bananas from Kroger's. Here it is February, it is below zero outside and yet I was able to make a meal using 90% locally source ingredients (mostly things I put up this past summer and fall). Eating locally year round is quite possible with prior planning and preparation.

Getting Ready

Tomorrow is a market day and that has meant I have spent most of my energy today getting ready for market.

The day before market starts early, I start harvesting leafy greens and herbs a bit after sunrise. Actually today because Eugene didn't get up until after 6:30 I opened the chickens, fed them and moved their tractors off of their nightly manure area (chickens poop while they sleep). I was about the get them water when he appeared carrying their waterer. After chicken duty I started in oh the harvesting. Normally I do all the harvesting for the Saturday farmers' market on Friday but this week Friday fell on a bad day for harvesting (or doing much of anything with plants other than killing weeds) according to the biodynamic calendar "The Stella Natura". So yesterday evening I did a lot of the harvest chores. I picked all the remaining garlic scapes off of the garlic plants. Got in a lot of red turnips and picked the first of the sugar snap peas. Since I was picking things towards the end of the day I did not want to cut herbs or greens because they do not do well with late in the day harvesting. Because of this I decided to do greens and herbs this morning despite having the knowledge that things will likely not be at their best.

Between 7 and 8:30am I was cutting swiss chard, Italian parsley, cilantro, baby zukes, cucumbers, oregano, tarragon and chives. By 8:35 everything I harvested was in the big 3-door fridge to cool down. I noticed the cilantro/parsley bed was inundated with weeds but that was okay because today was a great weeding day and I later got out to wheel hoe that bed and several others.

After getting my harvest chores finished I ate some breakfast and had a second cup of coffee and got started on an email to alert my customers and other interested parties about tomorrow's Farmers' market and the fact it is Alumni weekend at Miami University and also that Betty Quantz is going to be doing a cooking Demo (she does great cooking demos and passes out lots of samples) using food from us local farmers. That took a couple of hours. I also made a lot of labels and some new signs for the market stand. After that I went up to the garden to weed out some beds that needed it. Got 3 done and decided it was too hot for such work and also it was lunch time so went back in with Eugene and had lunch and cooled off.

After lunch I got to work labeling bags and bagging up a lot of dried herbs and garlic powder and made a batch of cookies. When that was done I went to the barn and started in on the fresh herbs and other things like bunching red turnips, bagging chard and garlic scapes. All the while listening to Air America Radio (I love listening to Randi Rhodes rant about the neocons. She's so right on). When that task was done I realized I still had to get a CSA newsletter together for our lone CSA member (which I still have not done) and also to get out tally sheet done for tomorrow and a few more table signs. I did get the sheet and the signs done and than decided to blog about it.

This takes us up to now (7:45pm) and I have to still do the newsletter and get something ready for dinner and call it a night (gotta be up at 4:30am tomorrow!)

Gearing Up

It's been raining on and off all day. We have gotten almost a whole cm according to our new rain gauge. But the rain has made the garden beds too wet to work in so we have not been doing much in the way of farming today. Won't do much tomorrow either because we made plans to go visit Eugene's mom in Yellow Springs and also there will be a total eclipse of the sun over north Africa, parts of southern Europe and the Middle East. When we used the biodynamic planting calendar, The Stella Natura, we noticed that all days that have any kind of lunar or solar eclipse anywhere over the planet were bad days to transplant plants or harvest things but wonderful days to kill weeds and till the soil. I once hoed a bed of shallots at the same time a solar eclipse was happening and no weeds grew in that bed for 8 weeks! It was as if I has used some sort of strong, chemical herbicide. It was truly amazing.

Lettuce seedlings in a cold frame getting hardened off before transplanting. The green is Simpson Elite, than Rouge D'hiver, than Marvel of Four Seasons and finally in the right corner lollo rosa. These were transplanted yesterday evening

Despite things being a bit quiet around here today we have been quite busy the past 5 days (or when ever it was I posted here last). yesterday Eugene got a bunch of beds tilled and ready for seeds and transplants and we spend a lovely evening sowing seeds (parsnips, spinach and radishes), transplanting 170 lettuce plants and than putting row covers over everything. We finished about the same time it was too dark to see. Eugene went out this morning to check on our work and said the row cover and hoops over the lettuces needed some adjusting. It is hard to put together things you cannot see.

Along with putting seeds and transplants into the ground I have been making soil blocks just about daily. I am either making small blocks to start smaller seeds or large blocks to put the sprouted seeds into. Right now we have a full compliment of light tables. There are tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, kale, broccoli, zucchinis, celery, sage, parsley and 4 flats of lettuce about 10 days away from being ready to go in the ground.

Since April is almost here it is time for a lot of summer crops to be started inside. By Tax day I should have peppers, eggplant, the main crop of tomatoes, more zucchini, more cucumbers, more broccoli, more cabbage, more lettuce (probably 2 or 3 more plantings). Before tax day we should have gotten several thousand onion sets in the ground and before the end of April we will do likewise with onion seedlings we started from seed. Onions started from seed yield a lot better quality than those started from sets but we had a lot of set sized onions (that means very small) from last year of types we could not find seed for this year.

This past Saturday we had a load of Fresh Aire Farm compost delivered. We like to make our own compost for a variety of reasons, a big one being it is a lot cheaper than buying the stuff and getting it delivered. But because we have moved and are starting a new farm we are really short on compost. I think we have about 2 or 3 cubic yards ready to use and need about 6 to 8 cubic yards for the beds and making soil mix. But we are lucky in that we are close to one of the finest compost makers in the USA in Dan Young. And Dan brought us 5 yards of some gorgeous compost Saturday morning and dumped it by the hoophouse that will be getting cukes and zukes in about a week. The stuff is nice but it was not cheap at $140 for 5yds plus another $50 to deliver (and that delivery charge has likely gone up in the past few days with the rise in petroleum based fuels). But I think it was money well spent.

It is now nearing dinner time. So far I have made a cole slaw (or cabbage salad as my grandmother Ada called it) and a spice cake for supper. I believe Nathan's kosher hot dogs will go with the above. Topped with home made pickle relish and red onions-Yum.