In the spirit of getting ready for the next season, I
thought I would take the next couple posts to lay out some of my plans in the
garden for 2017 and perhaps a rehashing of what worked and what didn’t in the
years past.
A friend of mine recently asked about seed starting and what
recommendations I had. I could likely have begun an expanded version of that
conversation here in blog-land by stating my vast experience from when I owned
and ran a CSA. However, the truth is, I’m sure I did do seed starting all wrong
in those years for that kind of business. In that venture, what’s needed are proven
varieties that grow in a wide range of conditions, mature predictably, harvest with
good structure, and maintain their own post-harvest freshness and appearance. It’s not romantic at all but very
effective.
What I wanted in those years was popping color, an array of
unusual varieties, and amazing flavor. Oh yeah, I also had this vision of
having the hours in the day to save my own seeds, which, among other things, necessitates
the making of tiny, pollinator proof cages to house parent varieties that I
would then get up at the crack of dawn and hand pollinate and then mark for
later seed saving. I know, it’s OK to laugh at my ideas of how much time I
would have. The amazing Hmong farmers I formed relationships with were polite
enough to not openly mock me. They were, to a family, masters of a kind of efficiency
I only dreamed of. Generations of hard-scrabble mountain farming in Laos left
their elders with real knowledge of farming when what you grew might very well
be all you had to eat. If you ever had dreams of learning the ropes,
apprenticing even for a day of harvest with one of these families would never
been time wasted.
But grow things, I did, and they were beautiful and
bountiful. Now that I’m the master gardener of my city lot only, and don’t even
sell very much, I could go whole hog with my seed fantasies. But falling on my
face a few times a season running a small farm did teach me to marry the two
visions and that I could have all the unique beauty, but temper my exuberance
with a healthy dose of keeping things simple.
I have just a couple sources for seeds and sometimes, I just
buy the darn plant, already well on its way. I buy seeds almost exclusively
from Baker Creek (http://www.rareseeds.com/), hands down the best garden-porn
in the catalog industry. They support heirloom varieties and put a great deal
of time and effort into finding and rescuing our planet’s ancient seeds, tiny
little treasures of culture that deserve a place. I also usually will buy a few
from Seeds Savers (http://www.seedsavers.org/), Seeds of Change (http://www.seedsofchange.com/), and for
market gardening varieties that work, Johnny’s (http://www.johnnyseeds.com/). And don’t
start seeds inside unless you have an actual greenhouse of some sort to
transfer them to more than 6-8 weeks before the last possible frost date for
your area. It’s easy to get excited and plant them in early February, here in
MN, but they run the risk of getting leggy and are prone to disease indoors.
I bought a small seed starting mat, like a heating pad for
soil, and used a soil block maker from Johnny’s that would make the soil into tiny
blacks to optimize my small area on the mat. It means you have to replant
within a week or so of the tiny spouts emerging, but when your seed starting in
your house in the kitchen counter, being able to take up a small space is
important. I always had a small thermometer so I knew if the soil was too hot
or not hot enough. There are charts for each veggie, but I shot for about 80
degrees Fahrenheit and that worked well because I had a mix of tomatoes,
peppers, eggplants, okra, strawberries, certain flowers that like it hotter to
germinate. Sometimes I would have to mess around with covering the flat and
plants with towels to get the temperature up and remove them if it got too hot.
Then the little seeds would emerge and I would carefully replant them in flats
with bigger soil plugs and try, with varying success not to mix up the variety
tags. They would go into a shelf in my kitchen window with lights and then I
boosted the efficiency of the light by using tin foil to reflect it back onto
them instead of spilling into my kitchen.
The best thing about this whole process is that seeds, by
their very nature, want to grow. The Mother has made that their only purpose
and with a couple tools and careful attention, most of my seeds sprouted just
fine. So rustle up your courage and order those seed catalogs. You’ll spend way
more at the garden stores and never get the variety if you don’t start them yourself.
Blue Skies, All.
