Things are popping here at Circle M, in spite of the foot-deep blanket of snow that cushions the farm on this early March day. Popping right out of the soil, in fact! Skinny shoots of onions, shallots, parsley, lettuce, celery, kale and broccoli have exploded from their seed coats and are pushing first leaves toward the sun in our cozy humid greenhouse.
While we were talking via cellphone recently, a friend asked me what was going on at the farm. When I told her I was standing inside my walk-in cooler tapping shallot seeds into black plastic plug trays she said, “You should write about that! I bet very few people know how it all works.” So here goes: The Story of a Seed from Plant To Plate at Circle M Market Farm.
A market farmer’s garden year starts quite bit earlier than a home gardener’s might, so first of all, don’t panic if you don’t have seeds in the ground yet. Our CSA Farm Members will be getting Shares delivered the first week of June, so we start planting inside in mid-February so we’ll have lots of different veggies to put in the boxes by then. But there are plenty of things you can start now if you want to, if you have the right set-up (sunny window or shelves with lights) to take care of them. And certainly, there are things you have to start now if you want to grow them from seed in our somewhat short northern growing season. If you want to see a complete seed-starting table for all possible garden crops, see this great one at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, one of our favorite seed catalogs.
Our earliest starts are onion family members because they need at least 100 days of full sun before the days start to shorten in August. You can plant onions from little bulbs, called “sets,” in May and still grow nice big bulbs by August, but you can’t buy sets for the tasty heirloom varieties we like to grow. So February 15 we seeded Walla Walla, Cippolini, Red Torpedo, Rossa Milano, New York Early and White Wing onions. We also seeded Red Prisma and Yellow Saffron shallots on that day. March 1 we seeded King Richard leeks.
Our next earliest starts are parsley family plants like, well, parsley, but also celery and celeriac. These have to get in early because they take up to 3 weeks to germinate and they need a long season to grow. We seeded these February 16 along with a few edible flowers we like to have ready early to add to our salad mix: pansy, violet and calendula. Finally, on February 28 we seeded broccoli, head lettuce and kale because we want them to be big and ready to transplant outside a few weeks before our last frost in May.
All of these “starts” are, of course, transplants. We don’t actually seed these things into the outside ground at this point – we can’t even see the ground! We drop them onto the surface of small cells in plastic plug trays filled with our homemade seed-starting soil. (Way back in the fall, we made up nearly a ton of this soil mix from peat moss, perlite, compost, sand and various rock powders and minerals. And thank goodness we did – our compost and sand are too frozen to dig now.) I’ve been doing this seeding, messy as it is, in the walk-in cooler in which we store our harvested veggies during the growing season.
Our earliest starts are onion family members because they need at least 100 days of full sun before the days start to shorten in August. You can plant onions from little bulbs, called “sets,” in May and still grow nice big bulbs by August, but you can’t buy sets for the tasty heirloom varieties we like to grow. So February 15 we seeded Walla Walla, Cippolini, Red Torpedo, Rossa Milano, New York Early and White Wing onions. We also seeded Red Prisma and Yellow Saffron shallots on that day. March 1 we seeded King Richard leeks.
Our next earliest starts are parsley family plants like, well, parsley, but also celery and celeriac. These have to get in early because they take up to 3 weeks to germinate and they need a long season to grow. We seeded these February 16 along with a few edible flowers we like to have ready early to add to our salad mix: pansy, violet and calendula. Finally, on February 28 we seeded broccoli, head lettuce and kale because we want them to be big and ready to transplant outside a few weeks before our last frost in May.
All of these “starts” are, of course, transplants. We don’t actually seed these things into the outside ground at this point – we can’t even see the ground! We drop them onto the surface of small cells in plastic plug trays filled with our homemade seed-starting soil. (Way back in the fall, we made up nearly a ton of this soil mix from peat moss, perlite, compost, sand and various rock powders and minerals. And thank goodness we did – our compost and sand are too frozen to dig now.) I’ve been doing this seeding, messy as it is, in the walk-in cooler in which we store our harvested veggies during the growing season.
Why seed in a cooler? Well, I’m using this very-well-insulated room as a “germination chamber.” Right now, I keep it warmed to 80 degrees with a very small space heater and this is where almost all of our seeds rest until they pop up, or germinate, from the soil. Most seeds just need warmth and moisture to get rolling – they don’t need light until they actually emerge from the soil. So I stack the seeded flats on top of each other on shelves in this warm chamber until I see the tiniest little plants poking up. The flats need to be checked every day, though, because once the seeds have germinated they start growing and they grow fast. Every flat with a few sprouts visible goes immediately into my glass greenhouse.
If at home you want to start some seeds now, the top of your fridge is a nice warm place to put flats until they germinate. Simply put seeds in the soil, water very well, and stick the flats in plastic bags to hold the moisture in. Check every day and once you see some sprouts, put the flats in a very sunny south-facing window, or put the flats in shelves with fluorescent lights hung over them.
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