The days are full of time spent seeding for the future of the farm. When our late order of seeds finally arrived, our team made quick work of getting those little guys off to a healthy start. Seeding is a core task on the farm and an unplanned break from starting new crops leaves a gap in our blooming season, so there's lots of time planning and sticking to schedules this time of year.
We do most of our seeding in 128 trays meaning each tray will hold 128 new little plant starts. This helps us to do the math to make sure we are starting enough seeds to grow enough plants to fill out all the holes in each row. The spreadsheets will make your eyes go crossed but the numbers help us feel confident in our plan and identify when problems are brewing before they become massive issues.
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We prepare for large seeding days by prefilling our trays with soil and storing them in the damp dark underbelly of the barn - the perfect spot for keeping the soil damp until planted. We check our seeding chart and collect the seed to be sown from our filing cabinet of seeds in the cooler where we inventory them.
Each seed comes with its own directions for sowing so grouping like items to plant at one time helps us to maximize efficiency when starting these little guys. We also like to give ourselves lots of notes on our seeding schedule to help us remember from one year to the next that stock does better planting 3 seeds to one cell in a tray than a single seed. This type of information research was what filled our winter months and boy are we glad we did all that leg work now!
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We begin our sowing season with a few extra trays to fill in crop loss in our spring fields like dianthus and Queen Anne’s lace. Then we transition into sowing out perennials or slow-growing seeds like solidago and sea holly. Now that we are at the end of April, we are focusing on the first of our summer field flowers. We will start zinnias, cosmos, and celosia.
There are so many different life stages now on the farm. Crops being removed, crops in full production, fields about to be harvested, babies planted and growing, and new seeds germinating. No matter where you look the seed of life is cracking wide open!
XOXO, Jess
