Yes, it’s that time of year when we are all getting a bit stir crazy and look forward to rooting for our favorite shooter. But we don’t have basketball players in mind, we have onions, leeks, and lettuce. Go Dakota Tears! Go Red Baron! Go King Richard! Go ahead and germinate, shoot right out of that soil! Sorry sports fans, I was never very good at cheering.
Carrie, Genevieve, and I got the ball rolling (ha!) and set up the first rack and set of lights at my house. We do this so I can keep an eye on them without trudging through the snow at the farm. We planted approximately 4,300 onion and leek seeds, including a perennial dividing onion that I have been trying to grow for the Experimental Farm Network. I just might have enough seeds to give back to this organization this Spring.
How can we plant that many so quickly? The answer is our volunteers. We try to plant 4 rows, 10 seeds per inch, in trays 18 inches long. All those seeds fit into 6 trays, and when they are ready, we pass the seedlings on to our volunteers, who divide and replant them into groups of 3. Onions push away from each other as they grow, so we get 3x the harvest from one planting.
In anticipation of our “pot party” on Saturday, I needed to gather papers and wine bottles.
I wanted to make sure we had enough papers for rolling our pots (not pot!) and went to my local dump/recycling center to ask if I could dumpster dive for newspapers. “Of course, take all you want,” the friendly dump overseer said. So I climbed in and slid around to get all the best ones (no glossy ones–not MOFGA approved), and I loaded up my car for the party. The interesting thing was, while diving, not one of my fellow townspeople gave me a second look.
On to the party! It was so great to have 17 volunteers show up to help roll pots. Lots of our regular volunteers arrived, including my youngest friends, and two new volunteers (welcome Marcia and Barbara). It was fun to gather, have conversation and share some food. We rolled over 2,000 paper pots during our gathering! We need about 2,000 more, but Carrie and I think that will be a great rainy day project sitting in the greenhouse. Full disclosure–I did order a case of peat pots for this year since this method is a trial for us. I am not comfortable not having a backup plan.
Carrie and Genevieve will be covering two sets of Thursday-Friday-Saturday volunteer days later this month. As April rolls around, we will be back to our schedule of Tuesday-Saturday. Later in the season Mondays will open up also. You can sign up as usual on our volunteer page at Growing to Give, and we hope you do!
Hopefully this coming Nor’Easter will be the last one for a while. I think we have enough poor man’s fertilizer, and we are all eager to get our hands back into the dirt.
Thanks to our friends and volunteers who came on Saturday. It was great to see all of you.
Always grateful,
Theda