Today, I planted the first seeds of the 2023 season. It was invigorating - dirt under my fingernails always feels so good! Of course, first I had to figure out what I was planting and when.
I use an online program called Tend to organize the farm plantings. It allows you to virtually plant your garden, and figures out how long each plant can hang out in a tray before it needs to go in the ground, what the typical plant spacings are, and a million other details that would make my head hurt in a spreadsheet. It’s my fourth year using Tend, and now it’s really easy - I modify my plan from last year and it remembers all my preferences and adjustments, like the crops I plant more densely or ones that take more time up in Alaska.
So what did I plant? Tomatoes, later than I’ve ever planted them, were first. I planted some of our first salad starts, even though it may be too early. If the soil warms up quickly, like it did last year, I may be able to put starts in the ground as early as the first week in April. If not, I’ll feed them some extra compost tea and hope for the best. A larger start is kind of nice going into the beginning of the season.
This year is a big shift for Homer Hilltop. It’s the first year since we started that we are not planning to run a CSA veggie box program for the community. I loved our CSA program, but it required so much planning, and at the end of the day, growing all those crops to give our members variety was a huge challenge.
So this year, we are focusing on the crops we know we grow well - especially greens - and bringing it all to the farmers market, the food hub and to our wholesale customers. It’s a little scary starting off the year without the working capital from those subscriptions, but at the same time, it feels like the right direction. Farming is all about trial and error, and how you market things is no exception.
Then it was all about the flowers. Snapdragons are by far my favorite flower to grow at Homer Hilltop for so many reasons, but one of them is NOT seeding them. It’s not really seeding, it’s basically sprinkling dust. I use my sense of touch to seed these, not my eyes. When they germinate, I just move them around a bit to alleviate any cells that got over-seeded. Usually I wind up with an entire extra tray at the end.
A lot of the flowers I’m growing this year are repeats from the past few years, but I still don’t have things systematized like I do for the vegetables. I don’t know how many feet I need of certain things, or what varieties bloom first. But I’m learning, and I’m being patient. Experience is the only really effective teacher.
After four hours of seeding, I’ve filled up half my massive seed cart, and my back is demanding I get off my feet, but it feels so good to get started, even with four feet of snow on the ground. Now that those seeds are in the ground, it’s all systems forward, but after 12 years of doing this dance, I feel less frantic than ever before. I’ll take that as a sign that I’m on course for our best season yet.
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