Recent Posts
Tiny Farm Blog
Return To Blog Listing
Two acres and some tools: a photo-blog of daily life on an organic microfarm.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'seedlings'
Onions from seed!
This is the first year I’ve tried growing onion from seed, and they’re doing fine. Today, I pulled up one multi-planting of Red Wing to check ‘em out. Multi-planting onions was also ...
Last of the lettuce
Can’t quite seem to stop planting! Lynn and Libby put in a last 200 or so lettuce seedlings to see how far they’ll go in fall growth. The soil is still moist an inch (2.5cm) or so down, bu...
Last of the season’s brassicas
These brassica seedlings—broccoli, cauliflower, kale, early-maturing cabbage—were started a week ago, way late by any planting guide standard for our region, but I’m going by the reality of ...
Potting for market
With the recently warming weather, field crops have started to grow more quickly, but nothing but radishes will be ready for this Saturday’s farmers’ market, and the early lettuce in the g...
Seedlings away!
Things can change suddenly on the tiny farm. I picked today to move the majority of seedlings to the greenhouse. Although this was MUCH later than hoped for earlier this year, it’s all about the...
Potting up
Many things are going on at once, and one of them is potting up seedlings and moving them out to the greenhouse. Already, onions, leek, parsley, lettuce, and the first trays of cauliflower and broccol...
Seedlings don’t wait around!
The weather’s been warm, sunny, essentially FANTASTIC for the last couple of days, and the forecast for the next few looks just as good. Indoors, many of the earliest seedling starts are putting...
Seedlings everywhere!
Seedlings are everywhere. The first set of tomatoes is putting on its hairy true leaves: that’s a Striped German in the pic. With Lynn honing her new putting-seeds-in- plug-sheets skills today, ...
Hanging in the greenhouse
A couple of days ago, I moved out four trays from the Milkhouse to the greenhouse: parsley, leek, onion, leek. I made a quick frame to keep the row cover off the alliums. Although it’s been just...
Early spring rounds
A gray and gloomy, windy day…but WARM. Well, fairly above freezing for the most part, and with a little rain, yesterday’s speeded-up melting continued. But we’re still a ways off fro...
First tomato: 2008
Here’s the very first tomato seedling to emerge and spread its seed leaves: a Striped German (a big, bi-color heirloom, one of my top 3-4 favorites over the last couple of years). This is six da...
Seedling action
The main tiny farming action is with the seedlings now; even if the snow melted off tomorrow (which it won’t), it’d still take a sunny, windy couple of weeks, give or take, for the field t...
New gardener
Hannah dropped by today to check things out. She’d gotten in touch through the farm web site, wanted to volunteer for a day or two every week through the season, to learn about small-scale farmi...
Inside and out…
Inside, in the increasingly GREEN Milkhouse, this year’s artificial sun set-up is done. It’s about fitting in as much area-under-lights as possible, while making sure all of the trays are ...
Peppers!
Another little new-season milestone: the first of the original veggie gang has appeared. These are Gypsy (hybrid) sweet peppers, seeded six days ago, along with other peppers and eggplant. They start...
Seasonal salad
The first harvested dish of the year here usually comes from early lettuce, but not usually from lettuce still in plug sheets. With my ambitious timing, and the way colder than hoped for weather, tran...
Back in the dirt!
Transplanted the arugula from the end of January into as small a corner of the greenhouse as seemed to make sense, two plants to a plug, about 6″ (15cm) apart. There’s no space to waste, a...
The watering tray
It’s funny how almost random objects can become practically indispensable tools. Like this rigid gray tray, given to me a while back, just the one, amongst a mixed bunch of plastic flower pots f...
Celery!
Celery has been surging up over the last day or so, 10 days after seeding. This is Utah 52-70, a pretty common variety. Celery is a member of the carrot family (Apiaceae), along with parsley, parsnip,...
Seedlings continue to grow…
Seedling production is on about the same schedule as last year, except there are a few new things on the go: celery, onions, leek, celeriac. The three grow racks aren’t yet full (and there̵...
Trimming leeks
Trimming back leeks is really satisfying. Here, I’m doing the first planting. With most indoor veggie seedlings and my two-tube fluorescent set-up, it’s lots of tray rotating and light hei...
More fun with lettuce
Some of the early lettuce I ended up leaving two to a cell, to see how they’d do. Now, I divided a bunch of those and potted them up singly to a much roomier 38-cell plug sheet (up from 72), and...
Two arugulas
The arugula, about a month from seeding, is looking lush and…TASTY. While fiddling with macro focus and tripod (I’ve been using a borrowed one lately for indoor pics), I reached around to ...
Fuzzy little rosemary
Hmmm, so that’s what tiny rosemary seedlings REALLY look like with their first true leaves. I’m experimenting with the new camera. On macro, it’s practically a microscope. I can focu...
Parsley update
Around two weeks after emerging, the first set of curly parsley is putting out its first true leaves. This is Krausa Market, a “triple curled” variety. Aka moss-curled. There’s als...
Tea and fungi
Chamomile tea prevents damping off—I’m a believer! It’s one of those natural but-do-they-really-work remedies, used where more product-minded folks would fork over a few bucks for a bott...
Seed starting tools II
Here are ALL the indoor seed starting tools I have, most of them always-used, a couple not. Nothing special, and FINGERS I’ve found are handiest for most of the work at this scale. In any case, ...
Simpson Elite
More early lettuce. This is Simpson Elite, an improved variety of Black Seeded Simpson, which is a really fast, reliable heirloom from the 1800’s. I grow both. They have thin, delicate, pale gre...
Lightbox suspended
Another seedling room set-up task checked off today: hanging the lightbox. Not exactly a big job—the chains were already there from last year—but having it in place is a big visual reminder in the...
Welcome to KeroWorld…
What an odd thought, what image comes to mind: the world of kerosene… And now I’m in it! Purchased new today, at a healthy 35% discount, this small, rather inexpensive, KeroWorld-brand ind...