It's March 19th which means tomorrow is officially.........SPRING! Yay! Interesting thing though, it's felt like spring for a long time and I attribute that to two reasons: 1) we've had an abnormally warm winter the past month or so and, 2) all of the garden planning and seeding and greenhouse building we've been doing the past couple months have made it SEEM like spring even though it was winter. That's all good for me. I'm not naturally a winter person. I have to convince myself to enjoy winter and see all the positives it can present, so a very long extended spring is just fine with me.
I've had some very enjoyable experiences as well as had the opportunity to learn some good lessons over the past month. I received several shipments of seeds which I had ordered for this year's gardens. Each shipment just feels like the best birthday present EVER! My husband and son and I also made a trip to Bozeman, MT, to visit our daughter for several days. Trips to Bozeman are always enjoyable events because I so appreciate the healthy attitude which is all about Bozeman. It's just in the air there. I like Bozeman so much that I don't think I'd ever want to live there because the shininess might wear off, if you know what I mean.
While we were in Bozeman I had the opportunity to visit a local farm/CSA called Gallatin Valley Botanical and meet the owners, Jacy and Matt. Even though their set-up has a lot of differences in how we are planning to or are doing things, there are some commonalities, too. It was so nice to see how another CSA is gearing up for the season.
Evidently the planets were all aligned when we visited Bozeman because I was also able to line up the purchase of nearly 200 pounds of organic certified seed potatoes from Kimm's Organic Seed Potatoes. This was one of those situations that was borne out of my lack of foresight (a lesson hopefully learned) that led to a wonderful meet-up with Yvonne Kimm, the owner of Kimm's Organic Seed Potatoes.
The week before our trip to Bozeman I decided it was time to get my seed potato order in and started checking out online places to order the potatoes. I had made some quick calls about the Black Hills to find out there really weren't any opportunities locally to buy local organic seed potatoes, and then started the online quest. I did finally find a couple places to order the potatoes and saw that many varieties were already sold out for the 2012 season (lesson), but this being my first year of growing organic potatoes, I wasn't in a terribly picky state of mind. I just wanted at least a couple varieties with one being a good storage potato so hopefully I can have extras to put in a root cellar in the fall. So, I finally got my order lined out with an out-of-state company and got to the "add on shipping and handling" portion and realized that for 200 pounds of seed potatoes I would be paying approximately $200 in shipping. Yikes! Up until now I'd only been ordering seeds, so shipping was very minimal or even free. I hadn't even considered the fact that 200 pounds of seed potatoes would weigh 200 pounds! Yep, seems obvious, doesn't it? At this point I began to get a little panicky. The shipping cost would throw my seed budget way out of whack, yet I dare not wait very long or I wouldn't have any organic options at all. So then I started thinking, "where could I potentially drive and pick up organic seed potatoes"........ah ha! We were heading for Bozeman in a few days!
After several phone calls, interesting conversations, and e-mails around the Bozeman area, I finally hooked up with Yvonne Kimm and was thrilled to find out that they did have 4-5 varieties of certified organic seed potatoes available right now and yes they could hook me up with around 200 pounds while we were in Bozeman. Woohoo! So while we were visiting our daughter, we made a drive out to the Kimm Farm and had a chance to talk with Yvonne and learn a little about the family's several generation conventional seed potato business and how that had by chance given way to a side business of organic seed potatoes for Yvonne. I'm so glad it did! From that visit I ended up with Yukon Golds, Russets, Cherry Reds, and Fingerling potatoes and I can't wait to get those babies in the ground.
Another lesson I have learned in the past month is that no matter how nice it may seem in the greenhouse, you (meaning I) should not assume baby seedlings will want to make the big move from inside the 60-70 degree house under grow lamps to the big bright 40 to 100 degree greenhouse. So my baby onions unfortunately provided me with a good lesson about the need to slowly adapt tender seedlings (even if they are just onions) to a new setting. A visitor to the greenhouse suggested that I should probably just start early season seedlings like onions right in the greenhouse so they have a heads up right at germination about what's in store for them. So yesterday I seeded another 1000 onions and placed them immediately in the greenhouse for hopefully a better outcome.
Along with the onions I have also seeded parsley, basil, leeks, and cabbage. Right now I'm seeding as quickly as I can make soil blocks which come 50 to a tray for the 2-inch size or 300 per tray for the micro's.
Last week we also had the opportunity to meet Trish and Jeremy from Cycle Farm (www.cyclefarm.wordpress.com) in Spearfish. I had been conversing with them through e-mail and phone for a few weeks, so it was so nice to finally get to meet them. They came out to our place to look at our new greenhouse as they are hoping to build a greenhouse soon on their acreage. Again, their acreage has many differences in comparison to ours, but we have a lot of common goals and ideals so it is fun to talk gardening and healthy living with them.
And finally, two other things we've been working on: our NRCS application for their high tunnel cost share program and the organic certification application. We just found out on Friday that we have been fully approved for our NRCS cost share application, so that means a new high tunnel is in our near future. Yay! And I am on the downhill side of our organic certification application which has really made us think through the next several years of garden management and cropland management. I believe that's all to our advantage and I look forward to the challenge of becoming organic certified.
Enjoy your spring and please e-mail, call, or Facebook message us if you'd like to compare lessons!
Michelle Grosek
Bear Butte Gardens
www.BearButteGardens.com
605-490-2919
email: Michelle@BearButteGardens.com
