Gearing Up!

It's time!  The first shelves and grow lights are set up.  One shelving unit can hold 8 trays with each tray containing 50 soil blocks.  Some soil blocks have one seedling, some have up to four per block, depending upon the type of seedling.  We will have at least two shelving units set up at peak germination time, perhaps three.  Once seedlings get a couple inches high they are moved out to the starter greenhouse to benefit from the perfect grow light---sunshine!  Once one batch of seedlings is moved out, another batch is started under the grow lights.    

The high tunnel greenhouse is waiting (high tunnel on the left, starter greenhouse on the right).  ----->

Leftover seeds are inventoried.  The new seed orders are nearly complete and ready for online confirmation. 

The soil block ingredients and mixer are lined up in the garage.  

And last, but certainly NOT least, the CSA share payments are rolling in day by day.  

So here's the plan for the next several weeks:

• This week - order and pay for seeds
• This weekend - start making soil blocks, seeding them, and germinating indoor under lights (onions first!)
• Next week - set up watering system and direct seed inside the high tunnel greenhouse
• Early February - seed a few tomatoes and cabbages to be planted into high tunnel early as a trial
• Late February - attend MOSES Organic Conference in Lacrosse, WI and on return hopefully start harvesting baby greens out of high tunnel to sell
• Early March - move early seedlings out to starter greenhouse
• Mid-March - seed cabbages and parsley into soil blocks and obtain seed potatoes

In March things really start moving along quickly.  The starter greenhouse (our permanent structure greenhouse on the right side in the above photo) should be very warm during the days and safe at night for seedlings that are covered.  And it's time to seed pretty much everything else into soil blocks (tomatoes, peppers, herbs, celery, leeks, flowers) so they will be a nice size to transplant out into the outdoor gardens beginning mid May.  Eggplant get seeded just slightly later for an early June planting outdoors.  

This year we are adding another aspect to our seeding and germinating.....we will be germinating a limited number of starter plants to direct sell to customers for their own gardens.  These will, of course, be certified organic starters and will be ready to go out into gardens in mid-May.  Right now we are planning to start early tomatoes, slicer tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, bell peppers, eggplant, herbs, and cabbages to be sold as certified organic nursery stock.  Of course this step requires one more license through the state, but we're hoping it will be worth it for us as well as our customers.  

That's how my calendar is shaping up!  It's been glorious having a couple "down" months to focus on outdoor off-season gardening tasks, household chores, holidays, family, and cooking, but now it's time to get the hamsters running in the wheel and step things up a little.  Yay mid-winter!  

Michelle & Rick

www.BearButteGardens.com

605.490.2919

Michelle@BearButteGardens.com

Rick@BearButteGardens.com

Projects, Lessons, Networking

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

Endless Planning!

I am in Week 8 of 2012 and already feel like I have utilized the weeks of this new year very well!  Let me illustrate:

Week 1 - attended the Growers' Conference in Missouri
Week 2 - released information about the Bear Butte Gardens CSAs for 2012
Week 3 - took inventory of the seeds I already had on hand and made a list of the seeds I wished to purchase and plant and received my first check for a CSA!
Week 4 - started fine tuning the "planting plan" and working on this year's farmer's market plans
Week 5 - seeded the first 1000 seed onions into the first round of soil blocks and placed them under grow lights in the house and became licensed to accept SNAP/EBT cards for selling produce
Week 6 - first seedlings began to successfully emerge under grow lights, seeded first seeds into containers in the new greenhouse
Week 7 - placed orders for the seeds I still needed for the spring and summer plantings ( a LOT!) and started the second batch of seeds in containers in the greenhouse
Week 8 - moved onion seedlings in soil blocks to the greenhouse and finished detailed planting plan

So now I'm at a point between initially getting things started and patiently waiting for my seed orders so I can gradually get the rest of the produce started.  There are a lot of variables to keep in mind when creating a planting plan for the amount of produce I wish to harvest this growing season.  There are the uncontrollable variables:  non-viable seed and weather.  I'm trying to minimize the effects of the uncontrollable variables by having multiple back-up plans such as lots of extra seed on hand for quick re-seeding of non-germinating seed and a small greenhouse now plus hopefully a larger high tunnel within a couple months to help compensate for the ever-present "wacky South Dakota weather" variable.

And then there are the controllable variables which tend to create the most headaches for me:

• What kind of tomatoes should I grow this year?  
• How many leaves of chard will I put in a weekly CSA box?  
• Do I really need to grow turnips even if I don't like them?  
• Is it better to have garden rows running north-south or east-west?  These are the kinds of things that drive me crazy!

There are some things that are thankfully just decided and I don't need to debate them anymore:

• Sell produce through CSAs or farmer's market?  Both!
• Organic or non-organic seed?  Organic!  
• Soil blocks or seed trays?  Soil blocks!  
• A variety of produce or just the basics?  A variety!  For anyone who knows me, this shouldn't be surprising.  
• Heirlooms or hybrids?  As many heirlooms as I can possibly find in organic seed, but I'll compromise for a really good, time-proven organic hybrid and be happy with that.

At this point this blog is going to switch from "I" to "we" as I'm going to start discussing farm implements and they are definitely my husband's area of knowledge, not mine.  

There are several implement additions that we need to add to our arsenal over the next several years as budget allows.  Part of this year's Planting Plan depends on the implements we can purchase.  Currently we have a good tractor with a bucket, a platform mower, an old disc, a blade, an old plow, and a walk-behind rear-tine tiller.  Items on the "to buy" list are a tiller for the tractor, mixer for mixing soil for seed starting, deeper plow, water wheel transplanter, cultivator, precision seeder, etc.

We also need to work into this year's plan purchasing more bee supers and the additional bees to go in them, putting up a high tunnel greenhouse, putting rain gutters on the present greenhouse and setting up a system of containers for gathering the rain, tearing down and building new fences, planting one shelter belt this year and plowing for another one to be planted next year, building a new chicken coop and some chicken tractors.  

So, in reading back through this blog, what I'm happy about is that I know I'm going to be busy for a while!  If any of these tasks sound appealing or you'd just like to discuss what we've learned along the way, just drop us an e-mail.  We're always glad to have some help or just compare methods with a fellow gardener.  

Michelle Grosek
Sturgis, SD

www.BearButteGardens.com

e-mail:  Michelle@BearButteGardens.com