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

Soil Blocking

We're heading into the last couple weeks of April and I feel experienced enough with soil blocking to write a little bit about it.  First off.......I love soil blocking!  I really, really do.  I just discovered the soil blocking method this past year, but then I began to wonder, where did soil blocking come from?  Mexico!  Yep, about 2000 years ago an Aztec tribe retreated to the "Floating Gardens" area, which is present day Mexico City, and they devised the Chinampas method of gardening of which the seedling nursery technique (or soil blocking) was integral.  The soil blocks, or chapines, were made from muck which had been dredged from the drainage canals in the Floating Gardens area and dried on piles of weeds.  The chinampero (farmer) would then make a small indentation with his little finger or a stick in the top of the chapines and then drop in a seed and cover the seeds with loose manure.  The chapines were watered until the seedlings were of a size to be planted into the chinampa.

I wanted to try soil blocking this year for several reasons, but the main reason was so I would not have to buy all shapes and sizes of seed trays and then wash them and store them from year to year.  With the soil blocking method I only need one size seed tray, the standard 1020 seedling flat without drain holes.  These will be easy to quickly clean out after transplanting and will all stack together in a small pile.  Use of the clear domes is optional.  Clear plastic wrap works very well in place of the domes during germination.

Standard 1020 tray without drain holes

My other reasons for wanting to try soil blocking included the fact that I wanted to mix my own soil anyway (versus utilizing a prepackaged mixed soil), I liked the idea of the roots of the seedlings being air pruned instead of encircling the seed trays, and I liked the idea of the ease of transplanting the soil blocks into the garden.

Tray of 50 2-inch soil blocks

There would be one reason that I can think of now why I would use plastic pots or divided seed trays in the future for starting seeds---if I decide to sell plants commercially.  Most customers would probably prefer to buy a tomato plant or petunia in a plastic container instead of just getting bare blocks of soil containing the plants.  However, I may be able to convince them otherwise if I ever get to that point.

What I've discovered thus far in my soil blocking experience is that they are very simple to make if you just follow the basic directions.  There are videos on YouTube that show you step by step how to make the blocks.  There are many "recipes" for making your own soil mixture on the internet.  I use the recipe that Eliot Coleman uses in The New Organic Grower with just a slight change.  Once you make one batch of soil and experiment with the soil blocker, you pretty much have it figured out.  If you buy your basic ingredients in bulk, the cost per tray is minimal.  Once I purchased my initial ingredients, I was set for thousands of soil blocks.  A bonus that I had not anticipated with making soil blocks......kids love to make the blocks!  I had a group of middle schoolers come out to the gardens last week and several of the boys had a blast making trays of blocks.

One 12-inch tomato plant in soil block

At this date I have tomato plants in the greenhouse ranging from tiny seedlings to 12-inch plants.  They are all in 2-inch blocks and they are all doing great.  Because of the organic nutrients in the soil mix, I have not needed to fertilize anything and I do not anticipate needing to do so before they are transplanted out into the garden.  Even the largest tomato plant roots are air pruning in the blocks which means when the roots grow to the edge of the soil block, they automatically hold back when they sense air.  As you know, if a 12-inch tomato is in a plastic pot the roots will not only be circling the inside of the pot, but also growing out the drain hole in the bottom.  The worst case scenario with soil blocked plants is if you have the blocks very close together, roots may eventually grow from one block to another, but it is easy to take a knife and quickly cut between the blocks when you're ready to transplant and the plants will be fine.

I am looking forward to being able to start transplanting some of the hardier plants out into the garden next week such as seed onions, brussels sprouts, and cabbage.  I anticipate it will be an easy transition for the plants as they will be moved with their own dense package of soil and placed into the garden where they will quickly spread their roots and thrive.

Micro and 2" soil block makers

One more positive note about soil blocking, watering the seedlings is much simpler than with traditional seed trays or plastic pots.  Those little plastic cells and pots will only take so much water, then the rest drains out and the seedlings dry out very quickly when they have a lot of root mass, especially on very warm days.  Even on the hottest days (and sometimes my greenhouse gets well over 100 degrees) I just fill the flat tray full of blocks with water so that all of the blocks are sitting shoulder deep in water.  They will immediately absorb some water, but what they don't absorb can be left in the tray for absorption later in the day with no chance of the blocks disintegrating or the seedlings rotting.  I've tested this many, many times with the unseasonal heat we had late winter/early spring and the seedlings all did great!

Michelle@BearButteGardens.com
www.BearButteGardens.com

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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