Planting Seedlings Early, Late, and Just in Time

There are times when two people cannot contribute enough hands to get the job done. We were extraordinarily blessed in the spring of 2021, when our friend, Dora, offered to come and help us get our planting beds up and running.

Dora at the prana table.

There were a few preliminary projects. We had to remove the bird netting, roll it up, tying each bundle securely, and stashing them away. Ditto for the landscape fabric, the twine, the fabric staples, the rocks, the branches.

Our hard work paid off.

As we unzipped each bed, it seemed clear that our over-wintering strategy had worked. The beds were pretty much weed-free. We scattered some soil supplements and tilthed the top layer of compost, mixing everything together easily and neatly.

We had two types of seedling trays. We had set our sights on using a paperpot transplanter that we had inherited from a friend. In theory, we could transplant 256 seedlings in less than a minute. I had used it successfully in another garden and was enthusiastic about our success in getting all of our transplants into their beds.

Unfortunately, the straw underlayment had not broken down completely. It caught in the furrower of the transplanter, and hiccuped our progress into frustration and despair. Luckily, Dora and Dambara were able to persevere, and they got all of the paperpot seedlings into the ground.

We also had 50-cell tray seedings. Each seedling went into the ground as we scooted our way down the beds. With three of us scooting, we were able to get all of these seedlings into the ground as well.

We up-potted many of the seedlings, to allow them to gain size and resiliency before going into the ground. Especially the sprawlers, the squashes and cucumbers, would benefit by being older when they went into the ground, when the days and nights were warmer.

The veggie beds, a month into transplanting.

The three of us got it all done. But we had adversaries: one pint-sized and a trillion pea-sized.

The robin who owned our veggie meadow delighted in pulling up our fragile seedlings. He didn't eat them; he merely pulled and dropped them, gasping, at the cusp of their former lodging. He did this over and over, and we determinedly followed after him, replanting the gasping youngsters.

It was the trillions that worked faster than we could. Pill bugs. Trillions of them. They had overwintered, snug as a bug in a rug, under our brilliant solution of landscape fabric, feasting our our brilliant solutions of straw, compost, and wood chips.

We lost 90% of our onions, shallots, and leeks, and most of our spinach and lettuces. There were trillions of them. They didn't care for cilantro or arugula, asparagus or carrots, so we had many successes, too.

Flourishing flower beds.

Researching strategies for combatting pill bugs: Eliminate all decaying straw, wood, and compost. Well. Then we'd be back to native soil, so those strategies won't help. Spraying: Not part of our farming strategy. The one that would work: Transplanting older seedlings so they can outgrow the munch rate of the pillbug hordes. I'm thinking it will also help if we eliminate the winter covering of landscape fabric. That's a happy thought, since keeping the fabric in place was a huge pain last winter.

Transplanting older seedlings also eliminates the paperpot transplanter. That's actually okay, too, since that allows us to use straw again this winter to help further build our soil.

So. We learned a lot. We accomplished a lot. We conquered a lot. And if it hadn't been for Dora, it wouldn't have happened. Dora saved our spring and our farming year. Thank you, thank you, Dora. You are a jewel.

A jewel of a friend.

Tranquility.

Sowing Seeds to Build Our Farm

We were lucky enough to order our seeds in November, 2020. We had moved through the fearful covid year, with hope dawning in the new year. It was easy to think expansively.

I've grown plenty of veggies in my tenure as gardener, so those seeds were easy. And fun. I've not grown flowers, not many anyway, and only landscape flowers; never cut flowers.

Our main source of inspiration came from Floret Farm. They are only about 45 minutes from our farm, so what worked for them would surely grow on our farm as well. We downloaded their recommendations for the best cut flowers: Focals, spikes, disks, fillers, and airs. We ordered almost all of our seeds from Johnny's and some from Osborne. They all arrived promptly, and I promptly entered overwhelm.

So many seeds! So many varieties! So many colors, heights, support needs, germination times, dates-to-maturity times. I couldn't wrap my mind around it all.

Luckily, I'm a whiz with excel spreadsheets. I painstakingly entered all the relevant information about germination times, transplant-before-last-frost times, heights, and quantities. I let excel do all of the date calculations for me, and then I transferred the varieties onto another spreadsheet organized by weekly, calendar dates.

Everything fell into place. On the biggest sowing week at the end of February, I would have to sow 15 varieties. Other weeks would demand sowing of 5 or 6 varieties. With 7 days in a week, we would have to sow 2 varieties per day during that big week. Most weeks would need only 1 or 2 sowing days. This plan was completely feasible.

Every variety was new to me.

It was feasible in theory, and low and behold, it was also feasible in reality. Joyfully feasible. With our new greenhouse sheltering the growing expanse of seedling trays, my heart grew and expanded. As the seeds germinated, and the tiny seedlings lifted their faces to the warm sun filtering through the greenhouse panels, my heart quite simply exploded.

We opened the greenhouse doors every morning, helping the air stay cool under the spring sun. We closed it every night, helping the air stay still and safe under the spring moon. We watered the trays, seedlings dancing and jostling under the gentle spray. We pinched off stray weed seedlings. We started succession sowings of the seasonal powerhouses, both veggie and flower.

The window vents open and close automatically, according to air temperature.

Our plan was working. Our greenhouse was working. The sun was working. The seedlings were working. Our farm was beginning.

Our self portrait.

A Greenhouse to Withstand the Winds

Creating a small-scale farm in the Pacific Northwest requires creating a greenhouse. The cold of winter lingers. The chill of spring lingers. Then the warmth of summer hits full force, with long days and temperate nights, and then all too soon, the cool of fall descends, and another farming season coasts to an end.

A greenhouse lets us start seeds early, early, early. We can get seedlings going and keep them happy in the daytime warmth of a greenhouse for several weeks. Once we pass our last-frost date, these happy seedlings can go into the ground and turn their faces to the warming sun and burst into serious chlorophyll production.

Original greenhouse site, by the blue tarp.

We had originally planned to build our greenhouse down by the veggie beds. We wanted it to be a pretty greenhouse, so nestled amongst the veggie beds, we would see it whenever we glanced out our windows. And it would be right there! Short trip from greenhouse to planting beds. Made so much sense.

But our planting beds are bordered by mature trees. We realized that the greenhouse would be in the shade by 2:00 in the afternoon during the spring months, those all-important months when the fragile seedlings would need all the light and warmth the greenhouse could muster.

Improved greenhouse site; flat and sunny.

So we changed plans midstream. We relocated the greenhouse site up near our shop, where the ground was super level, and the trees were a considerable distance to the east and west. Our pretty greenhouse would greet friends and neighbors when they came to visit. We could still see it from our windows; we just had to peer a bit.

We have considerable winds on our island. Two or three times a year, storms can bring winds that howl across our property at 50-60 mph. We also get a little snow, so snow load could be a factor. We chose a model that was sturdy enough to withstand our winds and shaped to slough snow.

It was expensive, about $5,000. But I just happened to land an editing gig that would cover the cost. We took the plunge. We had to have a greenhouse if we wanted successful planting beds, and the universe gave us the means to procure the perfect one. We clapped our hands with glee.

We drove two hours to pick up our new greenhouse and they piled and stacked and wedged it into our 20-foot RV. It came in flat packages. It barely fit inside our RV. It had thousands of screws and hundreds of pieces, and they all had to go together just so.

The instruction booklet was sparse and vague. The instructional videos weren't very instructional. We're not builders, but we're pretty clever. We got it figured out, and we finally, finally got it built.

Gravel and crushed-stone pad

Help from our friends.

A ways to go.

The marketing information claimed that two people could build the greenhouse in two days. It took us all of January. ALL of January. We laid down gravel. We laid down crushed rock. We scrutinized, read, videoed, experimented, put together, took apart, climbed ladders, scooted on our knees. One of us came to tears several times. One of us stayed calm and cheerful. We persevered, and we finally, finally got it built.

Thousands of screws, with tension pulling in several directions.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

Our farm cooperative, gathering to ooohh and aaahh.

Busily growing seedlings.

Never, never have I ever, ever had such a wonderful venue for sowing seeds, peering at germination, watering seedlings, crooning, and grinning. The greenhouse made our farm possible. I am in joyful love with our pretty, enduring, nurturing greenhouse.

Ready to grow a farm.

Camano Winds

We felt great about our ten planting beds. We were way ahead of the game by building them in the fall and letting them steep until spring. We'd be weed-free, since all the beds were covered with sturdy landscape fabric. Rain could get in, but weed seeds would bounce along to another destination, and any stray seedlings would languish under the black fabric.

So neat. So tidy.

Time for a cup of tea and a comfy chair.

Ha!

Fall winds wound up, the warm-up act for winter winds. Almost every morning a glance out the windows showed us that the tea and comfy chair weren't quite within reach.

We tried everything. We placed large rocks along the edges of the landscape cloth. The wind snuck under the cloths between the rocks and shuddered the cloth from under the rocks. Ten beds at 45 feet each adds up to 900 feet of fabric edge. We moved so many rocks so many times it got the better of us.

We tried thick branches, left over from uplimbing the perimeter trees. Each branch could secure 10-15 feet of fabric edge, enormously reducing the number of rocks we had to move. The fabric escaped, flew in circles, and tangled itself around the limbs.

We added burlap bags under the rocks and limbs. The burlap would stay wet and heavy from the rain and weigh down the entire edge, reinforced by the weight of the rocks and limbs. We hunted down a lot of burlap amongst the trees edging our beds, relaid them, rerocked and relimbed them, and thought fleetingly of tea and comfy chairs.

The fabric would. not. stay. put.

We zigzaged lengths of twine across the beds, relaid the burlap, rerocked and relimbed the burlap. Nope. The cloth still shuddered and jittered as the Camano winds sped merrily overhead. The fabric snuck out from all of its assorted restraints and wrapped itself untidily around nearby bushes and trunks.

The trick that finally worked was bird netting. We straightened all the lengths of fabric . . . again. . . stretched bird netting from end to end, stapled the netting down and threaded the twine zigzaggedly, end to end, AND put a rock on top of each staple to keep it in place. We added the limbs, because, why not? Our sandy sand doesn't provide firm anchoring for landscape staples, so they needed help staying in the ground.

The wind could no longer quite get the fabric-dance going. It zipped along the beds, causing barely a ripple. We peered out windows each morning, let out our breaths, and grinned. The planting beds could finally start their winter steeping, and we could brush the cobwebs off the comfy chairs, the steam drifting from our steeping cups. The quiet season had begun.

The quiet season.

Burn Out

The Burnout Generation

I've been listening to an audiobook, The Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen. It's a short listen, less than 2 hours, and I found it engaging all the way through. Ms. Petersen is a culture writer, and in this piece, she interviews five millennials about the complications of their lives. They are at the beginning of their careers, intelligent, industrious, motivated, and burned out. Their stories gave me a glimpse into the world of a generation with whom I don't have a lot of personal connection. It's given me a lot to think about.

Time for reflection

Burn out sneaks up on you

The interviews reveal commonalities as each story unfolds. The millennials have been busily engaged in their lives, doing what they had been taught to do at school or by their families, what they were expected to do by their colleagues or cultural norms, along with strategies they had figured out on their own. And each story describes an underlying thread of despair and helplessness over how to change their situation.

Juggling more doesn't help

Those seem to be the elements that lead to burn out, and burn out sneaks up on you. You're busily doing the things that you've been told will bring you success, and you don't feel successful. You look around you and back at how your life has been going, and it dawns on you that you're burned out.

And maybe you don't figure it out yourself. Maybe you read an article about burn out that, amazingly, lists your symptoms, and you realize that you're not doing things wrong, you're simply burned out. Maybe a friend or colleague recognizes it and suggests you might be burned out. However the realization comes to you, when you hear about it, you recognized its truth, and reality shifts.

Cultural expectations are flawed

Working harder doesn't help

The most important aspect of burn out is that the problem is not a lack on the individual's part. No matter how hard someone works, or how many hours he or she works, it doesn't get better. The solution is not to work harder or work longer. The problem is that the cultural expectations are flawed. If there is no separation between work, social, and personal, our brains don't get to shift gear. We are always on. There is no break, no recharge, no balance.

Doing more doesn't help

Ms. Petersen doesn't offer solutions, which is just as well, because the solution is going to be different for each person. Her message is simply that burn out is real, it's not you who is flawed, it's the system, and recognizing that gives you the chance to find solutions.