25/02/2025
Week 8// What are we up to during the middle of February? Well aside from contemplating how to not rely on social media for small business promo, I have started sowing seeds. This is one of my favourite parts of the entire growing season, filling each tray with little granules of hope for fields full of colour from late Spring to Fall. Something tells me that I’m really going to need that colour therapy this year… It’s been disorienting seeing some of the US flower farmers that I look up to having their funding frozen on sustainability projects that they have paid out of pocket for…
When it comes to seeding, our approach is succession sowing while keeping our specific growing area in mind. For example, looking at previous years’ data on how seedlings did with weather fluctuations. Our first round includes sweet peas, snapdragons, saponaria, dianthus, strawflower and poppies. I also like sowing perennials around this time of the year like lupins, delphiniums and echinacea. I love stock, but I find that they get too leggy if I start them in our warm room too early, so I like to wait until it’s safe for me to plant them out for more resilient plants. I’m still deciding whether they get hoophouse space this year. At our growing sites, the last frost ranges from April 16-May 5. I have learned the hard way that even if seedlings are tucked away in our hoophouse, if it goes to 0-1C, then seedlings tend to suffer. I have used remay to protect them before, but this product disintegrates over time, and I no longer want to bring it on site.
With that being said, I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks while seeding, so if you have read anything inspiring lately, especially about building local/national circular economies, please send resources my way 😊
