Making plans and starting seeds: The season of hope

by Helen Chandler, Farmer at Lake Divide Farm

This time of year doesn’t exactly scream spring. When I step outside into single-digit temperatures, I can feel the cold in my nostrils. The pale purples and blues of the evening sky say ice. Despite all this, the call of spring on the farm rings loud.

All of the seed starting, field preparation, transplanting, and harvesting that we will do through this season starts now. In January we order our seeds. This year we will grow 12 acres of vegetables. To us this means around 1.5 million plants, and all these plants have different needs. Some, like tomatoes require more space and are planted 2 feet apart in rows 5.5 feet apart. Others like our salad mix are planted 16 seeds per foot in rows 12 inches apart. Some of the plants, like garlic, stay in the ground eight months and need a thick blanket of mulch to curb the weeds. Others, like red radishes are harbingers of spring and in the ground less than a month before we pluck them from the soil and toss them into a salad.

We have created a hefty excel spreadsheet to coordinate the details that go into raising all these plants. In mid-February, we test the steel of our plants, starting our first seeds in the greenhouse. Early tomatoes, to be planted in our hoop house in April, and onions to be planted in the field in early May, along with a handful of others, will be first to touch the soil in 2020. When we are wildly busy in July doing everything at once, the plans that we make now, in the peace of a cozy evening, are what will keep the farm running smoothly. We hope.