Lettuce Troubles
We started off sowing lettuce seed from last year and the year before, with fairly good luck, until our new seed arrived. Our new seed came from Fedco, a seed company we have never used before but that has a good reputation for quality organic and natural seed..
We now have 3 weeks of lettuce transplants started, about 2,000 plants with a less than 0.1% germination rate. Less than 20 plants germinated. Lettuce ought to be up in 3-4 days, some of this stuff has been planted for close to 4 weeks.
If it was one variety of lettuce, I could understand there might be a problem with the seed, but 5 varieties of lettuce? It makes no sense.
Maybe it was the potting soil mix… Although we are not certified organic, we bought 20 bags of certified organic potting soil this year as a base to our mix and added in worm castings at a rate of 10-20%. That should not be the problem.
Fellow market gardener and neighbor, Carl Wagner and landscape designer and CSA working share member CJ also ordered and planted Fedco lettuce seeds and they both say their transplants are doing great. So, it is a problem on my end.
I have learned a new word…thermodormancy
I have since learned that the lettuce seed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, our usual source of lettuce seed has been primed. That means it was either soaked in water or potassium phosphate and then dried to improve germination.
If you are locked in your bathroom, craving reading material, and have already read the back of your toothpaste tube and shampoo bottle, you may find this article on lettuce priming interesting.
CSI – Richfield
Here are my conclusions… Lettuce does not germinate well at all beyond 85 degrees. Our unheated double poly-covered green house heats up quick. Our fans are set to come on at 85 degrees and run most of the day even if it is 40 -50 degrees outside and the sun is out.
I don’t know how CJ germinates her seeds but I am guessing it is cooler and with less direct light. Carl starts his stuff in his basement with heat from a wood stove.
I assume Fedco sells un-primed lettuce seed. Nothing wrong with that, it is just something we did not consider.
We are aware that high temps. reduce lettuce germination and in late spring/ summer move lettuce flats to our basement to germinate. It has just never been an issue so early in the season.
New primed and pelleted seed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds arrived Wednesday afternoon.
Pelleted lettuce seed works great in the green house. Lettuce seed is small and basically flat. It is hard to drop one seed at a time into each cell of a seedling flat and you have to go back and thin the lettuce down to one plant per cell. Pelleted lettuce seed is lettuce seed that is coated with a clay covering which makes each lettuce seed about the size of a BB. Much easier to plant one seed per cell and the clay absorbs water which leads to usually excellent germination…. in the green house with plentiful moisture.
The one time I tried sowing pelleted lettuce directly, it was a total bust. We have also tried pelleted carrot seeds multiple times with very poor results. We finally switched back to raw carrot seed. Carrot seed is even smaller than lettuce seed and the theory behind pelleted carrot seed was that it would reduce thinning. Sound great because thinning carrots is tedious on your knees type of work. But we never got a good stand with pelleted carrot seed. That is not to say that pelleted carrot seed does not work, it just has not worked on our small farm in northern Stanly County.
Setting out Broccoli and Planting Potatoes
Tuesday, we were faced with a dilemma. It was dry enough to till the soil and transplant but the forecast for Tuesday night was 27 degrees. I had set cabbage and broccoli transplants outside on tables Monday evening to expose them to temps. in the 30’s. Ideally, you want to harden off plants over a 4-7 day period but the low’s for the past 2-3 days had been in the 50’s.
I decided that the broccoli and cabbage could stand temps. around 28 degrees and we loaded up the truck and hauled plants and fertilizer across the road. I considered covering the transplants with row covers, a thin spun-bound polyester material, but with steady winds around 15 mph and gusting up to 30 mph, we dis-carded that idea.
I laid off the beds with my cultivating tractor, 2 rows to a bed and we started slinging McGeary 5-3-4 fertilizer and Azomite into the furrows by hand… toting 5 gallon buckets.
Working CSA share member CJ showed up early to help us get started and another working share member, Pam was able to come in the afternoon.
We finished up around 3:30 pm setting out close to a 1,000 broccoli and cabbage transplants and switched gears. We moved to a field that consists of about an acre a 1/4 mile away I started renting last year from my aunt to start planting potatoes. More bucket-slinging of nutrients before planting. We got a few rows planted before dark. The rows are 460′ long.
We were using the McGeary 5-3-4 on the potatoes, used up all the Azomite will had on hand, and switched to greensand for a trace mineral source.
Joe came to help on Wednesday. We spent all day slinging fertilizer and planting potatoes. We had 695 lbs. of potatoes to plant, 200 lbs Bintje’s and 200 lbs of German Butterballs. Plus a 125 lbs of 4 varieties of fingerlings.
We still have about 60 lbs. left to plant but we got 3/4 of an acre of potatoes planted. That is a lot to do by hand.
Tractor-Mounted Fertilizer Distributor
Everyone involved in slinging fertilizer the past two days via 5 gallon buckets is all for this device. One example.
Rooti the Pig Ham
As many of you will recall, we raised a pig on pasture in 2007 named Rooti. Most of the meat went into our freezer but one ham was cured via Cassie and Natalie of the Grateful Growers. Cassie brought the cut-up, cured, and vacuum-packed Rooti ham to the market last Saturday.
We had 3/4 of it packaged as country ham and 1/4 as prosciutto. Plus ham hocks and ham bones.
This ham is amazing! It has been hanging for about a year in one of 4 facilities in the US that still air-cures hams in Virginia.
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