We are trying a new garden strategy this year. We are going for staggered plantings of a lot of our favorites, particularly the brassicas.
We have had great success with growing them, thus far, but not great success with harvesting and using them on time. When you have 12 heads of cabbage all coming ripe in the same week, usually at a time when we are too busy to do anything with them.
We are always too busy to do anything. What are we thinking?
I digress. So this year, we are trying to be more intentional about timing the garden. Peas and Beas we are going to try to time for mass crops as usual, hoping to freeze/can them in a few big days in July and August. However, the brassicas we are going to try to stagger, going for a few heads of cabbage or stalks of brussels sprouts per week through most of the summer and fall.
We also got our seeds from a new place this year, St. Clare Seeds, a small, Catholic, family-owned seed business. Uncle Adam got his seeds from them last year and was pleased with the results, so we decided to try them out this year as well.
We potted our first seeds during school time. Evie and Ellie were busy with their school, so Seppi and Winnie did most of the heavy lifting.
Seppi lost interest pretty quickly, but Winnie was fascinated through the whole process.
She even got to help plant the Pak choi seeds.
Let’s just say, there was some significant variation in sprouting densities in the pak choi pots.
We have the planter that Seppi and Daddy built last year set up on the “sewing” table in the kitchen. It’s not ideal, but it will do for now.
Seppi loves watering the plants. One week later we have really good sprouting rate, >90%.
If you have never seen St. Clare Seeds, I encourage you to check them out. So far we are pleased with the results, in terms of reasonable pricing, rapid order fulfillment and timely delivery, as well as sprouting rates.
This coming week we have more pak choi and the redarling brussels sprouts to plant. Stay tuned!
Little Farm in the Big City 