Seed Planning
This is the seventh attempt we’ve had to figure out how to grow a great variety of crops well distributed and varied across the entire 20-week CSA season. In the early years, we didn’t do great. Practice makes perfect but planning and spreadsheets has really helped the most. We look at the days to maturity of every crop, count backwards from the week we would like that crop to be mature, take into account the weather we usually get that time of year and we have a plan for exactly when to plant each crop to get our farm members a great variety over the entire season.
Butternut Squash
Green Cabbage
Arugula
Chioggia Beets
Russett Potatoes
Romaine Lettuce
Cherry Tomatoes
Broccoli Heads
Garlic Bulb
Onions
Muskmelon (larges)
Last week, you received two items that were first seen in your earliest spring shares, red radishes and beautiful broccoli heads. Did you know that this planting was our third round of broccoli? This crop only takes about 45 to 60 days to mature, so this succession was planted back in mid-July. This week, we are giving lettuce in the shares. This crop requires even more planning. These heads are coming from our seventh succession. Each lettuce variety has a little variance in the days to maturity to help spread out harvest times which helps smooth out the transition between plantings.
As the weather cools and the sun shows less, we end up indoors working on season planning and seed research. Since the pandemic started and more people are growing their own food, seeds can be in short supply. We are now making most of our seed purchases in November before the seeds are even available just to make sure that we can get our name on what we need. We are also holding more seeds over from season to season and trying to stay a full season ahead. More and more with weather extremes causing failure in some seed crops, we will find that a specific variety of something is not going to be available for the year. This happened last year with organic white salad turnip seeds. Thankfully, small seed companies are starting to pop up and produce their own products. Planting seed crops in different locations to protect against total failure is the first step in seed security. Succession planning for a CSA program is important too, but without the seed growers we would all be very hungry.
Pulling out the ‘22 calendar,
