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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] A Riddle ...

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Matt Cheselka <cheselka AT freestateproject.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] A Riddle ...
  • Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:37:46 -0600 (CST)

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Pat Meadows wrote:

> That's why people generally grow them in small containers
> set in plastic flats - flat trays - so they will have good
> air circulation. I wouldn't grow my seedlings in something
> 8" deep.

I'm not growing my seedlings in 8" deep soil. The containers they're in
are about 8" deep. The containers are sweater boxes. I'm growing the
seeds in 1.5" x 1.5" x 2" peat pots with 'Supersoil'. I've had *very*
good success with this over the years, but I've never tried to grow any on
this scale before, so I've never had this problem. The seeds I planted on
early March, with the same sweater boxes, same peat pots, same
'Supersoil' are doing really really great. It's just the ones I planted
in Dec/Jan/Feb that are having the trouble I described.

> Matt, if I may very, very gently and politely suggest
> something to you: you can avoid a lot of costly and
> annoying mistakes if you read a couple of good books on
> gardening. It can save you an awful lot of wheel-spinning.

I have 28 books on gardening and small-scale farming that I've read at
least 10 times each over a timespan of about 15 years. I've grown pretty
much everyting I'm growing now with the only difference being that I'm
doing in a "production mode" and not a one-time-a-season thing.

Plants *want* to grow. If they don't grow, it's something else that's
holding them back. In this case, it's still a mystery to me why these
particular ones are having trouble. In order to not have a repeat of
this, I need to understand what I'm doing to mess up their desire to grow.

Lastly, at this point I'm not in a "do or die" situation. I've got an
outside job that's paying all the bills. Of course I'm not happy when I
don't have veggies a-growin' and when they don't grow I'm not getting any
closer to going into this full-time. My customers won't be happy either.
But I'm not a supermarket and "shit happens". The kinds of customers I
want to have will understand this. All I can do is learn from my
mistakes, swear a coupla times, and carry on.

Any more ideas about what might be going wrong with my babies would be
greatly appreciated.

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce





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