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  • From: Shawnee Flowerfarmer <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] transplanting carrots
  • Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 11:35:50 -0600

Beth-would you explain the "cornstarch gel" method that you mention below?  I haven't heard about this.
I have been most successful germinating carrot seed by sowing them along side drip tape in a shallow trench.
Shawnee, zone 5


From: lists AT rhomestead.com
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 11:20:14 -0500
Subject: [Market-farming] transplanting carrots

I know folks transplant beets. I wonder if anyone has had success transplanting carrots. I have seeded them in the hoophouse in February with June harvest. They were great, and the CSA loved having carrots early. So, I wonder about getting earlier harvests outside too?

 

I tried presprouting and suspending in a cornstarch gel to get an earlier start. Could see it had potential, but I still had trouble spacing them out enough, and it would take quite a few ziplocks of them to seed enough for a 100 share CSA harvest. I did learn you have to cover the cornstarch and seed well or the cornstarch will dry out and encrust the seed. But that would get them germinated earlier.

 

Beth Spaugh

Rehoboth Homestead, Peru, NY

Farm Fresh Food Club CSA - http://rhomestead.com

Garden fresh vegetables, organically grown, and pastured chicken, duck, and geese

 

"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." - Wendell Berry

 

"Without power over our food, any notion of democracy is empty." - Frances Moore Lappe


From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Marcy
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:20 PM
To: 'Market Farming'
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pinpoint seeder

 

Beth and Allan, I appreciate your feedback.

I have custody of a neighbor’s old Planet Jr.   He doesn’t use it but doesn’t want to sell it  J

Maybe I’ll work with it more on small seeds. I’ve had a tough time with it but I’m not very patient with things like that and after reading the whole process to change seed size I don’t think I’d do any better with the pinpoint.  And my hoophouse soil is FAR from perfect!  Especially after I had my neighbor take his skid-steer tiller through it last spring to work in the wheat grass cover – way too deep and we lost all the nice soil we’d been working on.

I’ll be more cognizant of what seed I’m planting (last year’s lettuce vs this year’s seed makes a huge difference in germination).  Maybe do more transplants for nice head spacing too. I was thinking about carrots, beets, chard, radish, all my herbs, but once we get the soil better the spacing will do better too. I like your suggestion about rolling the soil Allan and we’ll try a barrel.  Got rid of an old sod roller that must have weighed 300#. We could hardly move the thing. No clue what they did with it.  

Since I’ve got boys that love to use their knives I think we’ll stick with that for harvesting – this year anyway.

THANKS again!  I’m glad I checked as I’m sure I’d end up with both technical and personality issues!

Marcy

 

From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Beth Spaugh
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 11:01 AM
To: 'Market Farming'
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pinpoint seeder

 

I don’t like mine. Johnny’s offered for me to send it back for them to work on but I haven’t rounded up a large enough sturdy box yet. Apparently they have made some adjustments since I got mine 3 years ago. I was going to take it to the NOFA conference for them to take back, but ended up not going, so…

 

The technical issues – 1) the soil tends to build up behind the roller and the seeds don’t come out. It may work well in a perfect soil at a perfect moisture level. I have sandy soil in my hoophouse and it doesn’t not work well unless quite wet.

2) The belts pop off and aren’t real noticeable, so you don’t realize you are not sowing seeds.



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