We continued with the seeding that started last week on the farm. This week, we seeded bok choy, scallions, salanova and salad mix, and beets. All of these were seeded using the paper chain potting system. For seeding with the paper pot system, you begin by choosing the spacing that will exist between the plants once they are transplanted into the field. At Prema, we use 2 inch, 4 inch, and 6 inch spacing. Each option has a different chain, which come compacted. When you’re ready to seed, you open up a compacted chain and put it onto a metal mold that will hold the chain in place. You place the mold and chain onto a seed flat and fill it with soil.

Then, a plastic dibbler is used to poke a hole into every cell in the chain (there is a different dibbler for each size chain). Another tool called the drop seeder allows you to automatically fill every cell at once without having to do it by hand.

When the seeds are in, we water down the flats and remove the metal mold holding the chain in place. Then, we put the seed flats into the germination chamber. At Prema, we do not cover the seeds with soil after they have been put into the cells. Zach had found that there was no difference in germination success when he compared covering the seeds with soil versus leaving them without soil on top. This saves us time and soil in the long run.

Once 50% of the seeds on a tray have germinated, we take them out of the germination chamber and place them on a table in the heated propagation house. That way, we can always have space for more trays in the chamber and prevent the germinated trays from getting too leggy because they do not have light in the chamber.

We had a more bountiful market this week, with more greens than last week. Now that there is more daylight every day, we are noticing that things are starting to grow faster and that we can harvest each week from the same beds instead of having to wait several weeks for the slow growing to catch up. This week, in addition to the crops we brought to market last week, we had curly kale, arugula, and even more salad bags.