This week, we started seeding some crops in preparation for spring. We began the week by seeding tomatoes at a local gardener, David Funk’s, house. He turned his garage into a germination and propagation room and sells seed starts at the co-op, as well as to local farms such as Prema. All of the tomatoes for Prema will be started at David’s. We will be grafting every tomato plant for the farm, so this first planting consisted of 700 root stock seeds and about 500 scion seeds of different varieties, including saucing, slicing, and cherry tomatoes. 

I was surprised to hear that we would be starting our seeds so early in the season. All of the tomatoes will be going into the heated greenhouses, so Zach told me that we are really only waiting until there is enough sunlight for the tomatoes to thrive. Once that comes later in the season, the conditions will be perfect for the tomatoes to go into the ground.

We also began seeding some other crops in the propagation house at Prema. Two of these crops, beets and salad mix, were seeded using the paper chain potting system. This was my first time getting to use the paper pot system after hearing about it for so long and, even though we were only seeding this time around, I have already learned a lot about how it works. I’ll be sure to include some pictures of the system as I work more with it.

As always, Friday was harvest day. For market this week, we had bok choy, salad mix bags, carrots, turnips, radishes, kale, green onions, and parsley.