Earth Day is just six weeks away. With any luck, the Noyo Food Forest will have lots of new brassicas, herbs, and flowers to sell at their Earth Day event. Today I tucked broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seeds into their new little beds and told them to grow like crazy in the next six weeks.
Here is the process I followed under director Susan Lightfoot's guidance. First, the potting soil had to be mixed according to the following recipe: 3 parts Just Coir (the shredded coconut husks I discussed in Week 4), 3 parts vermiculite, 1 part worm castings, and 1 part compost. I scooped out the four components in the proper amounts and dumped everything into a wheelbarrow where I thoroughly enjoyed digging my hands in and mixing it all up good. The starting trays are organized in groups of six starts. You can fit about eight of these in a flat. That gives about 48 new plants to sell. I prepared six flats, which is about 288 plants altogether.
After filling the trays with the potting soil mixture and tamping the dirt down to ferret out any air pockets, a slight depression is made in each "cup" being careful not to go too deep. It is important to read the back of each seed envelope for the planting depth, which is about 1/4" for the cabbage and broccoli I was planting. Then comes the tough part for my old eyes. These seeds are extremely small and my fingers are pretty big. But somehow I managed to lay three seeds into each small depression and then cover them over with the potting mixture. I labeled each tray with color-coded markers that described what had been planted. Over the next six weeks, these new seed starts will be carefully watered every day until somebody buys them and transfers the little babies to their new homes.
Susan was concerned about the amount of plastic that is involved in this process. I looked around online and saw a blog about how to make biodegradable seed starter pots out of old toilet paper rolls. You can either peel off the tubes when the starts are ready to plant and recycle the cardboard or let them decompose in the ground. http://suzannemcminn.com/blog/2008/02/20/how-to-make-biodegradable-seed-starter-pots/ It may not be practical to use this type of method in a large nursery or garden like the Noyo Food Forest, but they are looking into ways of reducing the amount of plastic they use.
Here is a slideshow of today's work in the greenhouse:
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/slideshow/562716571hbFsTb
This week's SL Journal Lead Questions were: Does your organization work with communities of faith? How? If not, in your opinion is there room for development in this area? Do they work with alternative faith, or do they attempt to promote new cultural myths? I sat down in the garden with Susan to talk about these questions. Here is a video of Susan in her signature pink boots, sitting amid the yellow volunteer wild crysanthemums, which by the way are edible:
Susan is very wise and I always enjoy listening to her talk with such enthusiasm about the Learning Garden and the projects of the Noyo Food Forest. It is a pleasure to hear her speak about optimism and activism in such a positive way, especially in light of the heavy-duty readings we have had for this class in the last couple of weeks. Somehow, listening to her, I get the sense that maybe things are not as bad as they seem. Perhaps there is such a thing as faith and hope and optimism, where people like Susan smile and make things grow. This life amid the death, darkness and despair of a damaged world renews my sense of wonder that anything at all can grow on this spinning chunk of water and rock that resides in an insignificant suburb of a nondescript galaxy.
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