Seeding fall crops in the greenhouse has begun

A couple of weeks ago the last of the spring crops were being harvested and then mowed down.

Now we already are seeding those same crops for the fall in the greenhouse. It may seem early and it sort of is, but the fall crops have to be planted in the field sooner so that they can grow more while the days slowly get shorter and colder.

It takes a little bit of extra care to keep the first fall crops watered while they are growing in the greenhouse and when they first get planted since it is warmer than they want it but it is worth it to have them early.

This week was a big week of seeding our first plantings of many of the fall crops. Lettuce, kale, chard, collards, broccoli, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and parsley were seeded on Monday and a few of them already have started to germinate.

The bunching greens, broccolini and parsley we will do one more planting of this fall while we will plant lettuce every week for the next 11 weeks.

The fall crops that we direct seed will wait until late August before we seed them in the ground.

Up until now we’ve been doing all the seeding in the greenhouse by hand which can take a lot of time and is especially tedious when we are seeding 20 trays of the same variety of onions in one day.

Last month we bought a vacuum seeder to help speed up that seeding process and make it more precise having only one seed in each cell. Or we can multi-sow the same amount in every cell like we do for parsley.

Of course with every new piece of equipment there are some hiccups and a little bit of a learning curve. We thought we got a seed plate that would work with the pelleted lettuce seed but we didn’t and only realized when we tried to make it work.

Fortunately we were able to give the company a call and they knew exactly which plate we needed so we ordered it. Hopefully it will be here for next Monday when we seed the next round of lettuce but if not we’ll be seeding lettuce every week for a while.

A couple of weeks ago there were lots of bell peppers at a good size that were green and waiting to ripen. Thanks to the heatwave they have started to ripen and turning color from green to red.

The shade we put over the peppers seems to be helping reduce the amount of sunburn there is. After we get through most of the season we will be able to tell if it was worth it to use the shade over the peppers.