Building a Foundation
Fine tuning the nursery brushes off the grime of Winter.
As the growing season kicks off so does the plant nursery. Brushing the dust off the past year I sought to improve our growing nursery space. Since 2019 we have used cinder blocks and old pallets to build decks for young spring plants to mature on. While they work, you can imagine the are heavy to build, especially on our hand scale.
After watching a few videos, I decided to invest in a new system. Heading down to the local Tractor Supply I loaded brand new cattle panels each 15’ long. I thought this would be a great addition to the nursery as we could build the decks out much faster with much less effort.
Returning to the farm I placed the first decks. They came out more flexible than I would like but seemed to hold the plant trays. As more plants were loaded the panels began to bend and bow, making what usually looks like a flat sea turn to a flurry of waves. The plant trays stuck up at differing angles without any consistency. Adding insult to injury the bottoms of the cell trays wedged into the panels making moving trays a nightmare. I found myself threading my boot through the gaps in the metal to reach the back row. Ankle twist anyone?
February can be a rocky month. I liken it to a cross fit class where you have to get under and flip over a tire. If the tire was the year, getting it the first couple inches off the ground is February. The farm is at its heaviest and trying to get ahold of it between subzero temperatures, wind, and the occasional sunny day is a struggle. Materials have moved around, spaces need to be cleaned, and systems reestablished.
February is darkness and market farmers strive to bring the light of spring to the long nights of winter. Breathing life into winter is a challenge not for the faint of heart. This process requires faith and perseverance to overcome winter oppressive hold. In defiance of seasonal constraints, and knowing the promise of warmer spring days approaches, we tricks plants to grow under LED lights, in heated houses, or other means. While our specialty is seasonal produce, growing products on the edges of the season can be lucrative. Thus, we grow outside natural timing, starting seeds when the rest of the farm lays dormant and dark.
Having committed hundreds of hard-earned dollars to these decks I was confronted with a dilemma. Accept the inconsistency or back track and make it right?
As February turned to March I left town for a weekend. Upon returning the answer became clear. We are growing a lot of flowers this year and some of the baby plants are so small you need a magnifying glass to see them, even after nearly a month of growth. I noticed some of these plants had been covered by soil washed down from higher parts of the tray, brushing the dirt off revealed the buried baby plants. Unacceptable.
Nursery work requires extreme consistency. Differences in moisture across a tray can cause algae and drying issues. When you are working with flats each containing hundreds of plants each cell lost represents significant revenue down the line. It is a whole farm’s worth of income crammed into a 900 square foot space. The nursery is the engine of the farm, and any inconsistency is like a piston firing off rhythm. The engine must run smooth.
We started by building a pallet deck our standard way, bumping a cattle panel's worth of transplants over, and removing the panel. By the end of the morning, we had replaced the panels with pallets, only moving the trays once. Trays now sit flat on the decks, slide off when we need to move them, and are higher up given the depth of the pallets. What started out rocky, now provides a strong foundation to build the rest of the season from. The feeling of satisfaction came over like a wave, and as February turned to March, I remembered, we are really good at what we do.
Now that the seasons are turning towards spring there is hope in the air, light where there was dark. Plants are growing and soil is beckoning to be worked. With a plan in hand, it is the time to execute, trusting the experience of years past. Knowing that while challenges will come up, none are too big to overcome.
Thank you for a good piece about the details of attaining success. It's always great to dial it in the way you visualize it on the first shot. But there is more to success than dumb luck. Some folks call it Trial and Error. I like to call it Trial and Swear!
I m looking forward to following the seedlings progress.