Category: Gardening Tips

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Potting Soil or Seed Starting Mix – What’s the Difference?

Before going to farm school, I didn’t know the difference between soil for germinating seeds, soil for filling raised beds, compost or the dirt in my backyard. The assorted soil products seemed to me an elaborate marketing scheme. How wrong I was! Turns out, if you start your seeds in optimal soil conditions they’re going to make happier, more productive plants down the road. We’ve learned that (and most farmy things) the hard way so you don’t have to.

Michigan State University Extension explains the difference between potting soil and seed-starting mix. “Soilless seed-starting mixes have a finer texture and are made from ingredients such as milled peat moss, perlite, coconut coir fiber and vermiculite. Although potting soils may be used to start seeds, they tend to have a more-coarse texture and may contain field soil, compost or composted manure along with vermiculite, peat moss or perlite. Some seed-starting or potting mixes may contain fertilizer as an additive. Some products contain enough fertilizer to provide seedlings with sufficient nutrients to last up to three months, while others may have no added nutrients.”

Ask your trusted local nursery for what they recommend for seed starting or try your hand at making your own germination blend using this recipe from OSU Extension: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/make-your-own-seed-starting-mix-winter-prep.

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How to Choose the Best Tomato Variety for your Goals and Growing Conditions

Now through mid-April is the ideal time to start those tomato seeds indoors. However, with literally thousands of varieties in the tomatoverse, choosing the ideal tomato for your garden can get beyond overwhelming. We’re here for you! Below you’ll find some basic tomato terms, traits and tips to help your search for Solanceous success.  Whatever your tomato growing goals, your efforts will be aided if you buy from a local seed company that either grows their own seed or sources from other regional growers. Many tomato varieties available on the internet and box stores require way more heat units than the Pacific Northwest provides.

Organic, Non-GMO Tomato Seed

When choosing which varieties to grow, a good first question to ask yourself is, “Do you prefer a tomato that only grows 2-4 ft tall and requires minimum trellising?”. If so, you want a determinate variety! Once determinates reach a specific size they stop growing and focus all their energy on fruit production. Fruits will ripen over a concentrated timeframe of 2-4 weeks. These are the best options for short seasons or for sites lacking full sun.

If trellising, plant height and sun availability aren’t issues for you, consider Indeterminate varieties, which grow continuously so long as they have sufficient light, water and nutrients. A trellis is necessary to keep these plants upright, as many will reach 8+ feet in a greenhouse. Pruning is also recommended to maintain airflow, reduce disease and direct the plants’ energy toward fruit production. All this added work pays off in much higher yield potential over a span of 2+ months.

Cherry Tomatoes

The next question to consider is, “What size fruits do you crave?”. Do you enjoy small fruits to add to salads or large fruits to cut onto BLTs? Our smallest class of tomatoes are the cherries (0.5-1oz), which are the sweetest and a pure delight to snack on fresh off the vine. Next are the plums/romas/saladettes (2-4oz), which have a variety of uses from salads to sauces. Then there are your ol’ big slicers (4oz+), which are the beloved heirlooms and a dream on sandwiches and on the grill.

Organic, Non-GMO Tomato Seed

Finally, flavor. What makes your taste buds happy dance? While this category is subjective, there are a few basic factors to consider. Yellow tomatoes are often less acidic and milder, while darker purple/brown hues offer a more earthy, complex flavor profile. Red tomatoes are considered in the middle with a good balance of acidity and sweetness. Pinks, oranges and greens have their own tangy, unique and sweet traits that vary wildly variety to variety.

It’s hard to go wrong with a homegrown tomato, but it’s fun to consider the sauce-abilities!!

Check out our blog on Tomato Tending for more tom tips! Our Tomato Variety Comparison Chart provides a nice visually summary of all Deep Harvest Seeds tomato variety traits.

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Featured Crop: Doe Hill Pepper

For the last few years, we’ve been in pursuit of a medium sweet pepper variety that 1) makes a lot of peppers 2) actually ripens a lot of peppers and 3) is crunchy and sweet. We trialed over a dozen varieties and found a diamond in the rough, a unicorn, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… Da da da dum! Meet… Doe Hill! She’s all that and a bag of chips. Doe Hill Pepper hails from 19th century Appalachia, but comes to us thanks to our pals at Uprising Seeds. She’s strong and mighty, and thus doesn’t need a lot of support while still pumping out the early fruits.

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Is My Soil Ready To Plant?

Consider these important factors before popping seeds into the soil:

1)    Soil temperature: Most seeds aren’t going to be thrilled if their future home is below 50 degrees. Who’s to blame ‘em? Brrrr. Get yourself a soil thermometer and find out if you’re in that temperature ballpark before direct sowing most things. The exceptions are poppies, larkspur, sweet peas and calendula which are more-cold hardy than their flower friends. Kale, radish and arugula are the cool guys of vegetable town.

2)    Soil Moisture: Take a handful of soil about 6″ deep and squeeze it. If it forms a wet, slippery ball and excess water oozes out, the soil is still too wet to work. If it forms a weak ball that breaks apart easily, you’re ready to go!

3)    Ground cover: If your soil still has cover crop, grass, weeds, or other active plant life growing it, hold up! Your precious seed babies can’t compete for light and nutrients with plants that have an unfair head start. There are also likely a bunch of little munchers (Slugs! Ahh!!) hiding out in that matter. Pull the material out or chop it up and allow time for it to decompose. Large chunks of dead plant debris will also bind up nitrogen in the soil. Bacteria will use it to grow, multiply and further break down the plant matter.

If you want to expedite warming and decomposition, you could try tarping, building raised beds or double digging. Tillage also helps speed things up by breaking down plant tissue and oxygenating the soil. However it comes with a host of drawbacks for soil heath, so use judiciously! We use a few silage tarps ourselves to keep the soil a little drier and warmed up for early spring crops. Once we’re out of March, we prefer to keep our plastic use to a minimum and let our sheep eat down cover crop, before doing some light bed prep with the ol’ tractor.

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Succession Planning for Garden Success

I’m sure I’m the last one on earth to notice, but I’m still pretty pumped to find “success” in the word succession. Obvious? Yep. Cheesy? Mm-hmm. But accurate? 100%! Especially if you want tender, tasty greens in your garden for the long haul.

You don’t need to focus on succession planting in your first year of gardening, but as you hone your skills its importance is evident of you don’t love bolted lettuce salads and hard-to-chomp chard come mid summertime. The nitty gritty of succession planting is that we need to plant some crops more than once in order to eat (and actually enjoy) them for prolonged harvest periods.

The chart below demonstrates how often we plant various greens to keep them at optimal flavor and texture for our customers. Most gardeners can get away with extending these timeframes if you keep them well fertilized, don’t pick your crops super hard or don’t mind them a bit spicy, bitter, or tough. Many tender, annual greens (arugula, mizuna, tatsoi), however,  can’t be extended even with  extra TLC, as biology compels them to bolt after a few weeks.

Dates underlined in bold indicate that we recommend starting plants indoors and transplanting them out in 2-3 weeks. Indoor seeding is ideal when cool soil temps inhibit outdoor germination. We also start all bunching/heading greens (kale, chard, collards, cabbage, radicchio, head lettuce) indoors no matter the season, as we like to space the transplants with precision in the bed to optimize yields and harvest efficiency.

Look out success. Here you come!

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February is the Time to Seed Your Alliums

Garden enthusiasts, start your engines. On your marks, get set…. SEEEEED. No really, we’re truly ok with you starting now, but ideally only alliums (and perennial herbs and flowers). February through mid-March is indeed the ideal window to start your onions, leeks, and scallions indoors. Yee haw! Here we go.

At Deep Harvest, allium seeding entails planting seeds in seed starter mix at 1/4-1/2 inch deep, about five seeds per inch in rows in open flats. We place the flats on heat mats set around 55F°, but remove them when germinated. Too long on the heat is seriously stressful for those tender babies. Once plants are about 6 inches tall, we give them a couple inch haircut (aww) and allow them to continue sizing up until outside soil temps hit 50F°. Then it’s out of the nest and into the great wide open to fend for themselves. Don’t worry, you’ve raised them right!  At this point, we trim the roots to ½-1 inch long so they don’t J-root in the soil when planted and we even give ‘em a little liquid fertilizer dunk. Plants are pushed in about one inch to cover their roots and plant bases and are spaced at about 5 inches in rows 12 inches apart.  That’s all there is (all-lium there is?) to it, folks!

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Add Intrigue to Your Garden this Year

I don’t know about you, but we’re feeling itchy to mix things up a bit over here in farmlandia. Stir the pot. Reinvent. Evolve. Give the farm plan a “glow up” (as the kids say). An extreme makeover! Or even just a little one. Something to get the blood pumping, the heart racing, the hips shaking. Yes, as usual, the metaphors are going on too long, but you know what I mean! We have ideas to get us enthused about farming a 16th year that we think you might like to apply to keep your gardening or farming fresh, too

For one, we’re planning more farm trials than ever. Instead of just growing one cool looking grape tomato, honeydew melon, or snapdragon, we’re going to grow a dozen or more (you could even just do two or three). We’ll then put on our metaphorical lab coats to discuss the attributes and flaws of each. This is a quick way to learn if you need to change how you’re growing a crop (improve the soil, increase spacing, etc.) or if there’s simply a more optimal variety for your conditions. Sometimes it’s not you, it’s the variety you chose. Isn’t that a relief?

Two, we’re going to grow some out of the box crops we’ve never grown before. Last year, we tended two giant pumpkins that quickly became precious members of our family and the hottest ticket on our farm tours. This year, we have our eyes on growing celtuce (aka stem lettuce), turmeric, and cucamelons- all for the first time. Uncommon things you could cultivate from our seeds include yellow watermelon, Chinese Pink cutting celery, quinoa (it’s shockingly happy in the PNW) or ground cherries (the kids in your life will thank you).

Three, we’re going to build some infrastructure to make our work more pleasurable. Exhibit one- a root washer. Yah… so… we should’ve done that 15 years ago, but still – it will be mighty welcome after washing tens of thousands of roots without one! Worm bins, cloches, arches, trellises, raised beds or new pathways, are all ways you could add to your growing capacity and gardening good vibes.

Whatever we all do, let’s make this growing thing enjoyable. Tending produce and flowers for ourselves and community is not only utilitarian, but is also an honor and the deepest of joys when we set ourselves up to make it so.

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Early January is Time to dream not to Plant!

Howdy-do, gardening friends! It’s time for our near-annual public service announcement about weather, microbes and patience. Let us explain. While it’s easy to celebrate the rare sun fleck breaking through our January perma-cloud, don’t let that excitement lead to rash seed sowing. This time of year in western Washington our soil temps hover in the low 40s, too cold for even the hardiest seeds to thrive. Those that do manage to sprout encounter rain, frost, slugs, fungal disease and, most importantly, an absence of sunlight which threaten seedlings’ chance of survival.

We used to start our CSA in early May and pride ourselves on being early to farmers markets with carrots, broccoli and zucchini. But over the years we learned battling cold temps and early spring pests led to too much crop loss, burn-out, wasted seed, and damaged soil to justify the marginal early season gains in profit. Here on Whidbey Island, we now don’t direct sow much of anything outdoors until early April or March if it’s in a greenhouse.

So, what does this mean for you and your grand gardening goals? January is best for dreaming and scheming.  Perhaps build a new compost or worm bin, take a soil test, or level up your succession planting plan with some spreadsheets.  Research all the wonderful varieties offered by your regional seed companies and plan a mini variety trial.

Okay, so if January is off-limits for planting what about the rest of winter? February is perfect for starting onions and leeks indoors. March is ideal for starting tomatoes, peppers and eggplants indoors as well as hardy brassicas. If you have a greenhouse, you could begin direct seeding some greens and root crops. If these crops succumb to our NW winter blues, don’t fret, just try again in April! Our comprehensive NW planting calendar can be found here.

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Planning a Fall Garden

We’ve been planting, watering and weeding all your future fall crops for the past several months, and we’re excited to finally serve them up! Planning for a fall garden is very different than a spring or summer garden. Since the temps and light levels are so low, you can’t squeeze in multiple successions in the fall, only getting one shot at each crop.

From years of trial and error we’ve honed our fall planting dates to best guarantee that our crops are mature around Oct 1, just in time for your first share. Onions, leeks and shallots get seeded in Feb, winter squash and potatoes in May; brussels, parsnips and cabbage in June; broccoli, cauliflower, kale, carrots, beets and chicories in July; spinach, bok choi, radishes, turnips and mache in Aug; and finally quick greens like arugula, tatsoi or mustards in Sept.

Things always mature a bit ahead of or behind schedule, depending on the how warm the summer is. Broccoli and cauliflower are the trickiest to time correctly, as they head up quickly and then become very susceptible to damage from frost, rain, rodents and disease. The majority of fall crops, however, are adapted to hold well in the field through relatively long periods of inclement weather, giving us several weeks of harvest flexibility.

Storage crops like garlic, onions and winter squash, are harvested in Sept, allowed to cure for several weeks and then stored in our temperature-controlled barn room until it’s their CSA week. Many items like carrots, beets, cabbage and brussels CAN be washed and stored in a cooler for many weeks (safe from freezing weather and voles), but we don’t have enough space in the walk-in to do so.

Check out our Fall Planting Calendar!

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What’s Wrong with these Tomatoes? (And other farming guesswork.)

Endless Questions:

Farming is a lot of guesswork. Even though Nathaniel and I were both Biology majors in college and fancy ourselves logical people based in facts, we find ourselves following our guts in this farming field more than we’d prefer.

When we got back from our trip to North Dakota the majority of our heirloom tomatoes were squishy on the bottom and oddly translucent on the tops— aka terribly unmarketable. What in the world? We had to get to the bottom of this conundrum as our tomatoes are by far our most valuable crop each season. Was it heat, uneven watering, some combination of blossom end-rot and sunburn, a lack of a particular nutrient, a disease or something else? Wouldn’t we like to know!

A few weeks prior, we’d sent a leaf tissue sample of our tomato leaves into a university lab to see how the fertility levels were in our tunnels. Even with these reports in hand, we still couldn’t ascertain with certainty what caused our tomato terribleness. Based on articles and our experience we’re going with “heat stress” but still added some extra water, additional pruning, balanced fertilizer and put up the sides of the tunnels for airflow- just to cover our bases. Luckily, the plants responded well to something or another, but we’ll never know for sure what it was or what helped.

Every Fall, we submit soil tests for each of our fields (at least 6 tests for a price tag of $400) in hopes of applying an appropriate level of fertility for our mixed vegetable fields. Every Summer, we submit a handful of leaf tissue samples ($60 a pop) when things aren’t looking quite right. Even with this hard data, we have to lean on our experience, time intensive research, and ultimately our best guesswork to decide what the precious crops are going through and how best to respond.