Seed Starting at Redfearn Farm CSA in Independence!

The first of many seeds for the 2014 Redfearn Farm CSA have been planted!  It’s exciting to finally be underway.  Once these plants germinate, I’ll start to feel a hint of spring even if there’s still snow on the ground.  We spent the afternoon planting leek, tomato and pepper seeds.

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This is a tiny portion of what we’ll be planting for later transplant.  Come spring, we’ll be transplanting out to the beds around 2,000 leeks that Redfearn Farm CSA customers will begin to enjoy this summer.  We’ve got two varieties of leeks this year, an early variety called King Richard and a later variety called Lancelot so hopefully CSA members will enjoy a longer harvest period for these wonderful vegetables.

For tomatoes and peppers we’ve got more than ten varieties to plant of each, but today we planted only the varieties that will be planted out in our new high tunnel for extra-early peppers and tomatoes.  Redfearn Farm CSA customers should expect tomatoes and peppers at least 4 weeks earlier this year despite our cold Kansas City winter.  Those first Tomatoes will be Orange Blossom, Charger, Mountain Fresh Plus.  The bell peppers that we plan to plant in the high tunnel are Red Knight X3R, Ace, Sweet Sunrise.Since the greenhouse aka high tunnel isn’t complete yet, we don’t have a warm outdoor location to do the planting.  Never fear, Sheri let me use the kitchen counter.

Here I am planting Leek Seeds.  2,329…2,330…2,331….

That was pretty tedious.

Wish we had that greenhouse finished.  What a mess!

We hope to get the greenhouse finished within the next month, but until then we’ll utilize the seed germination station I built a couple years ago.  It consists of a cabinet with movable shelves and 12 fluorescent shop lights.   Here are some of the flats sitting on their heating lamp and covered to hold in the moisture while they germinate.    We should see some progress in a week or two.

Here they are after a couple weeks under the lamps.