. on Nostr: Farm Talk 🫛 Every climate is different, every place has different soils, every ...

Farm Talk 🫛

Every climate is different, every place has different soils, every place has different cultures and different markets.

You have to do what works in your exact spot. The correct answer to almost every garden question is "it depends."

So first find out what zone you are in. That will inform you of your average last frost date. After that date you can be fairly certain that most transplants or seeds won't be killed by below freezing temperatures.

Most plants have an average number of "days" to maturity which is not a very good number ( more on that later ). Count the number of days from the last average frost to the first average frost. Your seeds need to be able to be finished growing to the maturity you want under that number of days.

Have a 120 day frost free environment? Well that 150 day pepper might not be for your garden... unless you start them the number of days you need to make up for inside and transplant them out after the last frost date.

This is where nursery pots, grow lights and various greenhouses come into play.

Now lets talk about rotations. Some crops are a long season that produce once and done. Others can be planted twice a year and others can be planted weekly for fresh harvests. Most people grow single crop of tomatoes for example, potatoes and carrots a few times and salad greens weekly.

For most people gardening small weekly or bi weekly plantings is a great strategy so that you have small volumes of produce fresh to pick every week rather than huge hauls of produce that need to all be cleaned and stored and hopefully not spoiled by the time you want to eat it.

Same goes for commercial gardens/small farm. Plan your plantings based on weekly demand not on gross weight. No one wants giant old produce from a cooler. They want adorable delicious produce picked today.

Around Christmas I have all my chefs fill out forms for how much of my product they see needing each week throughout the year. I confirm around now and then evaluate coming into July for fall crops. This allows me to create a farm plan for meeting the known weekly demand. I add my farmers market sales numbers into the equation plus a little for loss and I have a plan for every square foot of soil before I plant a single seed.