The Second Seed Starting - March 15, 2020 @goldenoakfarm

Walla Walla Sweet onions and Phacelia seeds, with the markers for the pots/trays

Sunday morning as I was prepping for seed starting with my intern, I noticed what seemed like a discrepancy. I remembered that we had very limited room for onions in the Big garden and that we’d started something like 336 storage onions 2 weeks ago. My chart called for 550 Wallas…..hmmmmm…..

So I hauled out the Big garden plan and sure enough, there was room for 375 onions total…..hmmmmmm….seems someone with brainfog had been filling out the charts….

Well the storage onions were already started, supposed to be 150, actual was something under 336 as many did not germinate well this year. It was new seed too.

So I fixed the chart to reflect 225 of the Wallas and that changed it from 14 trays to 7. Much shorter morning of seed starting than I’d expected. There was also going to be 9 small pots of Phacelia.

I’ve used McEnroe Organic growing mix for several years now and have never had a problem with damping off.

I got the kitchen set up and was ready when my intern arrived.

All but 1 tray of the storage onions had come up and we’d moved most of them down to the south window with the T12 lights. I’d thinned and transplanted many of them, filling in empty holes in the pots. Each pot has 3 plants.

Three of the Walla trays and the remaining storage onion tray

The other 3 Walla trays on a heat mat. I was able to start them all on heat mats, with the reduced number of trays.

There was 1 tray in the East kitchen window, the one with Phacelia in it. Phacelia likes cool temperatures to start. There’s also 18 Wallas in that tray and they may not germinate as well, liking it warmer.

We sat down for a cup of tea and we checked the charts against the plan, to see if there were any other major messes to fix, but it was only the onions that had gotten put down wrong. So we cleaned up and went walking around the yard to see what was up.