My grow rack

Well we've got things going underway now. I bought a nice sturdy rack at Costco for under $70. It's got 5 shelves and is super heavy, made from powder-coated steel. THe assembly was actually pretty simple. I realized that I could theoretically fit 2 shop lights on each rack if I wanted to. I have 4 right now, I might double them up and see how it does.

Tommy picked me up 8 plastic flats and 5 space blankets. I'm going to wrap the space blankets around the rack, leaving a "curtain" at the front that I can open and close at will. This will reflect the light and also trap in the heat. We've situated it pretty close to the furnace and so I'm hoping that the trapped warmth will eliminate the need for any warming mats in order to germinate my tomatoes and especially peppers.

Other than that, I've got my seed order and my seed starting ingredients. And I got a nice pretty green wheelbarrow to mix it all in, though I might just end up using plastic bins in the basement since I think that would be easier. I bought a bunch of peat moss, some vermiculite, and a couple bags of organic compost. I also have my mycogrow mycelium inoculant, and some different inoculant from Gardens Alive. I'm also planning on separating out my earthworm castings from my worm bins and using all of that. I've got some bags of dry, shredded leaves in the garage that I'll mix in as well. I'm trying to find a source of a larger amount of vermiculite but I'll have to settle for the small bag I got at Lowe's. I'm hoping that when the nurseries open up in a few weeks that I'll be able to buy larger quantities of vermiculite. Or maybe when Big R opens their lawn & garden shop for the season... I'll have to call them and see when that will be.

Other than that, I need to keep folding my newspaper pots!

Growing for Market

I got my first Growing for Market magazine yesterday! It came with a cool book with lots of ideas of how to increase your income for market year-round. I haven't looked at it yet, carefully set it aside for tonight. Tommy (hopefully) will be going out tonight to see a friend and so that leaves me with my magazine and a hot cup of tea :)

I keep thinking that soon I'm going to actually start working on my business plan. I think I might want to keep track of everything I put into the garden, even though it's going to be mostly for home use, but that's where everything will come from. Even just a one or two page plan at this point I think will help me stay organized and focused. I have so many ideas and they are just all over the place, so it would be good to get them all down on paper and think up some sort of timeframe.

Phoenix Oyster Mushrooms

My mom and I decided to cultivate some edible mushrooms up on our property. The acreage has been selectively logged and so there are all these piles of wastewood all over. We'll try and use as much firewood as we can from them, but there is so much fallen dead wood that it would take forever. So I thought it would be fun to do mushrooms!

I just ordered some spawn for the Phoenix Oyster mushroom. The logs are mostly conifer types, and those do well on the softwoods. I ordered from Fungi.com and I also decided to get a couple ounces of their MycoGrow to mix in with my seed starting mix this year.

Here's the description from the website:

This member of the Tree Oyster family thrives on conifer stumps and logs, especially spruces and fir; after incubating the logs may be partially buried, vertically-oriented, to conserve water during fruiting. This species enjoys warm climates, producing large, white-beige mushrooms.

The cool thing about Oyster mushrooms is that they are very difficult to ship, therefore any locally produced mushrooms would fetch a premium price. We won't be selling any for a while, but it will be a good option for us when the time comes if we're able to grow them. We also might try Chicken Of The Woods. I'd love to grow shiitakes but they need oak trees and I have none.

more ordering and Wola cuteness

This morning I used the $25 off $25 GardensAlive coupon my mom got me. I got a floating row cover, long enough to cover 3 of my beds, some organic houseplant fertilizer (for my plants at work) and some soil inoculant. I'm sure my soil in the beds is fine, with all the compost, manure, leaves, etc, that's in there (and I plan on moving my worms into the garden beds when it warms up a bit also) but for the started plants I wanted to get some mycorrhizae into the starter mix. I hope this will work!

This morning when we were going out to the truck Wola was walking on the hard packed snow in the yard like she always does. When I came to get her she said "Careful, don't fall down and get owies!" She's so cute when she copies us... :)

Garden planning for 2009

So I've started to formulate my plan for what I am going to plant. I even have a little sketch on graph paper of what plants go in which place in my garden. I'm doing square foot gardening combined with intensive planting, companion planting and sheet composting. I have roughly 165 square feet to plant.

I am going to order all my seeds except potatoes from Baker Creek this year. Potatoes I'll probably get from Seed Saver's Exchange. I like Baker Creek a lot - they have a good selection but not too much that overwhelms me. Since I want to be a market gardener, I want to try out some varieties that I think will be good for markets. I was, though, having problems restraining myself... I had to pare down the order quite a bit. I'm sure every other gardener reading this will understand! But besides the selection, I like them because they are committed to not selling any genetically modified seed - it's all untreated, open pollinated and heirlooms. In addition, they even do GMO testing on all their seeds that are more subsceptible to GMO contamination. Corn is a big one - corn pollen can travel for miles on the wind... and unfortunately, if the corn you have been saving seed from for years becomes contaminated by GMO pollen from a farmer who is miles and miles away, you are all the sudden liable and could be sued by Monsanto for copyright infringement. I know it sounds nuts... but sadly enough it has happened and put more than one small farmer out of business.

So I decided that I'm just going to buy seeds this year and I'm going to build a grow rack for my basement to start all my long-season plants like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. Considering the fact that I'll only use one or two of each, and I'll end up with about 20-30 seeds, I'm going to plant ALL of them and sell the extras on craigslist. I do plan on selling plant starts as a part of my business plan in the long run anyway. I thought about buying a soil blocker but I think I'm just going to fold newspaper pots origami-style and sell them in those. They decompose in the soil and are free!

I'm not sure what I'm going to use for my soil mix - I know I'll use compost, worm castings, leaf mold, mycorrhizae inoculant, and then maybe soil-less starting mix and throw it all together. I'll build my rack out of some costco wire shelving and it should fit 8 flats for 1 shelf. So we'll see how that goes!

So far, here's my plant list:
Blue Lake Bush Beans
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
regular head broccoli
Amarillo Carrot (Yellow)
Cosmic Purple Carrot
Snow White Carrot
Shin Kuroda Carrot (orange baby type)
Richmond Green Apple Cucumber
Snow's Fancy Pickling Cucumber
Rocky Top Salad Mix
Million Dollar Melon (green fleshed)
Charentais Melon (orange fleshed)
Flat of Italy onion
Australian Brown onion
Crimson Forest Scallion (red)
Oregon Sugar Pod Peas
Purple Jalapeno
Quadrato bell pepper (yellow)
Mini Red Stuffer peppers
White Hailstone Radish
Early Globe Radish
Chinese Red Meat Radish
Purple Plum Radish
Bloomsdale Spinach
Jarrahdale Pumpkin (pie type)
Dad's Sunset tomato (orange)
Principe Borghese tomato (red paste type)
Siletz tomato (early red type)
Land Race Currant Tomato (tiny cherry type)
Tomatillo Verde
Genovese Basil
Oregano
Flatleaf Parsley
Parsley Root
Chives
Borage
Slow-bold Cilantro
Orange Hawaii Marigold
Empress of India Nasturtium
Blue Reflections Sweet Pea

Phew! That's a lot of seeds! That's the order I plan, I'll actually place it later and we'll see what I end up getting, since I'm sure some of these will be out of stock.