Commencement
Seed Starting Medium
Excerpted from Flying Tomato Farms
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For me, the growing season doesn’t start when the glossy catalogs start coming (before Christmas now instead of after the first of the year) or even when the seed packets full of promise arrive in the mail.
Sure, it’s exciting to leaf through and dream about what new tomatoes I’ll try, and to check back and forth between different companies’ offerings to get the right packet size and the best price for the vegetables and varieties I don’t save myself.
The real start of the season is when I mix that first batch of seed-starting medium—when I can plunge elbow-deep into a tubful of warm, peaty goodness and combine all the ingredients with my bare hands—even if I am wearing a ventilator mask at the same time, to avoid breathing peat and perlite dust into my lungs.
My glasses go foggy from the breath escaping around the edges of the protective gear, and the season begins.
In mid-February, I start the leeks, yellow storage onions, and parsley for my small CSA, farmers market sales, and for my own family living her in Southeastern South Dakota. They’re the first seeded crops of the season, and in the case of the leeks, the last to be harvested.
