Sowing Seeds With Nile

Fall City has a large community of avid vegetable gardeners.  Many of them gather on the 3rd Saturday of the month to swap information, share stories and educate each other on their successes and failures..... the group is called Trellis.  Here's a link to their Forum if you're interested in learning more about vegetable gardening and attending their monthly gatherings. 

I started attending their meetings at the beginning of this year in hopes of picking up pointers on the topic.  A guy named Nile Clarke is a regular attendee.  When I told the group I was interested in getting some seeding/starter/greenhouse experience he invited me to come to his farm to learn the fine art of seeding tomatoes.  Nile and his wife live at Salt Box Farm in Fall City.

When I arrived, the first thing Nile did was walk me through his 2011 Tomatoes Plan.   First lesson learned.... if you want to sow seeds, don't start creating your plan right before it's time to do the sowing..... that's too late.  You need to be thinking about this stuff way in advance - vegetable gardening isn't for procrastinators!   Planning includes deciding what varieties you want to grow, knowing how long each variety takes to mature (and therefore when you need to sow them)..... and then obtaining the seeds and all materials. 

Obtaining the seeds is often as simple as purchasing them from a reputable supplier.  Nile did some of that, but he also gathered some seeds on his own - targeting tomatoes he'd grown the previous year that were a hit, and purchasing some tomatoes he liked and harvesting those seeds. 

Nile had 16 varieties on his list and wanted to produce about 288 plants, which meant planting about 18 of each variety.  No, Nile and his wife don't swim in tomatoes each year, they generously give most of the plants away to various groups and individuals in the community.... what wonderful people they are!

288 plants, 72 segments per seed tray meant we had to prepare and sow 4 trays.

So, we started by filling each tray with good quality, well draining potting soil....

We tamped the soil down a smidge so as to make a little divot in each segment and then gave each tray a really good watering so the soil was evenly moist throughout.....

With that done, we carefully labelled each area of the tray with what we were going to plant and then did the fiddly task of putting a seed into each segment.... adding a few extras here and there for insurance purposes.  Dang, those tomato seeds are itty bitty..... this isn't something you do with gardening gloves on! 

We topped the trays off with a fine dusting of soil, and gently tamped each segment down again to create good seed to soil contact.....

After giving each tray a gentle mist-like watering we put covers on top and set them into the greenhouse on heating mats to germinate...... which should take about 3 weeks or so.  With the covers on it may not be necessary to do any additional watering while they germinate, but Nile will be checking on things just to be sure.....

Stay tuned for the next installment of my 2011 tomato journey.  I'm hoping to return to Salt Box Farm to help transfer the seedlings to bigger pots......