Preparing for Spring Transplants

Seed flats in the greenhouse in early spring. See the large lettuces growing in the beds, between flats of seedlings balanced on the bed walls.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Preparing for Spring Transplants

We have winter to enjoy/experience/endure before we start spring seedlings, but there are some steps you can take to make spring start-up easier and more successful. Of course, there is the usual list of tidying your workspace, preparing to order seeds and repairing tools.

Replacement tool handles

House Handle Company Telephone: (800) 260-6455 has a wide selection of good quality wood handles online. They specialize in hickory, white oak and ash. Be careful making your selection, and get the handle that’s just right for the tool you are repairing. You can see a lot of their handles in our photos. During the winter we usually have a “Santa’s workshop” day when we repair tools.

There are YouTube videos showing how to make sturdy repairs. Just be sure to shape the handle for a good fit before drilling any holes for rivets. And learn how to make rivets from large nails if none are supplied with your replacement handle. Sharp edges on poking-out badly finished rivets, or nuts and bolts can cause injuries. Sweat we might need. Blood and tears we can do without.

Screening a large pile of compost for the greenhouse beds. Photo Wren Vile

Seed Compost

Today I’m thinking about seed and potting compost.

We use 100% home-made compost for sowing seeds, and for potting-up transplants. We don’t mix in any other ingredients. Our seed compost is our regular good-quality compost, screened to remove large particles, and matured over the winter into a very mellow combination of nutrients and micro-organisms. We make great compost and it grows big strong plants.

We screen a big pile of compost in September, and fill the cinder-block beds in our solar-heated greenhouse. See this post: Screening compost to make our own seed compost for spring. If you are making your own screens, you can use hardware cloth (rat-wire), or do as reader Jim Poole suggested and try stucco lathing instead. “It is quite a bit sturdier. (But watch out for the cut ends when installing it- it can give you a nasty gash.)”

We need a lot of compost, but the idea works fine on a smaller scale too. Find an indoor place near where you will use the compost in the spring, and some tubs to put the screened compost into. If you want the full tub to be on a bench in spring, put the empty one on the bench and screen into it! If you want to grow lettuces in the compost, put the tubs near a window.

Just storing the compost inside over the winter will mean you are not dealing with frozen stuff when you want to sow. But better yet, see Starting Seedlings and Preparing for spring, sowing seeds, for more about how we grow lettuces in the stored compost over the winter in our greenhouse, then use that compost in spring for seedlings.

Greenhouse beds filled with screened compost.
Photo Wren Vile

Lettuce growing in screened home-made compost in our greenhouse in November.
Photo Wren Vile

We transplant lettuce at 10″ spacing into the beds in mid-September or early October. By harvesting only the outer leaves, we keep those lettuces alive and growing all winter to give us salad from November to February. Because we water the lettuces, the compost organisms stay alive and active. If you don’t grow a crop overwinter, water the compost from time to time to keep it slightly damp.

This system provides us with a large quantity of mellow screened compost for seed flats, indoors and not frozen. The micro-organisms have had plenty of time to colonize the compost, so it is full of life. In spring, as we need space in the greenhouse, we pull the lettuce. We can then scoop out the compost to fill the flats for seedlings.

Aphids

The only issue we sometimes have is aphids in early spring. This winter we are experimenting with some plants we hope will flower in early spring and attract beneficial insects who also eat aphids. I’ll report on this project when we see the results.

Here’s what we currently do to deal with early spring greenhouse aphids:

jet the plants with water to project the aphids into outer space (OK I’m exaggerating),
gather up lady bugs, or
if numbers of aphids are really high, we use a soap spray.

Lettuce transplants in soil blocks. Photo Pam Dawling

Soil blocks

We used to make soil blocks for our more delicate transplants (melons, early cucumbers and squash) because there is no transplant shock when you plant them out. We even used them for lettuces at one time. We developed a very simple recipe, which we seem to have lost, but it was something like 1.5 parts by volume of our home-made compost, 1 part of soaked coconut coir and as much water as needed to make a wet slumpy, but not soupy, mix.

I use coir rather than peat moss, because I believe the extraction rate of peat moss is not sustainable, and as a carbon sink, it’s better to leave it in the ground. Coir is a tropical food by-product. I’m sure it’s better returned to the soil where the coconuts are grown.

The mix is compressed into a special block-maker, which is then scraped across an edge of the container of mix, to create a flat base, and then the block is ejected using the spring-loaded handle into a tray or open flat. We line our flats with a sheet of plastic to reduce drying out. It’s important to dunk the block maker in water between fillings to wash off the old remnants and enable the new blocks to slip out smoothly.

The blocks are surprisingly stable – they can be picked up and moved, like brownies. Or you can move several at once on a kitchen spatula. As the plants grow, the roots get air-pruned. Even if you pack the blocks shoulder to shoulder in the tray, the roots from one block do not grow into the others. There is no root damage at all when the complete block is transplanted. Do make sure you press the surrounding soil down and inwards to make good contact with the block.

Okra seedlings in a Winstrip tray in the greenhouse. Note the vented cell sides.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Winstrip trays

More recently we have come to love Winstrip trays, very durable plug flats with cubic cells that are vented down the sides, so the plants get air-pruned. The bottoms of the cells have finger-sized holes so you can easily pop a full-grown transplant out of the tray. The Winstrip 50 cell tray has cells almost the size of soil blocks. These flats have all the advantages of soil blocks except price. They are expensive. We got ours used. Winstrips have two additional advantages: they are much quicker to use than soil blocks, and they work with all-compost. We don’t add any coir. One less input to buy. I haven’t calculated how many plugs-worth of coir pay for one Winstrip tray. . .

See this post on using Winstrip trays and transplanting plugs from them

For more about soil blocks, and Winstrip and other plug flats, see my book Sustainable Market Farming

Screening compost to make our own seed compost for spring

Tipping screened compost into our greenhouse beds. Photo by Wren Vile — Tipping screened compost into our greenhouse beds.
Photo by Wren Vile

I recently posted on the Mother Earth News Organic Gardening Blog, encouraging people to make some of their own seedling compost by screening home-made compost. Here I will tell you more about ours. We have a very skilled compost maker who provides a plentiful supply of very good compost for our gardens. In the warmer months, compost piles work fast, and we build up a good stockpile. We set aside some time before cold weather, usually in early September, to screen the compost we will need for seedlings in the spring. Screening removes large particles which seedlings would struggle against. Because we use a large amount of compost, this job takes us days. It’s a job we fit in around more urgent tasks, over a period of weeks. We appreciate being self-sufficient in organic seedling and potting compost. It’s certainly nice to know what our plants are growing in, and not to have to lug bags of mix back from the store.

We store the screened compost in our greenhouse, and so we have unfrozen compost ready to use when we need it in mid-January. Our greenhouse is designed mainly for spring seedling production. In summer it’s empty down to the concrete floor – we don’t grow anything there.

For extra value, we put the screened compost into our greenhouse beds and transplant lettuce into it in October. The watering that keeps the lettuce growing also helps the compost organisms to mellow out the compost over the winter. Worm eggs hatch, the lettuce roots make air channels throughout the bin, and we harvest the lettuce before we need to sow seedlings. If you want to try this method, but you have a smaller operation, you can simply fill bins, tubs or boxes inside your greenhouse. Get them in position near the windows before you fill them.

Our greenhouse beds are built of loose-fit cinder blocks, and we set up boards across the tops of the beds, all the way to the far end of the greenhouse. It’s a challenge to summon the courage to “run the boards”, but the worst that can happen is to tip the barrow or to fall 18″ off the boards!

Making compost screens

Compost screens come in two basic styles. We make flat compost frames that fit over a wheelbarrow, and screen into the barrows. The other main approach is to use a free-standing frame and throw compost at it, so that it (more or less) screens itself. After that, you shovel the compost into a wheelbarrow. Each style has its advantages.

Shoveling compost onto a flat screen. Photo by Wren Vile — Shoveling compost onto a flat screen.
Photo by Wren Vile

To make a flat screen, cut lengths of wood to make two frames that will sit on top of a wheelbarrow. Cut some rat wire (hardware cloth), sandwich it between the two frames and bolt the layers together. Then it will be easy to switch to new mesh when the old piece wears out. For a lighter, less durable model, make one frame and staple the hardware cloth to it.

To make a free-standing compost frame, see the photos.

Freestanding compost screen. Photo by Beth LeaMond — Free-standing compost screen.
Photo by Beth LeaMond

Freestanding compost screen in use. Photo by Beth LeaMond — Free-standing compost screen in use.
Photo by Beth LeaMond

A third alternative would be a flat compost screen suspended by ropes or chains attached to the corners from a swing-set frame or a convenient horizontal tree limb. Put a tarp on the ground, or position a wheelbarrow under the frame, and shuffle the frame as archeologists do when sifting through soil looking for ancient artifacts. It is a definite advantage to arrange for the compost to land in a wheelbarrow, so it doesn’t need to be shoveled back up off the ground.

How to screen compost

We use the flat screens on wheelbarrows. We have a bucketful of special compost-screening tools, which are mostly regular hoe heads on short handles. These are easily made from broken hoes! Some people use the Korean Ho-Mi tool for this task. We also have an unusual yellow plastic ergonomic trowel designed for people with wrist problems. It’s excellent for this particular job! Any comfortable hand tool that will not destroy the wire is worth trying.

Using a flat compost screen on a wheelbarrow. Photo by Wren Vile

Using a flat compost screen on a wheelbarrow.
Photo by Wren Vile

We shovel a modest amount of compost onto the screen at one end, and use the tool to push the compost back and forth so that small particles fall through and bigger pieces stay on the screen. Try to minimize direct contact between the tool and the wire, by keeping the tool on top of the compost on the screen. It’s important to avoid scraping the compost back and forth, as the metal tools can break up the wire mesh quite quickly.

When it seems like no more compost from that screenful will go through the screen, we deal with the leftovers. We collect rocks in buckets with holes in the bottom to let the rain drain out. Our rock buckets can sit around for months collecting rocks, and we don’t want to incubate mosquitoes every time it rains! We use our rocks to fix holes in the roads. We use different holey buckets to collect up any woody materials or undigested compost materials, to go back around the compost process once more.

Rocks are one of our biggest harvest. Photo by Kathryn Simmons — Rocks are one of our biggest harvests.
Photo by Kathryn Simmons

It helps to have fairly dry compost for screening. If it’s too wet, we abandon the task for that day, leaving some to dry on top of the screen, and turn to some other task. In very hot weather, we have even erected a canopy over our screening site, to provide shade and make the job more pleasant.

Growing winter greenhouse lettuce

When the greenhouse beds are full, we water the compost enough to keep it damp and alive. We transplant our greenhouse winter lettuce in early October (our first frost is mid-October), using cold-hardy leaf types or romaines. If you try this and are ready a long time before winter lettuce transplanting time, you could perhaps grow a different short-term crop in the compost first.

We harvest outer leaves from the lettuce whenever they are big enough, all winter long. Then we start to clear them when we need to use the compost for spring seedlings.

Young lettuce plants in greenhouse beds in October. Photo by Bridget Aleshire

Using home-made compost for seedlings

We start our first seedlings in mid-January, although we only sow a few things the first week (cabbage and lettuce for outdoors and tomatoes for our hoophouse), and harvesting just one or two lettuces would provide compost for those few flats. We use 100% home-made compost for sowing seeds, or for potting up transplants. We don’t mix in any other ingredients. We make great compost and it grows big strong plants. The only issue we sometimes have is aphids. Here’s what we do to deal with early spring greenhouse aphids:

jet the plants with water to project the aphids into outer space (OK I’m exaggerating),
gather up lady bugs, or
if numbers of aphids are really high, we use a soap spray.

Crop review time, harvesting potatoes, frosts and foliage

Beech tree in November foliage,
Credit Ezra Freeman

We’ve had a night of 24F and two of 26F, so the season is really changing. Here’s a photo from Ezra’s blog A Year In the Woods of a beech, one of the last trees with good foliage.

In the garden we’ve been setting up the spinach beds for the winter, weeding and filling gaps. We had really good spinach germination this fall, but then the seedlings got eaten by grasshoppers or something, so we have been moving plants from where they are closely spaced to where there are gaps. Spinach is an important winter crop for us. Kale is another, and happily we finally got a good stand of that, after resowing.

We’ve also finished screening compost into our cinder block greenhouse beds. This will be our spring seedling compost and we like having it all ready to use (not frozen in a lump as it would be when we start in mid-January if we stored it outside). Over the winter we grow lettuce in the compost in the beds, and the roots and the watering help mellow the compost into a lovely condition.

Yesterday we had our annual Crop Review meeting where we gather to talk over the successes and failures of the past season and start to consider what to do differently next year. Us five Full Crew were there, along with a few of the more casual helpers and also our Food Processing Manager and our Cooks Manager. This was a horribly hard season, starting with losing a couple of key people and having a very wet spring which grew lots of weeds and got us off to a very late start. We had to cancel several crops we had planned to grow (celeriac, lots of onions, kohlrabi, peanuts) and we lost several more to weeds after we’d planted them (leeks, Chinese cabbage, winter radish, some of the turnips and beets). Unsurprisingly, we are planning on a more manageable garden next year, so we can build up our strength and be more successful with what we do grow. Plus we’ll have a substantial bank of weed seeds to cope with.

We also used the meeting time to pop garlic cloves in preparation for planting later this week. I suppose most of you would call it next week. At Twin Oaks our weeks start on Fridays and end on Thursdays, for reasons almost lost in the mists of time. Nowadays I suspect we just like the quaintness of it.

Now we are starting to harvest our second potatoes (“Irish” potatoes) which we planted in July (late, like much else this year). We bush-hogged the tops two weeks ago, so that the potato skins could thicken up and be ready to harvest before it got too, too cold. Today we will remove the hay mulch and the dried up vines and weeds, to the compost pile, and tomorrow we’ll start harvesting.

We have a Checchi and Magli SP100 potato digger, which you can see in action on YouTube. Here’s ours

The other main work going on in the garden is getting cover crops planted. Here are before and after photos of one plot:

Late sweet corn and sweet potatoes Credit Ezra Freeman — Late sweet corn and sweet potatoes
Credit Ezra Freeman

Late corn undersown with oats, noew mowed high, and the sweet potato patch now sown in winter wheat and crimson clover. Credit Ezra Freeman — Late corn undersown with oats, now mowed high, and the sweet potato patch now sown in winter wheat and crimson clover.
Credit Ezra Freeman