Prepping for Seed Orders - December 18, 2019 @goldenoakfarm

Early morning set-up to start drawing

Wednesday morning my intern was coming and we were planning to make a valiant attempt to get seed orders worked up. I have to submit one to High Mowing by Friday.

I got as much information as I could find ready. I spent a huge amount of time searching for the garden plan for the New Herb garden for 2019 and never finding it. I guess I never drew one last year. So I prepared to draw one for 2019, as I needed to know what space I had to plant in for 2020.

We got 2019 drawn and the start of 2020 made and I realized I hadn’t done a seed inventory. So she brought the seed box up from the cellar fridge and we zoomed through an inventory. I had tossed a lot of old seed last year, knowing I would not be planting for at least 2 years. And as I hadn’t grown much as seedlings, there was little to put away. So it went quickly.

By lunch time when she had to go, we’d started going through catalogs I had marked up and entering the plants on the plan.

My helper friend had found a solution to the lack of seed starting space: use the empty bedroom upstairs! Using my 2 frames allows up to 12 trays, using his little frame allows 2 more, and the roundtop without its free standing frame can do 8 trays. So maybe as many as 22 trays of seedlings can be done at one time.

I will definitely have to purchase heat mats, as I won’t have the wood stove heat for starting. But I intended to do that anyways.

So my seed orders would be bigger than we thought for 2020.

The candles are lit so it must be near 4:30. I got all 3 New Herb garden plans done. I’d re-drawn 2018 because it had gotten mud on it and parts couldn’t be read. I’d listed all the plants alphabetically on the maps as finding them is sometimes hard. There were up to 65 plants in the garden each year.

The seed inventory wasn’t alphabetical, as there were so few to put away. That will make for possible mistakes in ordering, but most likely having more than I need vs none.

On Thursday I will be working with the Big garden plans and working up seed starting charts, so I will know just how much I can start. That will determine if a plant will be seeds or buying plants in spring.

If I am diligent, I should finish on Thursday. My helper friend will be here and I have several jobs for him to do with fencing repair. We’d intended to inventory the amendments, but the temperature is to be single digits on Thursday and the snow is frozen in front of the door. So I’m hoping to do the inventory next Tuesday when they say it will be 40’s.

This is the first year I’ve had the amendments in the Tonka garage and I forgot the snow lands right in front of the door. So I must plan to inventory in autumn from now on.

This also means I need to find a new place to store the outside Christmas tree, as I won’t be able to get it back into the Tonka garage in January.