Update

February News: Plus - Storing Seed

Farm equipment covered in snow

Farm equipment covered in snow

Happy Winter! Snow covers the ground, and greenhouses idle in anticipation of Spring.  Farm work is less urgent, yet there is still plenty to accomplish before the rush of the coming growing season.  Greenhouse repair work and washing burdock root are saved for warmer days; but this reflective time of winter is also perfect for analyzing last growing season’s ups and downs, looking over seed catalogs, planning crops for the 2020 season and ordering seeds and supplies.  Grower conferences populate the calendar, farmer friendships are rekindled and of course we find time to take the dogs for a Nordic ski around our fields and woods.

   Flipping the calendar page to February makes Spring seem that much closer and real.  Flint repurposed the wood shop temporarily and has rosemary, greenhouse tomatoes, and other seedlings germinating under lights. The whole space will be packed with small plants until mid March, at which point we start heating our seedling greenhouse.  Before you know it, we’ll be swimming in seedlings!

Professional Farming tip- Storing  your leftover garden seeds:

Before each growing season, Cate Farm buys over 250 different varieties of seed!  That’s a lot of packets, and a bit of cash. Sometimes we buy more seed than we need for one season to get a bulk price break, but in general, we don’t want to run out of seeds just when we need to plant them on schedule.  It’s better to buy a few extra seeds than too few. Hence, we have lots of seed left over at the end of the growing season. 

    Most seeds will store for multiple years if kept cool and dry.  Each seed packet lists the germination percentage at the time of sale, usually 80% or better.  We keep seed packets in plastic bins in our 50-60F shop over the winter, in a shaded location. We keep very expensive seeds, like some fancy tomato varieties, in the freezer in a plastic bag, which is the best way to preserve seed viability.  The fridge works very well too, if seeds are sealed in a plastic bag (refrigerators tend to dehydrate). 

   Just a few vegetable seed types do not store for more than a year.  These include onions and parsnips. We will plant these types after a year of storage and see what happens, but because we can’t count on good germination we usually reserve them for our home garden. 

  Every winter we take physical inventory of our viable seeds and place our seed orders accordingly.  

Check Out this Seed Storage Guide from Johnny’s Seeds!

We hope you have a great garden!

The Team at Cate Farm

November News

Flint Bags up some beautiful Burdock

Flint Bags up some beautiful Burdock

How time flies! Here it is, November already.

We had a superb late summer and early fall. The weather was great, with adequate rain when needed, but not too much, and our tomato, burdock and hemp crops all thrived in the warm, sunny conditions. We picked tomatoes until October, and have since cleaned out the greenhouses and the plants are now on the compost heap.  

Fall is clean-up time when we prepare greenhouses and fields for next season. Repairs that have been on our ‘To-Do’ list are now finally being completed, from greenhouse end-wall replacement to installing culverts on our farm roads. We always hope it all gets finished before the snow flies, but there’s always something else that needs to be done. Regardless of our ongoing projects, the cooler temperatures are refreshing, to say the least, and the shorter days signal plants and humans alike to slow down. We keep busy during our winters, but work carries less urgency and we welcome the change of seasons.

The burdock roots are all harvested and safely stored in our walk-in coolers. We even finished washing all of the seconds to be sent over to Caledonia Spirits to be turned into Gobo (read the article in Seven Days)! The Cate Farm team breathes a sigh of relief after the last roots are dug, as we no longer worry about possible wet (or freezing) field conditions that can prevent harvest.

We are now busy processing our hemp crop that we grow for CBD production. We have a stellar team to harvest, dry and prune the hemp branches, before removing the flower buds from the stalk, also known as ‘bucking,’ and into totes before the buds are sold.

 We hope all your gardens were productive and successful - maybe you even have a winter squash or two left for Thanksgiving!  

Wishing you a happy, healthy holiday with friends and family!

The team at Cate Farm