Spring on the Farm

March has arrived with the days now really drawing out and spring is in the air. Our thoughts move to sowing the seed that will produce the crops we use over the next 2 years.  We saved seed back in the summer and autumn and we'll get it out of storage and sort it from any chaff ready to sow in big plug trays (usually with between 200 and 300 cells/tray) in the greenhouse.

Then comes the exciting wait for the seedlings peep through the compost and this sometimes happens really quickly depending on the weather outside at the time.  Some seed, like Hypericum/St John's Wort, is really fine and is sprinkled over the trays and some are bigger and we use a clever low-tech seeder for these.  The angular Echinacea seed (pictured above) and the disc-shaped Marshmallow seed that look like miniature cheeses are both sown this way.

Some seed are also sown directly into the soil, as with Calendula, and towards the end of the month we hope we will have ground dry enough to work down ready to sow these in April.  Calendula seed have a
unique spikey seed coat that increases their surface area for absorbing moisture from the soil.  We are often amazed how quickly they show even in quite dry conditions.

Once the seedlings become plugs we aim to plant these out into our fields mid-April.

We also weed around rows and beds of herbs planted last year that we will harvest this year.  There is a lot of weeding work with hoes and weeders throughout the growing season.  It is hard work but with views like we have it’s always so rewarding!