Scorching the Garden 2020 Part 1
This is the third documented grow for us and we are introducing a lot of new things this year. We have more hardware, better software, and the same growing plan that has worked for many years. In this installment, we are going to showcase our planning and pre-prep.
You may or may not know our system by now and that we get our cardboard from Costo. What you may or may not know is how much cardboard it really takes and how long it takes to gather. We like to go on the weekends. That’s when it’s busy and the cardboard that is between the layers of products is plentiful. There are times we end up pulling around a cart of nothing but cardboard. As always, the customer service at Costco is exemplary. 
We have learned, by being burned, that you have to overlap your cardboard which means you need more than one half to double the surface area in sheets. We assume the average size piece we get is about 4’x4′. That’s 16 square feet. One of our gardens is 1600 square feet. We need around 100 pieces, if they were set edge to edge. To overlap properly, we need around 50 or more pieces, and that’s assuming all sheets are the same size with no holes or slits and the ground is perfectly level. It may be more like 75. All in all we estimate we need around 400 sheets and at 20-30 sheets a trip, we are looking at 15+ visits.
We rely on math to plant our gardens. The equations are not very complex, but they are invaluable. By putting a value to everything, we can manipulate the numbers to run simulations. Every year, we build calculators in spreadsheets to determine how much of what we need to produce X amount of something and how much it costs. Regardless of the amount. We can calculate (and we have to), how much salt is in a TSP of our sauces and how much that tiny amount of salt costs.
We have calculators for our budgets, our yields, our costs, our profits, and, of course, our recipes. We can predict how much water per plant per week we will use, how much garlic we will need to harvest, how many shrink bands we need, and how many of what kind of pepper will go to each product. This allows us to know where were are, where we were, where we’re heading, and where we should be heading-at a glance.
This reflects our philosophy of heavy preparation makes execution that much easier. Be it on paper or in the soil. The more work you do ahead of time, the easier the work is to do when the time comes to do it.
As we do every year, we order our seeds from Baker’s Creek Heirloom Seed Company. Just a quick side note, they sent me their 2020 full catalog. HOLY CRAP. It’s a freaking yearbook. The images are beautiful and they feature full color pictures of every seed and plant they offer. Not only do they feature their seeds, but they also profile different aspects of their business. This catalog is a keeper.
While we’re waiting for our seeds, let’s build the nursery. Standard design of a trough made of cardboard on some wire racks, covered with sheets of plastic, with LED panels. We expanded again this year, but not quite double as we have the past three. This year, we have space for over 360 seedlings and 10 light banks. This year, we used NO tape in our nursery and reused half the plastic from last year.
It’s easier to buy plants, but more expensive and you can only get what the stores carry. We prefer to start from seed. It’s more work, but a lot cheaper. Nearly every kind of plant is available online, and there is something to be said about doing things from scratch. A few days after ordering, our seeds arrived. We laid them out and added the seeds we kept from last year and giggled.
Same recipe as last year for germination: hydrogen peroxide to sterilize, water, paper towel to hold the water, and instead of plastic bags, we are going with glass jars. They’ll last much longer which creates less waste and ends up being cheaper. Someone gifted us the set and it looks like they paid a buck for them. Sounds like a good deal. And now we wait, gather more cardboard, monitor the seeds, wait, and get more equipment for the garden.
Just a week later, a lot of seeds sprouted. We were expecting this to take a lot longer, primarily because, it usually does. The jar and paper towel method just might be how we do things from now on. There is a heating pad under the pan and the temperature stays around 83 degrees F.
A couple of jars have some black forming. We removed the seeds, washed them in hydrogen peroxide, and set them up in new jars. We are shooting for all the superhots to be sprouted and in some soil by the end of February. Then well start on the the more mild peppers in March. Still can’t get over how fast those Reaper and Ghost seeds sprouted. Good stuff!
Gardening has been a thing we have done in earnest for over 15 years now. All sorts of terrain, different plants, soils, even did an indoor thing for a few years. Its funny though. Even after all these years, it’s the same anxiety: Whatever stage we are at, you always wish we were at the next stage. We are always worried that everything is going to fail because of something we are doing right now and if we were at the next stage, that would mean whatever we did prior, worked.
But yea. When they’re germinating, we wish they were seedlings. When they’re seedlings, we wish they were big enough to harden off. When hardening off, we wish they were in the ground. When they’re in the ground, we wish they were flowering. When flowering, we wish we had peppers. When we have peppers, we wish we had help, because holy crap-there are a a lot of peppers! Each bottle of sauce is chock full of anxiety and madness.
