Direct Sow Your Garden

Right now, it is too early to direct sow most seeds in your garden. You must wait for the final frost in your area for most seeds. You can figure out the first and last frost dates by going on The Farmer's Almanac site and entering your zip code. The soil is not warm enough yet for seeds to germinate.

Direct Sow Your Garden - 2/19-2/25/2024

Monday, February 19, 2024

We had a beautiful sunrise this morning.

Well, I just spent about 20 minutes starting this page and then the computer logged me out and everything was gone. Good morning. I guess it will be that kind of Monday. It is now 7:20am and I don't have time to go through all of that again. I have to get ready for a busy day because we can't find good help. We worked hard Saturday and Sunday and did not even make a dent in the amount of orders to be done. I am not complaining, just stating how it is when you own your own business and you can't find help. When that happens, it is up to the owner so here we are. What is a day off?

Today is President's Day so there won't be mail but we will have lots of orders ready to go out tomorrow. We printed and pulled hundreds of orders over the weekend. Thank you to each customer. We appreciate it so much! Eventually, we will find the right people to work here. We are grateful for the helpers we have now. They are all top notch but there are not enough of them.

Well, I closed a lot of Shopify orders and then the postage hit the maximum allowed and I could not close anymore. Ordinarily, we would pay it but it was President's Day. The banks are closed so we could not pay the silly bill. I started helping to close the Amazon orders. Several customers came by. The final one came at 4:30pm and asked for a tour. David gave him one at that late time because this man attends our small business meeting. I closed the store at 5:05pm, only to have to reopen it for this man at 5:20pm. He did not leave until 6:15pm so my plans of baking some bread and cooking a nice dinner were shot. I was starving. I told him we closed at 5pm but he just stayed.

By the time I got to the house, I was shaky and really needed food. From now on, the rules need to be enforced. From now on, no tours after 3:30pm and everyone needs to leave by 5pm.

Direct Sow

What does it mean to direct sow? When do I direct sow?

Direct sowing means to plant garden seeds directly into the soil in your garden, pots, planters, or raised beds without first starting the seeds in little pots in a greenhouse or in the house under grow lights. There is no sense in direct sowing in cold weather as most seeds will not germinate until the soil is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit for cool weather plants like brassicas and 60 degrees or more for warm weather plants like tomatoes and peppers.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Here is the thick fog from this morning. You cannot see the big tree or much of anything else.

It is now 8:25pm. What a long day! I got up early to work and cook a delicious egg casserole. As it became light, I noticed there was a thick fog outside. It was in the 40s and damp. I opened the Farm Store early as David and I left the farm at 9am to go to a doctor in San Antonio. We went to the podiatrist and he fixed my toenail problem. He also did some things to David's feet. He is a good doctor and a friend so we had a great visit.

While we were gone, there were customers here at the farm. We had two of our three teen helpers today and our regular staff, but no one else. We received our renewed 2024 license to sell plants in the state of Texas in the mail.

Michelle came to clean house and Nacho came to do outdoor work with his son. We got back and checked on things, then went out to get some groceries. We got back and went to work. I still could not close any orders as Shopify would not allow it until they take payment tomorrow. They have a built in $480 threshold which was reached on Monday but since it was a holiday, they could not get the money so they froze shipping labels. Today, they did not try to take payment. We tried to pay it, but Shopify would not allow it.

I spent the afternoon prepping and checking the pulled orders, getting them ready to mail tomorrow. I hope they take their payment early so I can get those orders out. Customers came in all afternoon and they bought a lot of plants.

I made a roast in the oven for dinner. I thought it was okay. I just got the kitchen cleaned up and we are watching Kung Fu. Matt just left here to go home and do laundry. I need to get caught up here on my blog. I am now behind by two days for the subject of direct sowing.

My Instant Pot died a few nights ago so I did not make it in there. Today, I ordered a new one.

This afternoon, the weather got warm, super warm. It was 81° and felt great but any hotter and I hate it. That wicked heat is coming.

Direct Sow

Direct sowing seed in the spring is best, no equipment to buy, so easy.

Get your seeds ready to direct sow as soon as the danger of frost is past and the ground has warmed up to the proper temperature. Some of the seeds will need to be scarified before being planted to make germination faster.

Remember that when you plant your seeds, do not plant them too deeply. We recommend that you plant them between one fourth and one half of an inch. Very small seeds don't need to be planted that deep.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Well, good morning. It is cloudy but clear out this morning. I took the dogs out in the dark and it felt fine. It is currently 58° Fahrenheit. There is so much to do today. (When isn't there, right?)

I am enjoying a cup of coffee and watching videos to see what is new in the gardening world. I saw one video that talks about some report from the University of Michigan that gardening is bad for the planet. (I included a link so no one says I am making it up like last time when I wrote about how the powers that be do not want us to have home gardens.) What? There is always some sort of liberal move to stop us from growing our own food. Gardening is good for you. It doesn't destroy the planet. It provides you with good food so you don't have to eat the chemical laden trash at the supermarket and I guess that is what upsets people here in the United States. It is ridiculous.

Direct Sow

Here come the brand new zinnias from the direct sown seeds dropped by large zinnias.

Many spring flowers will direct sow their seeds for the next season if they are not all picked or cut. Each year in the garden beds outside of the Farm Store, I allow my snapdragons and my zinnias to drop seeds into the soil. In June, when I pull up the dead snapdragons, the zinnia seeds that were dropped last fall will start growing. In hot August, when I pull up the brown zinnias that the summer heat has ruined, the seeds the zinnias direct sowed will start growing again within a few weeks. These new zinnias will last until the first frost.

Then sometime in late January, the snapdragon seeds that were direct sowed last spring will start growing again. Right now, in February, my snapdragons are doing great. When it got down to 9° about three weeks ago, it did not hurt the snapdragons.

Early spring when zinnias and snapdragons are together for a short while before it gets too hot for the snapdragons.

So we had customers all day long and we sold a lot of our greenhouse plants as well as more of our snake and aloe vera plants. I did not get many orders closed because Shopify was down for several hours today. I stayed out in Fulfillment closing orders until about 8:30pm. We had dinner delivered. Then I printed out a bunch of new ones to pull in the morning. I was so tired. David and I went in and fell asleep in front of the TV. These pre-spring days are long ones and the season is just getting started.

My new Instant Pot came in but I still have not opened it. I think it is bigger than the old one. The box is huge.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Good Thursday morning. I got up in the dark and made an egg casserole with potatoes, mushrooms, salsa, and cheese. It was very tasty. The day is cloudy at 63° and the high will be 89° today! I must get ready and go out to pull and fill orders.

One of our teen helpers has been planting things for the past three weeks. Someone asked me yesterday what we have planted. I have no idea since I did not do it. I have not had any time to go look.

As usual, I spent the day filling and mailing seed orders out to all of you. I wish we could find a good helper so I have time to make videos and do more social media but so far, we have come up empty.

It turns out that people want work but they don't show up for interviews or they say they can't come because they have to teach a class at a home school group and can we make the interview a different time? What? You asked for a job but you can't even find any of the times convenient for us to come for an interview? This is what we are continually going through.

Then there are those we have interviewed and hired and then they don't show up to work, not even for the first day. Others will come for a week or so and they are done. Then there are those who come for two weeks and then start the calling in sick process every week or every other week. This is not a vacation job. We are hiring you because we actually need you to do the job you are being paid to do. What a concept, right?

Do Not Grow Seeds In Your Windowsill

Healthy tomato seedlings are getting plenty of light.

David found this person on Facebook claiming to know how to grow seeds on her windowsill. Get this. She has over 30,000 followers and yet has no clue. She showed a photo of her latest seeds and said they are thriving. They were long and leggy and falling over because they are not getting enough light. David made a comment and she told him she has been doing this for years and they are thriving and then the followers started making fun of him saying that everyone is an expert, ha ha!

Well, guess what? David is an expert. I am not but just looking at the photo, I can see that the seedlings are searching for light and are dying. Duh. It doesn't take an expert to see those seeds are definitely not thriving. David was trying to be helpful but he should not have wasted his time. The problem is that people will buy our seeds and try to grow them like she did. Then when the plants die, they won't blame the person who gave them wrong information. They will blame the person who sold the seeds to them. We find so many gardeners on YouTube and Instagram without a clue yet they have so many followers. I just don't get it.

Folks, watch out who you follow for seed and gardening advice. This woman has a lot of followers and no idea what she is teaching them. We have very few followers but we actually know what we are talking about in regards to planting and starting seeds.

Growing seeds on your windowsill will not give those seedlings six to eight hours of sunlight a day. Why not? Because the sun moves and the window does not. When the owner of a seed company tells you your seedlings are leggy and are not getting enough light, you ought to listen because he has been doing it many more years than you have with thousands of different plants each year, not just a few leggy plants that you are trying to grow for your followers.

Direct Sow

When you direct sow your seeds, you don't need to spend money on anything special like pots, grow lights, heating mats, mini pots, and garden trays. You just need the warm soil and the very best seeds you can get, preferably heirloom seeds where you get your best flavor. It is easiest because you don't have to transplant any seedlings after hardening them off so they are used to the outdoors.

If you have planted the seeds too closely, you will need to thin out the weakest or smallest plants to give the plants room to grow and develop properly. The amount of space between plants depends on the variety of plant you are growing.

Friday, February 23, 2024

Good morning, fellow gardeners. Looks like it will be a beautiful, sunny day again. I will be out in the high tunnel this morning doing some videos and then I will do orders. Have any of you started seeds yet? We have been direct sowing vegetable seeds for about three weeks now with seeds that are cold hardy.

We also have plants for sale that have been growing in the greenhouse since December. They are going fast so I will go out and see what we have left. I haven't been out there in about 14 days but I have rung up trays full of vegetable and strawberry plants over the past three weeks when we started selling our plants. Our plants are grown by us with our own seeds, all hand planted. We do not buy them from others.

Eggs And Advice

I have had my farm fresh chicken eggs on sale now for three weeks at $3 a carton if you buy two cartons. I have sold very few, yet the folks on Facebook who sell their eggs are still getting $5, $6, and even $7 a dozen in our area. So the price is back up to $5 a dozen. If I don't sell them, we will eat them. We are spending way too much money on good feed and supplies to practically give the eggs away and when I do, no one buys them. I have fresh eggs straight from my own chickens if anyone wants great eggs. If not, that is fine. We will eat more eggs.

Two days ago, one of the customers asked me where I get my eggs in the Farm Store. What? I told her I get them from my chickens each day and she looked flabbergasted. I guess she thought that I buy them from the store. My chickens have become laying fools and they just won't stop!

I have a lot in the refrigerator so she told me I should go to farmers markets and sell them there instead of here on the farm or that I should sell them to some guy up in Poteet so he can sell them. First, the county says I can only sell my eggs to the end consumer. I cannot sell them to a store or a restaurant. I am not about to go against the county's rules. The rules are in place for a reason. Then she wanted to know if the eggs are washed. Yes, they are because the county says I have to wash them in order to sell them. Apparently, a lot of folks selling eggs are not washing them but in order to sell them, the county says I have to wash them, so I do.

I hate it when a customer comes into the store and starts giving unwanted advice, especially when they don't know what the rules are for selling. I had a similar experience on Monday. A man who told me that the photo of a melon on one of our envelopes is wrong because as a kid he remembers the melon looking different. He then proceeded to bring up photos from Siri on his phone to try to convince me otherwise. We have been doing this seed thing now for almost 15 years. We know what we are doing. We are correct in this melon's photo. We grow them. We know what they look like. Thank you and have a nice day.

I paid some business bills and filed a health insurance claim. Then I went out to the orchard where David, Matt, and Sam are repairing pipes that broke again and were not correctly fixed earlier in the week by others. This means our brand new trees and lots of others cannot be watered until the pipes are fixed. It has been in the 80s every day this week so water is already important in February.

I took some photos and made some videos of the goings on out there. I went through our garden beds and found some of the asparagus is already coming up. I picked it all, took it in, washed it and we will enjoy it this evening with dinner.

I found some strawberry blooms. Yes, our strawberry plants survived the winter from last year and are already blooming with white flowers.

I discovered that David has some huge tomato plants with tomatoes already on them and he is selling them for $19.95 each. David has also lowered the smaller tomato plants to $5.95 each or two for $9.95.

I cut a bunch of lettuce for the rabbits and chickens and took it to them. They loved it.

My new Instant Pot arrived since my old one died last week. I decided to try something new so I made yogurt in it. It came out great. Of course, it was not finished cooking until about 11pm. After letting it cool, I put it in the refrigerator around 11:30pm and went to bed. I had previously fallen asleep on the couch so I had a good nap this evening!

We had customers all afternoon buying plants and seeds. David put a large chicken from the grocery store (not one of ours) in the Traeger to smoke for dinner. It turned out to be delicious. Matt stayed and we watched Shark Tank, which is a favorite show of ours.

Here is tonight's moon. It looks full but tomorrow is the full moon, the Snow Moon. Very bright and up early.

Tycoon Tomato Plants

We just ran out of our Tycoon Tomato Plants. However, we still have a lot of other tomato plants for you to choose from but you should come out soon. We are open tomorrow from 10am until 2pm and then on Monday, we will open again from 9am to 5pm.

Direct Sow

Corn grows best when you direct sow your seeds 1/2 inch in regular soil but 3 inches in straight sand like we have on the farm.

Above, I mentioned that we recommend direct sowing your seeds between one quarter and one half of an inch in the garden soil. But what if your soil is all sand, like beach sand? Yes, here on the farm, we have beach sand without the water. In sand, when you direct sow your seed, you will need to plant the seeds at least double what you would plant them in regular soil.

When you plant your corn seeds, make sure to put your corn seeds down three inches in the sand. Plants will grow better when they have better support down in the loose sand. We found this out the hard way. Our corn has not done well because we would direct sow the seeds about one half inch deep. Then David discovered that the seeds need to go in deeper here just because it is all sand.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

It is already the weekend! Of course, I don't get one of those. I am in the store six days a week and even on Sunday, we have to pull orders to keep up. I got up and flavored my homemade yogurt with some vanilla and monk fruit sweetener. Then I made egg casseroles--one for us and one for the chickens. Got to use all of those eggs up!

If you are coming by for some today, don't worry! I have plenty in the Farm Store fridge. We have some beautiful tomato plants for sale and we open at 10am today. Please don't show up early. I have to do things before I can wait on you. Show up at 10am, not 8am.

It is 49° and already 7:30am. Time to go out and feed all of the animals. I am by myself today so I have to do it all.

I got everyone fed and I washed the new eggs. They are now in the fridge waiting for you to come buy them today. We open in ten minutes and no one has shown up yet. Thank you! I will see you soon!

Wow! What a day! Today was the biggest day in our store in four years out here on the farm! We had a whopping 18 sets of guests in just four hours! I was so busy that I didn't know what to do! David had to call Matt in to help. At one point, I had eight sets of guests in the store all at once! Thank you to everyone who came out to see us and thank you for all of your purchases! We sold a lot of plants, eggs, coffees, and seeds, as well as some gardening supplies including our germination kits and germination mix!

Our apple trees are in full blossom. Many of our other fruit trees are budding or have blossoms. The bees are getting busy.

The chickens gave me 40 eggs today. What is up with that?

Our fruit trees are either budding or are in full blossom out in the orchard.

This evening, Svengoolie was a replay again so we watched the movie, Star Trek Generations. We dined on Filipino food from a food truck at Farm To Familia and it was very tasty food.

Direct Sow

Black Nebula carrots were direct sown.

There are some seeds that you cannot start in pots and then transplant because the roots do not do well when transplanted. These seeds must be direct sowed such as all roots, spinach, beans, peas, corn, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, mustard greens, cucumbers, melons, cabbage, and kale. Roots would include onions, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, and radishes as well as other vegetables that do not come to mind right now.

Direct sow all of the above when the ground is warm enough and you should have a happy garden.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Yesterday's eggs after being washed. They are beautiful!

Good Sunday morning! I just put out the David's Garden Seeds® newsletter for spring planting. If you have not yet ordered seeds for your spring garden, be sure to do it before we run out of all of your favorites. We have already run out of some things.

I am about to go out to feed the fish, chickens, and rabbits. I have four cartons of eggs to take over to the Farm Store. We are not open today but we will open at 9am tomorrow. If you need great farm fresh eggs, we have plenty and, yes, they are from our own chickens. We don't buy them elsewhere like many other places do. We have been eating a lot of the eggs. Someone was telling me earlier this week that instead of throwing my eggs away, I should be giving them to a certain man who sells other people's eggs in Poteet. I told her that we don't throw our eggs away. We eat them. They don't go to waste. The feed we buy is way too expensive to throw the eggs out.

This afternoon, we will be cutting up our seed potatoes, getting them ready to plant. If you want to know how to plant potatoes, check out my article here.

We did cut up the potatoes and now they are healing or scabbing over so we can plant them in one to two days.

We had a bit of a bombshell at church today. At the end of the sermon, the pastor resigned effective immediately. Boom! No notice. Wow!

David was asked if he would preach over the next few weeks so he agreed to that. If you did not know, David earned a Bachelor's Degree in Biblical Studies and was a pastor for a while. We have had plenty of experience in ministry and it was pretty rough for us and our family. One day, God will deal with those who were ugly to our tiny children, to David, and to me. For now, God has blessed us with a wonderful business. We love what we do now.

It is currently 3pm and 85° Fahrenheit! Hard to believe it is February.

Direct Sow

After you direct sow your seeds, you need to give them a little water every day to keep the ground moist. Once the plants germinate, then you can water them a bit less.

You will want to water as necessary. Do not water every day (unless your plant really needs it). Stick your finger down into the soil and feel it to see if the plants need water. Use mulch in your garden to help keep the soil moisture locked in. Check it every few days to be sure that the plant is getting enough water. Too much or too little can kill your garden plants and each variety will take a different amount of hydration.

Return from Direct Sow Your Garden to Year Five On The Farm

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