The Seed Order
The Seed Order has been placed. The seeds have started to arrive, a little slower than past years due to pandemic protocols which is expected and understood. No matter, we will get the seeds we ordered in time for 2021 planting. Seed order season is an exciting time full of promise and hope.
Seed order season always starts with catalogs arriving in the bleak mid-winter. What a perfect time to see beautiful images of pristine vegetables, flowers, herbs at the time of year when sunshine and warmth in southwest Ohio may not have visited for weeks. Who needs a marketing department when a simple presentation of your product promises hope for the future?
We placed The Seed Order early this year with five suppliers since we put ourselves on an accelerated schedule due to finding out a little too late last spring that COVID-19 caused a run on seeds for gardening. The Seed Order has started to arrive. Spinach and three varieties of lettuce have been seeded for transplants already!
And that marks the other side of the coin when it comes to The Seed Order. Almost everything in our garden is seeded for transplant, some will be up-potted before transplanting into the garden, but all transplants will be individually planted by someone. The only vegetables that we direct seed are beans and okra. This year we will add popcorn to that very short list.
And The Seed Order means we have lots of future work because…if you order it, you must plant it. And that future work becomes a logistical nightmare as more and more seeds are planted for transplant, and transplants are ready for transplanting, and as the weather warms the weeds in our non-brittle environment emerge and eventually attempt to outpace the transplants, and weeding is added to the never ending to-do list as those earliest transplants are maturing and need to be harvested, so that not only are we seeding for transplant, preparing beds, harvesting, and transplanting, we are fighting the yearly battle of the weed, a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants.
Sometime after early June, we find ourselves totally overwhelmed but settled into a pattern of work such that “everything else has to wait.” It is all so exhausting, but we keep doing it because, at the same time, it is exhilarating. The promise of homegrown vegetables, all of the homegrown vegetables, perfectly encapsulated by Guy Clark’s ode to Homegrown Tomatoes.
We know what’s ahead of us during this garden year, some successes, some failures, some surprises, only if we work without thinking about how hard we have to work. It’s the promise and hope that makes all the difference.