Lisa Kitt - Seed Plan

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We currently sell produce, meat, eggs, and honey at the Grande Prairie Farmers Market.  We believe in having a sustainable and diverse farm.  Naturally, this makes one interested in seed security.  We live in a short summer zone, yet we are buying seeds that come from the warm south and who knows where.  I want to start growing seeds so that we can be planting seeds that are suitable for a shorter cooler growing zone.  And I would love to make those available on a small scale to small backyard gardeners.  The best way to market the seeds is through the farmer's market booth that we already have, which happens to be year round.  During the winter months, our booth starts to look a little bare so it would be exciting to start to fill it up with seeds.  It will be a challenge to integrate saving seeds because they are going to be an added chore on the to-do list, and we also don't have the infrastructure set up yet to thresh and clean the seed so t...

I sent both Mary and Patrick an excel copy of the Enterprise Budgets.  And judging by the numbers carrots seemed lucrative if I made all my assumptions properly.... Beets still made some money.  And Spinach was struggling to make money. 

My target market will be local hobby vegetable gardeners.  There has been a small-scale seed supplier in the area for the past 5-10 years and I would initially start with interviewing her and identifying some of her trends over the years.  She doesn't grow her own seeds that she sells, but she brings in heritage varieties and sells them locally.  Another identifier of trends in the area would be to just look at the varieties that are sold in all of the local stores targeting my audience.  They bring in a lot of the basics.  I think that would be a great place to start.  Facebook has become a great tool to create market research.  I could start a survey and send it out within the Facebook groups pertaining to different local gardening groups and see what kind of response I get back. Understanding what the customer wants will have a huge impact on what I grow.  I would start with that information and plan to grow what the people want.  I...

Storage: For the most part I imagine at this point attempting to store seeds for 3-5 years.  Therefore, I will be able to get away with drying the seeds at room temperature.  This limits me to being able to store the dried seed in paper envelopes.  Which means that I risk insect and rodent contamination.  I think I will be okay as long as I set up a mouse trap nearby with some peanut butter on it.  I will store the seeds in a cool dry area in our house.  That would be one of the spare rooms that isn't fully heated throughout the winter and kept closed in the summer. If I ever want to get experimental we do have an Excalibur dehydrator which I could use to dry the seeds down even more and then I would be able to freeze them or store them in plastic or glass containers. I looked up the Germination Standards: Carrots are 60% minimum Spinach is 65% minimum Beets 65-75% minimum depending on the grading classification As for purity.  I wasn't able t...

At the moment the only vegetable plant grown in our area that is genetically modified is the sugar beet.  The recommendation is that you triple the isolation distances.  Navazio recommended even going 10km or more.  So if the normal isolation distance is 1-3 miles and I was to triple that it would be 3-9miles, which would be 5-14km.  If I did have a neighbor growing GM beets I would have to consider covering the beets and introducing insects into the covering for pollination, or potentially trying to grow shelter belts for long-term risk management.  Luckily we don't have any neighbors growing GM beets, so I won't have to worry about this at the time.

Traceability is a very important consideration.  Things that I want to consider is the origin of that seed.  Was it from seed stock from a few years ago, or was it the seed I have been growing out year after year for a while now.  This all has to be documented.  We will start by creating Lot Numbers that I will add to every Seed Crop Plan that I make yearly.  I will also include on every Seed Crop Plan the origin of the mother seed using Lot Numbers from previous years.  I will have to start with creating a Lot Number for the seeds I have originally purchased of carrots, beets, and spinach from West Coast Seeds or William Dam Seeds.  These were the parent seeds.  Although I didn't grow them, I will start a binder with Lot Numbers and they will be the first recorded seeds.  From there I will continue to document the Lot's that I grow in the future.  There will be a detailed Lot Log Book.  As well, I will have the Lot numbers on eac...

This is where we ended last time, imagining what I could possibly use to thresh and clean carrots, beets, and spinach without investing a lot into equipment. I will first want to experiment with the bare minimum.  Threshing: A belt thresher was a recommended thresher for beets, carrots, and spinach.   As well as a rotary thresher to help break the seeds apart or out of their coverings.  I'm just going to go with the good old fashioned type of threshing - Using my hands, or feet, or sieves!  For the carrots, I can either rub the seeds by hand out of their casings, or I could try putting them in a bucket and stomping on them.  For the beets and spinach, I will just manually rub the seeds off of their stalks.  The carrots will get de-bearded with a soft brush that can help rub the little hairs off.  For the beet seed, I am going to let them dry a little longer at this stage and can further thresh them by walking on them and removing som...

It turns out I have picked some of the trickier seeds especially when it comes to harvesting, threshing, and cleaning.  All three are share many similarities.  They need to be windrowed, and require different steps for de-burring or breaking seeds apart.  Carrots: They are going to mature unevenly.  The primary umbel will mature first followed by the secondary and tertiary.  You can tell when the seed is mature by looking at the color of the seed and when it turns an earthen brown color it is ready.  Due to our short season, I am going to be looking to harvest the plants when the primary umbels are fully matured and the secondary umbel seed set is on it's way to being mature.  The plants will be cut and windrowed no higher than 2 feet for 5-10 days.  The trick is that we do not want them to get too dry and brittle.  After 5-10 days the stalks will be threshed and then you need to consider de-bearding and further cleaning with screens. Bee...

I am aiming to plant about 400 carrots so I am going to start saving about 500 carrots from the first year of production.  Within the first month of growth, I will select for plant vigor by rouging out any smaller seedlings.  At harvest, I will have the opportunity to select for color, size, forking, cracking, smoothness, flavor, and bolt resistance.  I liked how in the webinar they had lined up a bunch of specimen from one variety to create a spectrum and remember to not select too narrowly within that spectrum.  This is the technique I will use for the length, smoothness, bluntness of the tip, and shape.  Researching this variety it looks like it is mostly categorized a s and Imperator type carrot, however, some of the sites look at it also as a Nantes.  So I am going to take that into consideration when looking at the shape and look for a rounded end but not too blunt.  I won't be looking for the most slender of carrots, rather the in-between round ...

Daucus Carota Yellowstone Carrots require an isolation distance of 0.5-2 miles.   Spinacia Oleracea Bloomsdale Spinach requires an isolation distance of 0.5-3 miles. Beta Vulgaris Golden Beets require an isolation distance of 0.5-10 miles. Carrots, Spinach, and Beets generally have the same minimum isolation distance of 0.5 miles.   Beets and spinach are wind pollinated and are both very light seeds to the isolation distance becomes larger if there aren’t any barriers in between us and the neighbors or neighboring crops of the same species.   Beets are susceptible to crossing with genetically modified sugar beets therefore, there is a minimum distance of 10 miles where GMO sugar beets are involved.   All three of these species cross-pollinate very easily by insects or wind.    We are situated in a very isolated area.   To the West of us is a half a mile of thick forest, followed by pasture and grazing lease.   I am still wor...

For some crazy reason I have decided to attempt to grow two biennials!   Luckily carrots and beets have similar storage requirements and are from a different species, so I don’t have to worry about any cross-pollination. Both carrots and beets require 3 months of cool temperatures around 1-3 degrees Celsius and a high humidity around 90-95 percent. I have a root cellar that cools to 4 degrees around the beginning of October when I need to have the root crops out of the ground due to snow.   It quickly drops to 1-3 degrees within a couple of weeks after harvest.   The humidity hovers around 95 percent so I have to worry about too much humidity at times.   My preferred method for storing carrots and beets is in the heavy plastic bags with holes punched in them.   One main difference between the seed carrots and market carrots is that I won’t be washing the seed carrots to preserve the beneficial microbes in the soil intact. I am going to try throwing in a few...

What plants grow good in our area and what plants I really want to grow for seed?  That is the question! We live in a cooler short season climate.  After looking at the different climatic zones that Navazio outlines I think that we fall somewhere between Cold Season - Dry Seeded Crop and Warm Season - Dry Seeded Crop, depending on the weather year to year.  Our average summer day in 21-26 degrees.  Our really hot days are weekends of 30-33.  We are lucky to get a few of these and they tend to come in a few day clusters.  Again, every year here is very different.  One thing that remains the same is that we live in a dry climate with low humidity.  It can freeze up until about May 25th and then again around the end of August and beginning of September. I really want to try growing Golden Beets, Yellowstone Carrots, and Bloomsdale Spinach.  These are all open-pollinated varieties.  Golden Beets and Bloomsdale Spinach are very expensive or...

We live in a remote area of northern Alberta, surrounded by other organic and organically managed farms. We do need to address one field that may be, as the crow flies, within 4 miles and has in the past grown canola. We also have a short growing season and so need to learn what we can and cannot grow for seed in our growing zone, or add season extensions for crops that require more heat units or growing days. Because of our short season, we need to learn how, and which, species of crops we can stagger the plantings in order to maximize the varieties of crops we can grow for seed production. We intend to mix vegetable production with seed production. We will thin crops with the intention of selling the harvest, and leave the best for seed. We will maintain a completely separate market garden specifically for vegetable production in order to avoid timing and irrigation conflicts.   Our land base alone will not be large enough to meet the required buffe...