Lisa Kitt - Seed Plan

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...