Things have been quite busy on the farm. I have been spending a lot of time watering and moving many plants into our hoop house and cold frame here in Seattle, and after doing this for years I learned a lesson the hard way this morning. Morning coffee may have played a large part in this hard lesson. I'll start back at the spring of 2008 on one of many rainy days.
My farm mentor Georgie had shown me how to prep flats for seed and one of those steps involved lightly pressing another flat on top of the starter mix to compress it. ...a bit. Repeat this entire sowing process until it quits raining and eventually you'll have more plants than you know what to do with. In my infinite wisdom and low-caffeine state this morning, I decided to really squash this peat mix down and seed four flats. This unfortunate error didn't reveal itself until it was time to sprinkle gallon after gallon after gallon after gallon after gallon on these flats that are clearly misbehaving. Bubbles started emerging from the cells and entire clods of peat moss came bursting forth out of their six-pack plastic-cell confinement. I though to myself, "what in tarnation?!" After doing battle for an hour with my trusty water bucket, I resigned to dumping all four flats onto the compost pile and starting all over again. Without compression, everything was dreamy again and I was able to wet everything out in a mater of minutes. I have recovered (although not gracefully) and I strongly recommend for those of you who feel compelled to seed flats at 8:00 A.M. to fight any and all primal urges to smash peat moss into oblivion and definitely indulge in your vice prior to loading trays.
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