Gardening puts you on a continuous learning curve. At Transition Garden, we have been at it for over 25 years, and we still learn something new every year. Some of the new learnings some from nature’s surprises, and some learnings come from new things that we try to grow, or new techniques for growing the old favorites.
This year, nature produced what seemed like a long cool and wet spring. Many nighttime temperatures remained in the single digits (Celsius) and there was frequent rain well into mid-June. Those conditions are not good for plants which are susceptible to fungal diseases. For example, we noticed tomato blight coming on extra early in some of the greenhouse plants. Also, we experienced poor germination in planting outside, and even in our greenhouse seed trays due to the cool, cloudy weather, We had to adapt by using a Bordeaux (copper) mix on our tomatoes, and plant a second seeding of a number of crops after the soil warmed better.

Nevertheless, as we do every year, we tried a few new things. Firstly, we heard that you can 1. cook corn starch in water to make a thin gel, 2. after it cools, put it in a ziplock bag, 3. mix your carrot seeds in, 4. cut the corner off the bag and dispense the gel-seed mixture into a furrow much as you would as if decorating a cake, and 5. cover lightly with soil. The gel offers an easy way to get uniform seed dispersal, and helps the seeds stay hydrated.
We also are experimenting with barley as a small scale grain, using a new 5’x14′ garden bed. We decided on using a short-stalk, 6-row, hulless, cold hardy barley, which is similar to the varieties grown in Nepal, Tibet and similar regions. After doing our homework on seeding (depth, distance between seeds, etc.), we seeded the barley in furrows about 1/2 to 3/4″ deep. We got very poor germination. We did a second seeding – this time by spreading the seed on the surface, and gently raking it in. We got about the same poor results. Even though a germination test showed almost 100% germination rate, we are left scratching our heads, but we will try again next year.
Don’t get discouraged by setbacks of different kinds, be it a pest wiping out a crop, extreme weather or anything else. Take the long view – everything is a chance to learn. We can always adapt and plan for the next time.
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