County AG Report: Greenhouse Planting

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) - While most people are still waiting to start seeds until the weather gets a bit warmer, Rob Koenig found out last week how to extend the growing season to earlier in the year with a greenhouse. This week, rob looks at some of the seedlings Treystar farms is starting, both in the ground, and in trays.

“I’m planting yellow sweet Spanish onions.”

In last week’s county ag report, we looked at the structure needed to grow seedlings this early in the season. This week, we’re looking at the process for getting the planting season started.

“so what you do to plant them is you put an inch of soil in anything really, and you just gently sprinkle them over the soil, like this. Kind of like if you’re cooking and putting a really strong spice in.”

Ainsley Putnam found an interest in gardening from a young age. Her father, Taylor Putnam of Treystar farms, has certainly helped with her interest in many ways. Unlike most kids, who may have been playing in the snow during this school vacation week, Ainsley instead wanted to help her dad get the planting season started, a few seeds at a time. While she might be on break from school, this sort of activity has helped Ainsley learn about some of the different factors that go into planting and growing veggies.

“there are so many different environments that plants can live in, and you have to have the right temperature, climate, weather for every single one of them.”

While yellow sweet Spanish onions are great for onion rings, that’s not the only thing that was being planted that day. Taylor Putnam was hard at work getting things ready to plant peas.

“usually, we put them in by St. Patrick’s day, but we’re going to do them today, the first planting. We’ll do another planting on St. Patty’s day…. We do two rows per bed, so you start it in… so there’s that one.”

While peas were the first to go into the ground in the greenhouse this season, scallions were also on the list to get planted this time around.

“this is probably the best thing we ever bought. It costs a little money up front, but the time savings. On the bottom, it has a shaft that has different hole sizes for the type of seed you got… so what we do is we measure the seed size that we’re using, so in this case what we’re going to plant next is scallions, or white bunching onions. And we’ll drop into a hole the smaller ones based on the seed size, to help get us a better idea of zoning in, and we’ll put them in that way…. We’re doing high intense planting, and we can get more in, because like I said this is valuable real estate in here.”

And as the seedlings continue to grow, we’ll be coming back here in the coming weeks to take a look at their progress.

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