Propagation of spring transplants starts early in the year. As our garden maintenance program continues to grow, so does the volume of transplants we need to produce. We propagate 95% of our annual crop transplants each year, totaling well over 100,000 plants each year! The plants are sown in successions each week starting in January and continuing all the way until September. Most of these plants are transported to our urban farms while still very tiny, so the nursery space needed for each plant is small, but keeping 20,000-40,000 plants in the nursery at a time still takes up real estate!
This winter we invested a small part of our Barnraiser contributions towards a new, vertical indoor Propagation Station. We set up steel racks, each with 5 shelves and a full spectrum light on each shelf. This system allows us to fit 4x as many plants into our heated propagation space than previous years. After germination and a few days or weeks of early growth, the transplants are moved outside to our larger, unheated greenhouses to fill out until they are ready for outdoor planting. Keep an eye on our social media and blog sites for continued updates as to the crops we are sowing and their progress from the Propagation Station to the Greenhouses to a Garden near you!
