We transplant everything we can on our micro-farm. Even some things that probably should be direct seeded, like peas and beans, get transplanted. Recently, we've been preparing our Fall and Winter plantings; cutting soil blocks, planting seeds and germinating tray upon tray of sprouts down in the grow room. It's been a lot of work and taken a lot of time. Now our cool and cold weather crops, kale, broccoli, mache, endive, leeks and many others, are in and growing happily under the lights. Kale (shown above) were the first to emerge. Leeks are still a bit out. Soon they'll all go outside for a week or so of progressive hardening before finally getting transplanted to a farm row.
Transplanting takes much more work than direct seeding. In total, I can spend up to 15 hours chaperoning a 20-foot row of kale from seed to transplanted farm bed. Alternatively, if we were direct seeding, I could drop a few hundred dollars on a Planet Jr. bulk seeder and get the whole row planted in under an hour. Most "tiny", market-farms work at least 2 1/2 to 5 acres. Even small greenhouse operations usually cover at least an acre. All these folks probably do a lot of transplanting. But, with so much land to work, time is a limiting factor. For them, a large amount of direct seeding makes sense. For us the calculus is different. Farming our paltry 1/2 acre, it's really a question of space. Sure, we're super pressed for time. but ultimately we run out of land before we run out of daylight. We need to make the most of every inch. So, regardless of how much extra work or time it takes, we need to transplant.
A well planned, well executed transplanting regimen can make our micro-farm larger. Not larger in any physical sense but larger in yield per unit area. It's like magic.
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