Today, we were planting again. We’re about 10 flats shy of 10,000 and working fast in teams!

I feel really good about today’s planting of seed saved from last year. Some gardeners asked us to glean their gardens each week for the Pilot Baptist Church free produce stand. When we picked, we saved three kinds of bean and peas, okra, and peppers too old to eat. Now we are using the dried pods and peppers for this year’s plants. We don’t know their exact names, or how “pure” the seed might be, but they will grow and yield edibles.

We also planted from Wyatt-Quarles and Louisburg Southern States’ donated seed packages, which include (today) cucumber, eggplant, acorn squash, cauliflower, and more. We also used donated seed various gardeners had mailed to us, and a bunch of tomatoes and peas donated by Wendy and Mark G. of the Louisburg/Bunn area!

At some point this week, we hope to plant seed for our own garden and greenhouse–we’re planning to grow produce to give away and to eat in our own space. (We ask you to grow and share, and ensure we do the same!)

We also have some special seeds for things like black watermelon, black tomato, tiny tim tomato, jicama, and more which we will sell to raise donations.

Over the course of the past two weeks we have enjoyed planting many things! We’ve found some ways to speed things up, which include:

- having a team putting foundation soil (for under the seed) into trays and then handing the trays to the planters

- laying out 4 trays in a row and planting all of them together with the same thing

- one person planting a whole tray and then handing off to a second who covers the seeds with more soil

We’ve also found some things that slowed us down, but did them anyway. The biggest “time waster” that we decided was important:

- planting several different types of veggies in each 4-pack

We took the time to do this to ensure our gardeners may have a wider variety in their gardens. For example, we have some packs that are part cucumber and part squash. Others are 2, 3, or 4 types of tomatoes so gardeners can have a variety, some for paste, some for eating, and some for cooking or canning. And, some that had both hot and sweet peppers.

We’re having fun, getting dirty, and getting a bit bone weary, and it is worth every minute!

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