A lot of our time has been occupied with starting our tomatoes and peppers in the basement, using fluorescent lights, these past few weeks. Basically we start the seeds in seed flats and continue to transplant them to bigger peat pots as they grow until they are ready to be planted in the fields come May. The tomatoes destined for the High Tunnel will be planted sometime in late April, I believe.

We have a wood stove in the basement which we keep fired up to give the seeds the warmth they need to germinate and grow. Once the weather warms up, we begin to put them into our unheated outside greenhouse to give them the benefits of the sun.

As you can see from the pictures below (sorry about the poor lighting but it is the basement!), we have set up shelves and fluorescent lighting around the wood stove. The heat from the stove helps the seeds to germinate better.

And below is a picture of what results from the above process. A tiny plant that we hope will eventually give us lots of luscious tomatoes starting in July!

Above is a picture of the some of the onions we have growing in the basement in seed flats. These will be transplanted out in the fields in April.

The varieties we have started are all sweet Spanish types. However, we have added some red sweet Spanish types this year. We are growing: Ailsa Craig Exhibition, Riverside Sweet Spanish, Montero, Red Defender, Ruby Ring and Red Burgermeister.

Our famous Newaygo Newaygo (walla walla) onions are overwintering in the fields right now.

So, if all goes well, we hope to have a bountiful harvest of onions starting in July at Magicland Farms.

No, not the planting in the field but the planting in our basement and small attached greenhouse. In order to get the produce to our customers as early as possible, we need to start some of the vegetables inside. Right now, we have started onions, tomatoes and peppers in seed flats. The picture above shows one of the flats of tomatoes.

After they grow a bit, they are then transplanted into peat pots to await planting in the fields and the high tunnel. We wait until sometime around May 20th to plant the tomatoes in the field; the ones destined for the high tunnel can go in earlier, somewhere around the end of April.