Did you know we have a food bank in our neighborhood? You support them.

A 50 foot row of luscious veggies, fruits or flowers could have your special message broadcasted for the 2020 growing season. In the past we have honored loved ones, remembered those who have passed, or shared a brief message with the world!

We are excited to grow carrots for the first time this season and try our hand at other direct seeding crops (beets, lettuce galore!). This tool is indispensable to plant those teeny tiny seeds.

We grow all of our crops from seed. The organic seed starting mix needs to be fortified with nutrients to grow strong plants right from the beginning. We will be ordering a 54 cu ft tote of seed starting mix from our friends at Peaceful Valley farm supply.

There are many choices a farmer can make to farm more sustainably, and many of those choices can happen at the farm stand. At Sowing Solidarity we are very conscious of avoiding single-use plastic, that is why we intentionally choose recyclable cardboard tomato pints. 

These biodegradable produce bags are made from a bioplastic (aka compostable plastic) that is entirely derived from plant materials, which allows the produce stored inside them to breathe. This is a positive feature because it prolongs the life of the produce by allowing the ethylene gas and excess moisture to escape, keeping fruits and veggies as fresh as possible.

Who loves Shishito peppers and melons!? We do! And we learned this past growing seasons that our community wants to eat more of them in 2020! We need the extra help from our "heat mat friends" to raise the temp high enough to get those heat loving seeds to start germinating in February. 

One of the best ways we attracted new neighbors to the farm stand was through our road signs, which we put out every Saturday morning. We learned so much last growing season, one lesson was that we need more and bigger signs!

Large outdoor greenhouses are not always an option, so these indoor LED grow lights are an excellent avenue to growing your own food! With more grow lights we can grow even more food and sell veggie starts to the community this spring.

These tables fit the dimensions of our expanding grow light system. Efficiency is everything!

These crates are indispensable on the farm for harvesting produce and organizing the produce in refrigeration. A farmer's best friend during harvest, besides the harvesting knife :)

Harvesting knives are used on our lettuce and squash predominantly. So basically used every other day during the summer to keep up with squash production!

Wow! This will open up a world of free time for farmer Gina, instead of having to personally turn the water on and off all season. So many hours will be saved for other important farm duties.

Our six foot stakes were definitely too short this past growing season and we got the memo that our community loves their tomatoes! We want to grow more next season and include fun new varieties, along with the oldies but goodies.

Before any planting we apply a generous layer of compost across our beds. Compost encourages the production of beneficial bacteria, (in our case) makes clay soils more airy, and prevents water from evaporating from deeper soil levels.

We grew a lot of vining crops (Armenian cucumbers, butternut squash, and melons) last year that can be grown vertically, this will allow us to access crops more easily and grow more food below the vining crops. Win-win!

Who knew that direct Sacramento summer sun was so intense? Everyone, does. That's the answer :) We need more shade over our food washing station, for food safety and shelter from the heat!

Yes, rabbits love alfalfa pellets, but they are great for the garden too! They supply rich nitrogen in the soil for the young plants to feed on while growing . We sprinkle a generous helping of these pellets across our beds at planting time. 

These are endlessly useful for holding row cover in place to shield the crops from a windy day (saved our baby tomato plants from North winds this year), to hanging handmade wreaths at the farm stand and held in place our shade awning. This is the swiss army knife of farm gadgets.

When you are cold you wrap up with a blanket right!? Well so do our plants. When the weather report forecasts 32 degrees or below we setup our row cover to make sure the plants stay nice and cozy. Row cover also protects young transplants from harsh winds

We place this arched wire about every five feet, before unrolling the row cover on top. Wire hoops and row cover go together like peas and carrots. Then there's the bricks we use to hold down the row cover, but that's a story for another time :)

We use this biodegradable twine when using the Florida weave technique of tying back our tomatoes.

Our speed is 200s. That's 200 cells per tray. Come January we've got thousands of seeds to sow!

Greens, get your greens here! Lettuce, beets, radish, kale, chard and some other surprise spring crops will be on the menu.

Starting summer seeds begins in February, but its worth the wait!