There really is something so beautiful in trays of starts. In this picture you see lettuce at the bottom and cabbages above. The colors are so vibrant, and each little cell in the tray is a promise of great meals to come. Before we get to the point of receiving these trays though, Cameron has already put hours of work in. The first step is determining when we want to harvest a crop. From there he works backwards, factoring in the days to germination, to days of maturity. How many weeks do we want a particular crop? Can we harvest before it is at full maturity? Lettuce and many of the greens we can pick young, putting together bags of Stir Fry Mix or mixed baby lettuce.
Once Headstart sends us the trays of starts, the guys get them into the ground. Several years back Nigel invested in this Italian transplanter, which seats up to 3 guys. While the tractor slowly makes its way down the rows they gently take the little starts from the tray and pop them down the planting tubes. Before this machine, we used a transplanting sled. The guys would lie flat and work off of a wooden platform, not very comfortable and it was much slower.