How is everyone doing amidst the COVID-19 outbreak?

[SeanInVa]

Here in Virginia, we've just closed schools for the remainder of the school year. Still waiting to hear more from the school division on expectations. We have a high schooler and an elementary schooler. It's going to be much easier to tutor the younger one on multiplication and division than the older on Chemistry ?

We're trying to limit our treks out of the house, and practicing social distancing. We've only had a couple reported cases in the county we live in, but the health district below us has some of the highest reported cases in the state.

I hope all of you are staying safe!

[dfollett]

Much the same here, but no school kids. A few cases in our very small county of under 15,000. At least with everything I have growing I can keep busy. One question I thought of this morning... Where they have asked all 'non essential' businesses to close, what about the nurseries and garden centers? It seems to me they ought to be encouraging everyone who can to grow a garden. Will we be able to buy starts or will we need to start all our own? I usually buy most of my plants with the exception of tomatoes.

[SeanInVa]

That's a good question. In Virginia, the governor has mandated certain business close where social distancing can't be maintained (salons, tattoo parlors, etc), but is allowing other businesses to stay open provided they admit no more than 10 patrons at a time AND can ensure there is enough room for them all to practice social distancing. So for us, that means nurseries could stay open - but just need to manage how many people are actively shopping. YMMV of course, depending on your locale.

I was hoping to start exploring selling plants and veggies at a new, small farmers market. I've since shifted that to focusing on offering plants to neighbors/friends/family - and then plan to do the same with veggies until we're out of the woods if we're still under threat when they ripen.

[Diane Whitehead]

I'm packaging seeds and sending them to family members who have decided to start growing vegetables instead of just rhododendrons. Seeds are selling out of the stores, and nearby seed companies are just doing mail order now, but are overwhelmed by new customers and say it will be 2 to 4 weeks before they will be sending seeds. So it is a good thing I have a stash of well over a thousand kinds of vegetables - that's what happens when one wants to try them all, but can only do that by growing 1 or 2 seeds from each packet.

[CBo]

Some areas have a good facebook group or craigslist for buying starts. Just because official stand alone stores are closed doesn't mean we can't contact people directly and do commerce as far as I'm concerned.
Nurseries, greenhouses and garden centers are essential here in Delaware and are open. So are florists.
But you have me thinking...maybe I should be starting veggie plants to sell. Only problem is dealing with online posting to advertise and sell what I have, and juggling meeting up with people to sell the plants. Juice is probably not worth the squeeze for me. Would have to sell over 1k plants to make it worthwhile and that is a lot of customer interaction.

[HL2601]

Our nurseries and some garden centers are open but we are all on mandatory shelter in place for the whole state of Colorado.

I work with our High School's Plant Club. Every year our big project is a Mother's Day sale which the kids prepare for for most of the year. We sell hundreds of tomato and pepper plants, homegrown geraniums and succulents rooted from our own plants.

Two weeks ago we were given 2 hours to clear out our greenhouse-all our seedlings, soil, pots, the whole caboodle. They are blowing disinfectant of sorts through the HVAC system so we had to seal everything to protect what we didn't take. They gave us no return date other than after the normal week Spring Break. Now they have extended that date until April 20... Many many babies here...under my lights for the time being. We have the potting soil and the pots, but no school. We were thinking we may do a social distancing pot up date and do a front yard drive by sale, like you all were speaking about. Several of us live in the same neighborhood so it could be a very limited gathering and appropriately socially distant.

Scary times. We think our plants could be especially valuable and important to people especially if this all continues. Gardens will be valuable possibly for food production, but also for mental health if people continue to need to stay at home. We aren't looking for profit. More to help.

In the meantime I am starting my own tomato seeds and I am going to need the space! Need to do some creative thinking here with no greenhouse and snow predicted for Thursday. Plants on every surface might not go over so well given all our 24/7 togetherness.

[oakley]

We are doing ok under the circumstances. NY had a rough go early on but about 99% mask wearing has put us in good shape for now.

Lots of tomato love has been a nice diversion. Having a nice season. About 3 dozen micros. Just now starting to pay attention with first fruits
blushing/ripening.

[oakley]

That was just a quick hello. I've been getting 'time-out' notices after just a few minutes....'error, invalid server response'.

Just wanted Dan to know I'm still full in the project, just having covid exhaustion.
I'm starting to take lots of pics. The carrot leaf above is a nice plant. 10inches from the soil level, one gallon grow bag. Big fruit!.

[SeanInVa]

thanks for mentioning the problems with the site, I will take a look to see if what's up.

And the plant is looking good!

[oakley]

I'm sure it is just on my end Sean. I've just not embraced the site yet being on others I can zip-zoom pics without issue. Takes time but covid is
horribly brain dead dough head at times. We are all distracted and minimally attentive.

Thankful to have a garden that is feeding us as well as experiments.

[dfollett]

Thanks for checking in Oakley. Glad to hear your still working with them. You should have one or two that are getting close to stable. That's a nice looking plant. I have only grown a couple of 148X F3s. One in particular was 11" with 2.5 oz red fruit that tasted like a real tomato rather than a cherry. There were hardly any seeds. It was one of those nearly solid inside with a couple of small seed locules that had two or three seeds. I really like the carrot leaf. I'm growing more and more of them.

[oakley]

I have the original three that are stable. The Angora leaf seems stable as well. Another large orange I'm unsure where that came from. (regular leaf).
The new carrot leaf will round out my Fall/Winter grow to 6 varieties, 2-3 three plants of each. I'll cull if needed due to space restraints.

The only minor destructive issues this year are the tortoise beetles/bugs. Lots of them but easy to locate and pick off.

+making my posts short with 'invalid server notices'.

As I mentioned, just checking in and will save seed to share later.