Gorgeous day!!

Hello my friends! Tis a truly gorgeous day, started off foggy with rain but is now 66 F with a lovely breeze. Makes me wish for a porch swing.

Paris Island Cos (romaine lettuce) has now been seeded in every greenhouse pot, and the second 72 cell propagator has been seeded with Black Prince snapdragons, Bull's Blood beets, Touchstone Gold beet/chard, 5-color silver beet (swiss chard), Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi, Pokey Joe cilantro, prairie sage, and milkweed. This is my cold stratification flat, so it's out in the greenhouse for some freezing nights.

I have so much more to do but have used up my spoons for the day and am close to using up my potting soil. Once I get more, I'll need holes in the bottom of my two new paint buckets--they're the 5 gallon size--because those taters have got to be planted soon. Never seen anything so enthusiastic; they're already opening leaves! And the bag of taters in the kitchen is all sprouted as well, so I can grab quite a few more starts since this works so nicely. No sweet tater starts yet though; I ate them before they could sprout. Have to try that again. **grin** 

Running at a deficit, sheesh

Hello! Really worn out and worn down. This bitter cold just takes it out of me, and it snowed again too. BUT my sixpacks with the trays and domes came today!! I was quite gleeful, lol!

It took me three separate tries, but I finally got potting soil mixed with water, the damp soil spooned (carefully! I was working on my kitchen counter) into the first set of sixpacks, and then calendula seeds planted. I now have two sixpacks each of Resina (Baker Creek), Strawberry Blonde (Wild Garden Seed), and Solis Sponsa (Strictly Medicinal). These are all mixes and so the seeds are quite variable, some curled tightly, some more comma-shaped, some dark, some light. 

Between yesterday's potting up of strawberries and new plantings of sweetpeas and today's calendula, I'm three quarters of the way through my bag of potting soil. Will have to get more soon. But since I am, as I said, operating at an energy deficit today, more soil mixing and planting will have to wait a while.

Seeds are in!

 Hello!! Seeds are in from Prairie Moon and on their way from Strictly Medicinal and Baker Creek. That, I think, is the last of it until the plants start shipping in mid-March. 

Today Gryph repaired our leaky hose and cut open a lot of boxes for me. I finished the greenhouse floor (for a while: it is biodegradable after all, and will need done again) and started on the area around the greenhouse. Our friend is working on liberating her hardwood floors from the carpet and assorted tacks and staples. Once she starts bringing empty boxes by again I'll start laying the "garden floor" but until then, we need to go out and cut down the weed trees which are in my way.

What a concept!! "Weed trees." Growing up in the desert where these trees were scarce it just astounds me that they're so abundant here they can only be classified as weeds! But there you have it, they come up everywhere, make walking impossible, and the ailanthus trees even kill off other plants. So down they all come and get covered with cardboard to keep them down--because the cut seedlings come back year after year if you don't actually dig them out! Who knew that could happen? Never would have in the desert, sheesh! Really caught me off-guard.... but you notice I'm still here where there's enough rain to support weed trees, eh? And I'm staying here, especially if my garden succeeds, because I'll have deepened my roots in this place. There's just something about planting trees and flowers that ties me to the land, and growing food as well sets me firmly into the seasonal cycle of a particular place. I belong here. Just as much as this place belongs to me, I belong to this place. I belong to this land. I belong to this home and garden.

Today is lovely warm and bright, a brief respite before low double-digit temps freeze us all out on Saturday. I discovered that the greenhouse plastic acts like shade cloth, so I left the door tied open for a while to get some sun on my babies and also turned the pots to get them to straighten up and stop leaning. Pretty sure the 2017 seed is not up at all and the seedlings are all lettuce from 2021 seed stock. The peas (also from 2021) are very slow but continue to peek up over the soil surface. No sign of the chard, carrots, or beets.

Tomorrow I need to get my calendula and prairie sage into a 72 cell propagator and into the greenhouse; this evening I'll check on which of my other seeds need that kind of cold moist stratification (definitely this year's chard, carrots, and beets, sheesh). I can plant more peas and the sweet peas also, but not in the same propagator. Don't want to take any chance on mixing those up because sweetpeas are toxic. They'll be by themselves and well-labeled--probably in another deli chicken container since the dome is high.

<intermission>

Gryph and I have worked a bit more while there was light. He cut down some of the weed trees and we both worked on getting that topsoil off the driveway and into the garden cart, then spread into a low spot. Here he's working on the north side of the wheelchair ramp:

And then he spread the dirt onto a low spot:

Soon as we have that patch filled, we'll cover it with cardboard to await garden plants!

Checked the indoor seedlings. A miracle has occurred. For the very first time EVER, wild strawberries have germinated for me! We even have a couple tomatoes showing green hints right at soil level. All hail the warmth of the fridge top!!! 

For now, it's early supper and a heating pad. Whatever tomorrow brings, I'm looking forward to it!

Happiness!

Well, I finally managed it! This afternoon I filled my "seedling pots" with soil and planted small amounts of several seeds! It's very interesting; if you compact the potting soil well, it stays in the pot when you lift and move it, doesn't fall out the bottom at all. As an aid to my future more-detailed Seed Inventory, I wrote the date on the seed packets. It's easy to imagine there will be several dates on most of the packets by the time the seed is used up.

BC=Baker Creek WG=Wild Garden Seed

Strawberry "Regina" BC
Sweetpea "Cupani" WGS
Snapdragon "Apple Blossom" BC
Poppy "Florist Pepperbox" BC
Tomato "Home Stoop" WGS
Zucchini "Costata Romanesco" BC
Salad Mix "Fall/Winter" Slow Germinating WG

The strawberry is a European variety, not like our commercial cultivars but like a wild strawberry. The sweetpea is one of the oldest surviving varieties, several hundred years old. The snapdragon is a 3 foot tender perennial. The poppy is for seeds and decorative pods. The tomato is Frank Morton's favorite, one he hybridized from Homestead and Stupice decades ago. The zuke is bred for flowers so I guess I'll be figuring out what to stuff them with on a grain-and-dairy-free diet! But I'm also hoping for plenty of squash because I just LOVE zucchini. And the salad mix is to grow mixed greens, of course, but the seeds are divided into slow-germinating and fast-germinating; the fast ones get started a week after the slow.

I will say that as I was cutting tubes and wrapping their edges with masking tape, my spirit guide asked, quite bemused, why I didn't just buy seed starters. "They're cheap," he said, puzzled, "and easier." I have two reasons. The first is, they weren't in the stores when I started this a few weeks ago, so toilet paper cores were all I could get at the time. The second is, starter pots are mostly peat based, and peat mining is an extractive earth-damaging technology. Not that paper-making isn't extractive! But the toilet paper cores are a waste product from something we can't do without, and here is reason number three: it tickles me to my soul to turn a waste product into something indispensable. 

To show you how much it tickles me, I still use the shelves I built out of cardboard boxes and old Tupperware catalogs... and of course since I expected to use them vertically, they've now been horizontal for years. But they still look pretty much like this:  http://dreambit1.blogspot.com/2012/08/walks-in-chortling-softly-im-makin.html

So this afternoon I put Gryph to work using an awl to punch holes in the bottoms of all sorts of recycled bowls, cups, and trays. As my energy allows, I'll mix more potting soil with water and fill more containers, because I have an acute sense of time slipping away and taking the seed-starting window with it. It might be ridiculously cold nights out there for the next two months, but once the heat hits it'll be here fast. I can't afford to wait for spring before I plant--spring is only two weeks long and then we're into early summer!--so I've got to do it now. And it's a joy! Who wouldn't want to do something which tickles them to the soul?

Still waiting, btw, for the next batch of seeds from Baker Creek. I had high hopes for today's mail. **drats** Maybe they'll come tomorrow. 

I also checked into worm bins today. Oy, those things are expensive!! But then I found a youtube showing how to make a $5 worm bin. Well, mine will be less than that; we have an old tub we can repurpose. I'll have to buy the worms, since nightcrawlers don't work well in a worm bin. If I remember right, you can get small amounts of red wigglers as bait, but if not, I'll find them online.

In short, this is the year I'm going to find alternatives to all the things which have kept me from gardening successfully here. Soil's depleted? Fertilizer. Squirrels destroy everything? Greenhouse. Compost won't make? Worm bin. One way or another I'm going to get around all the obstacles and grow some food and flowers.

And speaking of flowers! I found vases of tulips on closeout at the grocery store last week, got five of them. Once the flowers fade---sheesh, an open tulip is like an alien life form!! lol!!--I'll move the bulbs to potting soil and fertilize them. They'll have to live in the greenhouse until I figure out how to get them safely into the yard--probably have to build them a cage out of hardware cloth since they're totally edible and enticing to any digging burrowing critter, including rabbits, raccoons, and possums. But now I'll have tulips in the yard again! I'm reclaiming my life, one plant at a time!

More Seedses!!!

The Wild Garden Seeds order is in. I'm beginning to feel a sense of completion, like I'm close to having all the seeds I need, even though I'm not getting all the seeds I want. One more order to come from Baker Creek, with beans and other warm season crops.

It made me feel more secure to get tomato seeds today. Isn't that funny? We don't live a tomato-dependent life. Gryph is sensitive to the acid in them and of course they're a nightshade, so they promote inflammation. We've gone for years not having them, but somehow in these uncertain times, we need them again. Knowing I have seeds eases an inner anxiety I didn't even know was there.

Good thing I checked the greenhouse today; the seedlings were sitting in water from yesterday. Guess they won't need anything more for a week or so. Had to get a couple extra trays to be able to get them out of the water. Dumped it and some extra soil onto the calendula and pea pots. 

Speaking of which--whatever is growing in the pot is not calendula. I suppose that first snowstorm took them out and what stayed is one of the weeds. And now that I'm looking at identification images, it's not chickweed either. Don't think I have chickweed in the yard, so I'm glad I bought a packet, along with another packet of calendula. The Seed Inventory just gets longer and longer!

What I haven't got and really need to is the sacred plants: White Sage, Sweetgrass, Tobacco. These are on the "definitely try again" list. 

Melons and Candy Roaster Squash are on the "I wish!" list. Also on that list? A big photo keeper from the craft store. I believe all the individual keepers will hold seed packets wonderfully well, and the outer container will keep everything together.

Been thinking about redoing the Seed Inventory to add space for the seed company's name. Right now it's driving me nuts to be unable to remember where I found bare-root sweetgrass several years ago. I don't wish to try reordering seeds in a year or two and not know where to look. The older I get, the more I notice that "how could I ever forget that?!" increasingly becomes "How I wish I could remember..." so I may as well do this right from the beginning and include the seed company. That way I can also compare things like seedling vigor, growth habits, whether the plants are true to the description, yields, time to harvest, etc. I don't know if my garden will become a reliable food source or not, but the more I pay attention and write things down, the better chance it has. 

I leave you with two pics. The greenhouse doesn't look like much but I think as it fills up it'll become more attractive. For now it's keeping both wind and squirrels off the plants and that's huge. The second pic is the lettuce sprouts which are making me smile bigtime.

 

Seedses!!!

 My Baker Creek order came today! I'll be back once I finish fondl---errr, sorting and organizing them.

Oh, I begin to think my teensiest sprouts in the greenhouse are lettuce after all; one finally pushed up the remains of a seed coat, and it's same color and texture as the remaining lettuce seeds, if rather larger--I guess it swelled with the moisture. Never been so micro-focused on seeds before!

Whoooot!!!!

Dog had to go out so I surfaced from my wish list. Filled a watering can with room temperature water, headed out, and discovered that an unheated greenhouse is a REALLY lovely thing. Not only are my peas now sprouting (undisturbed by squirrels!!!) in a couple of pots, I have carrots sprouting!!! Whooooot!!!! Odd that they're even faster than the lettuce, especially since the carrot seeds are older, but hey--I'll take it!!! And when they're big enough for my camera to distinguish, I'll post pics!

Well, can you blame me?

 **logs into Baker Creek's seed catalog to dream for a couple minutes**

**discovers the "wish list" function**

**disappears for hours**

Oh, it's been a difficult week, for sure

Hello again. I come to you much subdued, physically, in a very bad fibromyalgia flare. Exactly nothing has happened in the way of physical gardening over the past week, although I am happy to tell you that I will soon have to update the seed inventory. I have orders in with Wild Garden Seeds and Baker Creek Seeds, both, and can't wait to get the seeds into my hands! Worked around the dreaded "out of stock" and the even MORE dreaded "out of money" to get more peas, lots of greens, zucchini, and watermelon seeds!

Greenhouse flooring continues to accumulate. I finally have a way to reuse frozen food boxes!! You can't recycle them, you know, because they're waxed. But they can be an underlayer for the greenhouse floor! At this point the squirrels are still ignoring the greenhouse and I am heartily cheered by that. It's beginning to look like a second (bigger!) greenhouse is definitely in the works for us, so I'm accumulating all the cardboard I can. And while we are in limbo, I keep plottin' and plannin' what to do next. 

My favorite daydream right now is a dozen 20" pots lined up along the wheelchair ramp, beans closest to the ramp, squashes or melons or tomatoes in the center of the pots, herbs at the front edge. Haven't decided whether to use hardware cloth or bird netting to keep the squirrels out. I just know that the idea of fresh green beans dangling over the inside of the railings tickles me enormously--and melons! I ordered a variety called Tigger, little half pound stripey melons, and it would be a kick to have them dangling over the railings!!

Inside the greenhouse, I have pea sproutage. It's very slow, just the tiniest green tips at soil level, but I think every warm day will see them stretch a little more into the light. The one day I was able to check on them, I noticed the green house was noticeably warmer than the outside temp, so the cover really does work--probably not least because it cuts off the wind. It's supposed to hit 60F here Wednesday, so I'll take a watering can out. Right now I'd rather use a watering can than the hose--I can make the water room temp, which will help germination.

The top of the fridge is home to my slowly growing accumulation of toilet paper cores. I have one deli chicken container filled with them and ready for soil (when I'm up to mixing it), and a few more cores waiting to be cut for the next container. My big experiment is to wrap the tops and bottoms of the cores with masking tape, to see if it helps them hold together longer. When I've used them in the past they've fallen apart as I tried to lift them out of their containers for transplanting, which leaves the roots truly vulnerable and sets the plants back. We'll see whether masking tape is my secret ingredient this year.

As far as big melons, like watermelons, we have a driveway which runs through the back yard. Most of it is covered with dirt and plants, but the part which gets the strongest western sun exposure is still bare. I want to plant watermelons on either side and let them run rampant on the concrete. My aim is twofold: reduce the heat the driveway throws into the yard (because those huge leaves will shade it), and give the melons someplace clean and hot to grow upon. It might be that year by year, foot by foot, I'll reclaim the concrete for gardening purposes. Always have loved container gardening, and letting vines spill out onto clean concrete speaks to my soul.

Most of the usual gardening suspects are out of the question for us. Food allergies dictate that we not grow corn, broccoli, eggplant, cabbage, so many veggies... better to focus on what we can grow, I think. Gryph, although sensitive to tomatoes, is willing to try them on a very limited basis. We haven't figured out where to plant asparagus and it might very well go into the middle of some of the wheelchair-ramp-pots, since like the tomatoes we can only handle it in limited amounts. I'm seriously considering getting an indoor light set-up to grow baby salad greens until the greenhouse is warm enough (it's unheated), but the question there is how to keep Cleo (the cat) from digging in the trays... maybe bird netting will discourage her the way it discourages squirrels... the trouble is, it also discourages me!

Which reminds me, some gardening did happen--I pulled the netting out of the way and pruned the raspberry canes in the giant stump planter out front. The general rule is to cut them back to 12" in January, and this year I remembered! Also pruned the grape vine pretty severely. I didn't get either task done in January of 2020 and was startled how poorly the plants did compared to the years when I've remembered. Got my fingers crossed I'll be well enough in March to fertilize them all on time.

And that brings up a neglected subject. I've been reluctant to spend money on fertilizers, especially organic fertilizers, but now it's money-where-your-mouth-is time. I have to adjust my thinking from "omg that's shockingly expensive!" to "okay, yes, this is a necessary expenditure." You do get what you pay for, and you certainly can't get organic fertilizers from the dollar store. If our bodies do better when we eat organic food--and Gryph and I have experimented enough over the years to be certain this is true for us--then we need to get organic fertilizer.

I think the tide has turned for me, and my trips to Michaels or JoAnn Fabrics have lost their luster. Now I very much want to spend every spare cent on pots, soil, seeds, fertilizer, and whatever it takes to keep my garden safe from squirrels--be that another greenhouse, hardware cloth, or bird netting. Time for me to reclaim this great love of my heart and rebuild my yard into the paradise I've always wanted it to be, one pot at a time.

Seed Inventory

I need to figure out how to make a good seed inventory. Being a visually oriented person, I'm inclined to use color to separate various categories, and I also want to keep track of various seed vendors. I love Strictly Medicinal, Baker Creek, and Wild Garden Seed. These highly ethical, non-GMO, organic seed companies have been my go-to source for years. Here are their addies:

Strictly Medicinal https://strictlymedicinalseeds.com/

Baker Creek https://www.rareseeds.com/

Wild Garden Seeds https://www.wildgardenseed.com/

It was a shock to me, since I tend to save seed from year to year, when I ordered my first seeds and saw the 2020 prices. Holy cannoli, they have gone UP! They've gone up enough that I don't wish to duplicate anything I already have, thus the need for a seed inventory.

Basic organization says I need one for cool season and one for warm season. I've never had a greenhouse before so I don't know what kind of overlap there might be, but since my brain is already used to dividing the seeds by season, that's what I'll do. Then of course there are the broad categories, greens, herbs, legumes, melons, squashes, roots, etc. I'll be leaving out many of my favorite plants because Gryph and I have developed allergies or intolerances to them over the years.

Ah, tomatoes are still on the list after all. I just asked Gryph, and he's willing to take a chance. Banana peppers are on the list also, and brussels sprouts, maybe tat soi or bok choy, turnips--ha! I should have asked for this list a while ago!--kohlrabi, asparagus, beans, peas, potatoes, carrots, beets, cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon (but only red! not orange or yellow or white, lol), tomatillos, ground cherries (the sweet version of tomatillos), "bell" squash (pattypan!), zukes, yellow straight neck, acorn squash, delicata (my favorite), butternut, and herbs: sage, parsley, cilantro, and rosemary. This is a pretty good start!

Annnd here is our first obstacle: looking for a link to Royal Golden watermelon so I can show you what Gryph and I are intrigued with, I hit the barrier, "Out of stock." Who knows how many times I'm going to come up against that as I try to figure out my seed orders? This past year of unprecedented demand, as people everywhere suddenly bought seeds and planted gardens in an effort to deal with the pandemic, has truly changed the seed world. Prices are up, availability is down. Seed surfing is going to take a while!

I confess it's more fun than figuring out the inventory, but I do have to do so before I can start buying more seeds. **sheepish smile** Guess I'll haul out some paper and get started.

Making Progress

Things are humming along here in That House; we were approved for help with new paint; we've applied for weatherization help; the electric company automatically applied the deposit to all bills; the rose on the side fence burst into pink-petaled glory; another completely unknown to me shrub burst into intoxicatingly beautiful fragrant white bloom. Yesterday Gryph moved the heaviest boxes for me and suddenly we both have reading material AND there is open floor space in the dining room!

We've picked up a couple of garden tools and some seeds and soil at Home Depot, and I have started laying out my first garden bed: along the front of the front porch, eastern exposure, part sun part shade. Neighbor called the city to trim her street tree, a green ash that had many dead limbs, and I was lucky enough to get the biggest branches and plenty of leaves. The branches will be the walls of my raised bed and the leaves will give me organic matter. One of the new tools is called a Garden Hound (think generic Garden Claw) and I am going to be turning soil as I can today. We have some newspaper to use as a mulching layer and three bags of topsoil to cover the whole thing.

I was highly amused at myself to check out my seed packets last night and discover that I have three packs of cilantro seed and four of basil seed; any guesses on my favorite herbs? lol! I also have doubles on carrots and green beans.

I don't know what summer gardening will be like in this yard; I don't know if it will be too hot for peas and spinach or not, but I'm going to try them--tis the only way to find out, and gardening's always a crap shoot anyhow. If you don't take a risk, you don't win.. and planting seeds is about as risky as I get, lol...

I know, I know... I have this image of myself as highly risk-averse, and here I go haring off to be with someone I met online, and then we buy a house that is falling down.... and somehow those don't change my basic self-image as someone who is risk-averse, lol....