Transplanting and the Polar Vortex

Hi! I haven't been here in a week because I haven't been able to garden. I did manage to buy a small growlight (LED) and I've clamped it on my kitchen dishrack (which is a two level over-the-sink rack). The seedlings get some light every day now, not ideal, but the best I can manage--and the dishes get washed at night after the seedlings go back to the top of the fridge.

The Costata Romanesco squash is vigorous and exuberant, roots coming out everywhere, so tonight I repotted them into giant styrofoam drink cups--nothing like recycled and free! It's a good thing I only started three squash plants, sheesh. Hope the cups will do them for a couple weeks. We did have to laugh when we saw all the roots poking out of the sides of the toilet paper cores! They won't be able to do that with the cups, but they will have five times the soil.

Sweetpeas have to get potted up next, because their roots are coming out the bottom of the tubes already.

I think I may be saving toilet paper and paper towel cores permanently now, because that was the easiest potting up I've ever done--just lifted the whole thing into the cup and filled around the tube with wet potting soil. I do have sixpacks coming, but there's no obligation to use them all or to use them exclusively. They'll be quite convenient for carrying seedlings to other gardens and I can keep using the cores here.

The polar vortex has called a precipitate halt to my outdoor plans. I'm not safe walking through uneven snow, so I can't get to the greenhouse and that means my plans to bring seedlings inside have come to naught. So now we are having a big experiment: will lettuce and pea seedlings survive two weeks frozen solid? They do fine at freezing, but how will they do in single digit frozen nights when the wind chills are below zero? Luckily I have plenty of seeds, right? I was going to succession plant anyway, but I tell you what, if these seedlings survive the bitter cold, I am definitely gonna save seeds from them and plant it again! Polar vortexes come 6 to 8 times a decade so plants which are hardy enough to survive them will be a treasure!

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!

Sproutage!!

So hello!! Top of the fridge is evidently a great place for sproutage! Today we have Salad Mix from Wild Garden Seed; these are most likely lettuces, with other greens still to come up:

And here we have mixed seedlings, Cupani Sweetpea from WGS on the right, Florist Pepperbox Poppy from Baker Creek on the left. The middle row, Apple Blossom Snapdragon from BC, is yet to pop:

You can see my goofy baked goods and deli chicken trays and my ever-so-high-tech seedling pots. The masking tape is holding its own! Pots in the greenhouse are falling apart but these are just fine. We're not going through the toilet paper fast enough to satisfy my seedling needs (it might be pretty awful if we were!!), so today I bought two 72 cell propagators. The cells are hexagonal rather than square and I don't honestly know if they're all they're cracked up to be--supposed to promote healthier roots that don't get rootbound, but who knows, really?--the main selling point was the price, only $5 each. I'll look online to find something cheaper, since I have to start hundreds of seeds, but for now these will do.

Don't know exactly how many people I want this garden to feed. It's going to be divvied up across three widely-spaced yards, although the third garden may turn out to be pretty small. We're calling it Sisters Seed Co-op. It'll meet multiple functions; food, flowers, medicinal herbs, groundcover, wildlife habitat, windbreak, and Native American sacred plants. The white sage plants (Strictly Medicinal Seeds) are coming in March and the Sweetgrass plants (Prairie Moon Nursery) in May; the Kansas native shrubs (Kansas Forest Service) will probably come in March as well, and will need some kind of protection from rabbits. Love those bunnies, but not enough to let them eat my baby shrubs--especially since once the shrubs get some height to them, their fruit will feed the rabbits just fine.

Got a shock when I checked out a local CSA. Under "what to expect" they had a list of veggies by month and even though their seedlings are already bigger than mine, it's nothing but greens until April, then radishes and peas, but nothing that I would consider substantial produce until JULY. No tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash until July! That isn't gonna work for me! If I'm starting seeds in February, I by golly want my first summer crops on the plants by May--because most crops are 75 to 90 days, and May marks 90 days. What this means is that I have to get serious about both growing space and lights, so that I can keep the summer plants inside until it's warm enough to put them in the greenhouse (mid-March). 

That's considerably more indoor growing than I had planned for and it'll be a challenge to find space for larger pots. Gryph and I are eyeing the laundry room, looking to see if we can make it work better and get shelves in which will hold the plants and give us storage both at once. 

Been planning on a lot of succession planting, so I guess I'll find out if planting now is a fool's errand or not... but honestly, the kid in me is so excited about seeds and seedlings that it's worth it. Hoping to be eating baby lettuce and needing to replant by the end of February, anyway! It's almost time to get fish emulsion so I can feed all those valiant little lettuce and pea plants growing in frozen soil in the greenhouse. It's supposed to drop to single digits by the end of this week, so I'll wait on that until it warms up again.

Wasn't sure I would ever be done buying seeds but when the next batch comes in the mail, I think that's it. This is all I can handle and more besides. Now I have to divert the money to seedling pots and potting soil, drip irrigation, 20 inch pots to go next to the wheelchair ramp, bird neeting to keep the squirrels out, and fertilizer.

Unexpected find as we were rummaging around in the laundry room--weed control fabric! That combined with the cardboard which is starting to come in from one of the co-op sisters who's moving into a new garden (with bonus house! Imagine!), should give me a head start on making a good-sized garden without digging or hoeing, always a consideration when one is disabled.

Going to do my best to keep this garden organic. Have omri-certified Neem oil and copper fungicide and will find an omri-certified fertilizer as well. The cardboard should eliminate needing to spray for weeds and should also defeat digging squirrels. We've used cardboard for the path from the steps to the trash can for several years now, and they ignore it as if it were concrete, so my hopes are up!

One final weird thing: the driveway runs from the street through the yard all the way to the back gate, and I lost the ability to keep it swept clean about six years ago. Mother Nature appreciated that. Between the silty dust that blows in on the wind and the fallen leaves each year, she's managed to lay down a three inch layer of topsoil over much of the driveway in the back yard. That's basically half an inch of new topsoil per year! We still have low spots where the elderberries came out, so that topsoil now has a destination, however slow I am to get it moved. We need a clean path with safe footing along the north side of the wheelchair ramp and space for all those 20' pots along the south side. . 

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!