March 12 catch up

Hmmmm. Good and bad alike. The bad astonished me. I started with clean new potting soil and clean new pots and got damping off anyway. **sigh** Probably gonna have to replant my last two top-of-the-fridge flats. But the flats in the greenhouse are doing really well. Wish now I had put them all out there to begin with.

My big lesson here is that I simply don't have adequate lights. The seedlings should have been well past the damping off stage by now but they're growing slowly--even the ones under lights--because it just isn't bright enough no matter what I do. I've spent that stimulus check four ways from Sunday already, but at this moment I truly want to spend it on a professional lighting set up. If I'm to be serious about growing part of our food and all of our flowers, then I need the proper tools for it.

The morning glories are well up and need to go out and get tons more light, but our very changeable forecast once again calls for freezing nights midweek. I'm thinking about repurposing a craft cart and using it to take the plants outside during the day, then bring them back in at night. It'll harden them off, which has to happen anyway.

Trip to the nursery netted me many herbs, including my favorite pineapple sage and a wonderful dark green parsley, a couple of lavenders, as well a flower, Dicentra (bleeding hearts). A trip to the grocery store netted me a Loring Peach tree. It's not a dwarf, so it could easily get to 15 feet. We honestly don't know where to put it. I'm thinking it'll have to go in the front yard. The back is full!

Lettuces are up in the greenhouse and so, it seems, are a few carrots (Cosmic Purple). The new beets and chards are up. Even the kohlrabi is up, but there is absolutely no sign of peas. That mystifies me. 

I have seen ants in the pots, so I am evidently not going to be able to escape them this year.

We're slowly expanding the garden floor in the back yard, just one layer right now, but it looks to me like a perfect berry bed. I want to get more raspberries and blackberries and see if I can keep them going. The harvests in years past were most wonderful; I want that again.

The lilac is planted in the front yard now and is leafing out. No sign yet of leaves on anything else. The back yard daffodils and crocus both bloomed on March 11.

I've been slowed down by illness and will have to make up for lost time as I can. Have held off on planting warm season crops because I have nowhere to put them yet--but once the midweek frosts are done, I can put them in the greenhouse.

Ooops! Need to catch up!

I see there's been a week between my posts. It's like I left y'all in limbo! So! I did get the potting soil, 3 bags of organic 50 quart from Miracle-Gro for $9 apiece (Costco is mah frien'!!). 50 quarts is 1.67 cubic feet, and I could have gotten 2 cubic foot bags of conventional at the hardware store, but they would have been $15 apiece and none of us could lift them.

When I opened the first bag I almost started singing. The organic potting mix is glorious!! Fine grained and smells wonderful, feels wonderful. It's brown instead of black and holds a LOT of water. 

The buckets have holes (courtesy Gryph) but I changed my mind about how I want to use them. One is now going to be dedicated to sweet peas because I don't want to take a chance on mixing them in with garden peas (sweet peas are toxic). The other may be a new potato bucket, but the starts I had are now in a restaurant to-go bag, a big clear one with handles. I just couldn't resist, lol. It's now out in the greenhouse and will get more potting soil as the leaves grow.

I've repotted the strawberries--such teeny lil things they are!!--and I've filled another flat of sixpacks with soil and seeds, part bok choi from Baker Creek, mostly salad mix from Wild Garden Seed.

Had to rearrange the garden corner of the kitchen. It still doesn't work quite right and I probably have to address that sometime in the next two weeks.

The 72 cell propagator on the fridge is filled with teensy herb sprouts, almost all of them up in just a week! But it's too soon to plant them out because we're due for frosty weather the 13th through 18th of March. After that they can all be potted up and moved to the greenhouse.

And now I think we're all caught up, at least until I plant something else!

Nick's Lilac

 Another absolutely gorgeous day! I watered the plants in the greenhouse, carried the salad mix flat (germination already!!) out to the greenhouse, and then Gryph and I did something we've been wanting to do for the longest time, planted Nick's Lilac in the front yard. 

It was originally a start from his grandmother's lilac bush. He and Cody brought it to me in a darling little hand-painted clay pot, and we transplanted it from pot to pot over the years. Some years it bloomed, some years it got caught by late frosts. This winter it was nearly dead from drought while I was pretty sick. We got it to come back with judicious amounts of water and energy work. It was already opening leaves when the polar vortex hit and I really thought it was a goner then, but I see that nothing keeps that lilac down! It's already breaking buds again, tiny green showing against the gray. I'm hoping so much that it will root deeply into the front yard and give us that glorious fragrance every spring. We mulched it with shredded junk mail and bills.

And now I have an empty pot for the beginning of my summer garden! Going to line them up along the wheelchair ramp and fill them to overflowing, using the railing as a trellis. There are two more pots in the back yard waiting to be emptied into the compost bin, and I'm seriously considering also repurposing the two in the greenhouse plus one more in the front yard.

Over the years, these large pots have gone from $8 apiece to $20 apiece, which is why I decided to repurpose the ones I have. I can start easily enough with four of them along the ramp, and fill in with smaller pots (which I had intended to do anyway). The two in the greenhouse are filled with peas and I'm thinking I'd like to let that crop grow and produce before we move the pots. Hot southern exposure on the driveway will be way better for squash and peppers than for peas! It'll be quite interesting to see how long the plants will produce in the greenhouse since the green fibers in the cover act as shadecloth. I may have to buy some actual shadecloth to keep the sun from frying my cool season veggies next month. Always interesting the first season of a new garden tool or technique, and I think the greenhouse counts as both.

I'm sorry to say we wore ourselves out and nothing else has been done in the garden today. I do need to get the morning glories into cups or pots this evening since they've been soaking quite a while. Hoping I can get that taken care of soon.

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** 

This is weird...

 A blank post from last week. How did that happen? I bet it was a day when I was having computer woes.

Reseeding

Replanted peas in the greenhouse today: De Grace in the long low pot, Carouby De Maussane in the two 24" pots, and Sugar Bon in the two square pots. Haven't decided whether to reuse the cardboard tube pots with all the non-sprouted carrots and beets; probably will. 

Calendula are sprouting well. The weather is too unsettled to plant them out yet. Even unheated, my laundry room is 20 degrees warmer than the greenhouse so putting them in the greenhouse won't work either. But that greenhouse will be getting lavender sooner rather than later, because I forgot to read the germinating instructions and they say 30-45 days in the fridge before planting. To me that says "cold stratification" and in nature, that would be cold moist stratification (snow and rain)--easy to get right now with freezing nights. I'll likely plant the lavender and prairie sage in the same flat, and search out any others I have which need stratification.

Today's seeds, in a 72 hex-cell propagator which is now on top of the fridge: creeping thyme, clary sage, aromatic aster, lemon bee balm, purple prairie clover, and marshmallow, plus the three peas mentioned above.

Next up: salad mix, lavender, and prairie sage.

Disappointment

I got to the greenhouse. Everything froze to death, except the unknown weeds in the big pot. (Man, weeds are hardy! They're alive all over the yard, too!) One flimsy layer of plastic just cannot do anything when the windchill is 29 below and the actual temp is -11F. I'm so disappointed for my tiny brave seedlings. Clearly I need to know well in advance of extreme events like polar vortexes, so I can save my plants when the next one happens.