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< | Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. The Old Guy's Garden Record Saturday, February 1, 2014 - Making a Posting "Out of Nothing at All" I usually try to have some upbeat, forward looking insights to share on the first of the month, but I'm pretty much coming up empty this morning. Like the old Air Supply hit, Making Love Out of Nothing At All, I'll attempt to share something of value "out of nothing at all." February is often a month that tests my patience. I've already started petunias, onions, and geraniums for our garden and am in the spirit to get things going. Unfortunately, most of the rest of what we'll need in transplants for our 2014 garden shouldn't be started quite this early. One group of plants I will get to start this month are our brassicas (or cole crops). While I usually seed a whole flat of broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and occasionally kohlrabi at one time in February, I'm going to give our cauliflower a two week head start. The longer seasoned cauliflower varieties often get caught by warm weather before we can harvest them. Building in a week or two will make for some big transplants, but may help us harvest more of the delicious vegetable before the heat of summer makes their heads turn yellow and go bitter.
• Moira (tomato) The Seed Savers Exchange online Annual Yearbook is in its first year, so there are still some bugs on the site. Images and text often overlap, images don't reliably load, and the current online ordering process is an absolute disaster. But it's a good first attempt that the SSE will hopefully refine in time. Okay, there's 494 words of "nothing at all" to begin the month.
I wrote yesterday that we'd not be planting much until we started our brassicas later this month. But our mail yesterday contained our backordered Patterson onion seed from Johnny's Selected Seeds. At one point last month, Johnny's had pushed back the shipping date for the yellow storage onion seed to March 1. They obviously hurried things up somehow, shipping the seed at the originally stated backorder date. But...I also noticed the seed tested out last October at 82% germination, so they may have had to dip into some seed heldover from last year to make things work. As long as the seed comes up fairly well, I'll be happy with it. So today I seeded more onions even though we have several flats of them started already. I really do want to try the Patterson variety. Since I didn't want or need another full flat of onions, I pulled out one of our very old half flats to do the planting this morning. Even using a half flat, I was going to have more space in it than I needed for the onions, hence the trip to the garage for celery and beet seed. I already had some leek seed in the kitchen freezer along with our onion seed. I ended up starting two rows of Patterson onions, a half row each of Blue Solaise leeks and Conquistador celery, and a row of Pacemaker III beets.
Note that there's a long forum page on the Garden Web of folks who wish PBS and/or WGBH would release a DVD or Blu-ray of the original, Jim Crockett Victory Garden episodes. The leeks and celery were just extras. I grew some last year, but didn't get either hilled properly, so I'd like to try them again. One of my grandfathers used to grow celery in an old, bottomless wash tub, adding soil to the tub to hill the celery as it grew. News Flash from the Washington Post: Groundhog Day 2014: Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow, 6 more weeks of winter Later... Around 5:30 pm I looked out our back window and saw the field next to us was filled with Canadian Geese. That's not all that uncommon, as the geese winter over in this area, possibly because of the warm waters of Turtle Creek Reservoir. There just seemed to be a lot more geese than usual gleaning the field this afternoon. Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - Starting Some Herbs
The weather bureau is predicting 3-8" of accumulation...over a thin sheet of ice. Annie and I both slipped, but didn't fall while hauling stuff in from the car this afternoon. Before the snow got started today, I turned my attention to getting some herbs started for this spring. I'd started a couple of small pots of thyme yesterday and seeded parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano, and dill today. The plantings did require a little planning, as thyme requires light to germinate, but likes rather cool temperatures (50-75o F). So the pots of thyme got covered with Glad Wrap (held onto the pot with a rubber band) and just went into a flat with other plants on our plant rack, as our basement currently runs around 65o.
At the very bottom of the plant rack photo at right are two sage plants from cuttings that I moved to pots yesterday. The sage was very slow to root, but it appears that the two (out of four cuttings I took) will make nice plants. Although it doesn't show very well in the photo at right, all of our flats of onions got a haircut yesterday. When our onions begin to get floppy and fall over, I trim them to about 3" tall with scissors. I also trim onions that didn't quite get their seed head out of the soil. And we still have the half flat of Patterson onions I started Sunday on the top heat mat of our plant rack. A couple of herbs (or spices) I didn't start this week are basil and paprika. I start our basil about the same time as our tomatoes (in March). Paprika comes from dried paprika peppers, and our peppers also get started sometime in March. With all the snow outside, I thought it might be comforting to share a few parsley and basil photos.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - More Snow
I found it interesting and disappointing last night that only CBS and NBC news had stories about the snowstorm. ABC, CNN, Fox, the New York Times, and the Washington Post apparently didn't have a clue, or didn't care, about a major snowstorm covering much of the midwest until the snowflakes began falling on them.
Having started down the treacherous path of putting money into a very old vehicle, it appears that I'll be putting new tires on the usually dependable truck and getting the welds fixed on one side of the bed. It should serve for hauling chores for several more years. And while I'm ranting, I did send GM the URL for the story linked above. What I learned from that was really disappointing. It would seem that no one at GM, from CEO Mary Barra's office on down, knows how to read! At least, their reading comprehension skills seem limited, as all of their responses to me never addressed the issues I presented them. Note that GM's sales were down 12% in January. GM blamed bad weather, but a mechanic I know and I think something else may have had an effect. I'll get back to gardening stuff tomorrow. When I went out to start and defrost our car and truck this morning, I also brought in cauliflower seed from our garage freezer. Thursday, February 6, 2014 - Starting Cauliflower (a bit early)
I'm starting cauliflower a bit earlier this year than usual. Our cauliflower always seems to mature one or two weeks after our main heads of broccoli, and I'd like to have them come in at about the same time. Getting the crop to come in a couple of weeks earlier may also avoid some of the disappointments we've had with bitter yellow heads of cauliflower when the weather really gets hot. For today's planting, I used another half flat with four fourpack inserts (#804 four-cell inserts, 32 cells/standard 1020 seed flat), giving me room for sixteen plants. While we usually put seven or eight cauliflower in our main garden planting, we often use extras in a row in our large East Garden plot.
Please note that in seeding processes when I refer to potting soil, potting medium or mix, I'm talking about a planting medium that has been sterilized to prevent damping off fungus. I ended up seeding eight cells of Amazing, six cells of Fremont, and just two cells of a new (to us) variety we're trying for the first time this year, Violet of Sicily. All three varieties ripen about the same time (65-75 days after transplanting). Amazing has been, well, amazing for us in producing good, early heads of cauliflower. We tried some Fremont a few years ago and found that it produced almost equally well. The Violet of Sicily is a purple cauliflower that I'm trying just for the fun of it. The half flat got covered with a clear humidome (after some serious patching) and went onto a soil heating mat in the basement under our plant lights. Brassicas really don't need bottom heat or light to germinate. There just happened to be space available over half of one of the soil heating mats. We won't be seeding the rest of our brassicas and possibly even a few more cells of cauliflower until later this month, usually around February 20. Friday, February 7, 2014 - Brrr...
The Patterson onions that I started on Sunday appear to be germinating at a good rate. A few beet plants (not shown) have poked their way through the soil as well. The leeks and celery aren't showing anything yet and may not, as I used five year old seed for those two plantings. Our Tuesday planting of herbs isn't showing any growth unless you count the mold or moss I quickly dispatched this morning with a spray of captan. I've taken to keeping an old spray bottle filled with a mixture of pyrethrin
With all the snow this winter and the truck breaking down this week, I'm back to shopping for a 4x4 truck. I've switched brands, but am still having trouble finding a basic regular cab, long bed, 4X4 pickup truck I want and can afford. All the auto makers show them on their sites, but they're pretty scarce on the lots of auto dealers. Saturday, February 8, 2014 - Thyme is Up
It appears that I was a bit too generous with the thyme seed. I'm not very experienced at growing herbs and haven't had a lot of luck getting some of them to germinate well. Obviously, the 2012 dated seed from both Shumway and Ferry-Morse (via a Walmart seed rack) is quite viable. In a few days, I'll have to harden my heart and thin the plants to only a few in each pot. As soon as possible, I'll move one or two plants from each pot to other 3" square plastic pots, as that size pot should be ideal for the thyme until I transplant them into the garden. And yes, I had to work really hard until now not to go for the bad joke of stuff like "thyme's up" and "thyme to transplant."
While the southeast is getting another winter storm, we continue having cold, clear days. But the 10-day forecast for our area shows promise of some warmer weather soon. I've kept busy watering, re-seeding where necessary (I dropped a half tray of herb plants!), transplanting, and generally babying the transplants we have started under plant lights, but haven't posted much here. That's because I got serious last Friday about replacing our fourteen year old truck.
I got home from my buying trip well after dark last night. My wife naturally wanted to see the new truck. So, I slipped it into the low 4-wheel drive setting, and we drove through the snow back to the barn to feed a cat who lives there. Driving to the barn in heavy snow or in muddy conditions used to be an invitation for an expensive extraction from a tow truck and/or winch. The new truck handled the short trip like a champ. While it's always tough to dirty up a new truck, the Chevy designation for this model is a "work truck," and that's how we'll use it. Hauling lumber, compost, topsoil, gravel, and manure are all in its near future. We did some unusual financing on the truck, so I still have to sign the auto loan papers today. Then there will be the necessary title and license plates to do. Possibly one of the nicest surprises of the experience was that my truck insurance only went up $41 semi-annually. So when I'm done joyriding, I'll get back to garden writing again. I recently learned of a really promising new way to propagate gloxinias from a reader in Australia. Thursday, February 13, 2014 - Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook
I usually find a variety or two in the yearbook to order each year. This time around I'm looking to re-supply with Spanish Skyscraper pea seed. Another SSE member sent a small, free sample of the pea seed with my order for other stuff last year. I liked the quality of the peas produced but will have to figure out a place for a very tall trellis. Spanish Skyscraper peas can vine well over eight feet high. Our planting last year, shown at right, outgrew our trellis before a strong wind storm bent them over and effectively ended their growing season. The yearbook, sans the great cover art, is also available online for the first time this year. I wrote about our listings in the yearbook the first of this month, so I won't repeat that here.
I should add a few words of thanks here to the Seed Savers Exchange. While I was a bit miffed at first when I saw that they'd bumped my listing for the Eclipse pea from the online and later, print yearbook, they actually did me a favor. Eclipse is a patent protected variety (PVP) owned by the Seminis/Monsanto conglomerate. Without SSE's wise intervention, I might have received some nasty news from Monsanto's legal department. Note that one needs to be a Seed Savers Exchange member to order from the yearbook (but not from their online store). Membership runs $40 per year with a "Fixed Income" membership also available at $30 per year. To order "Limited Quantity" varieties from the yearbook, one needs to be a "listed member." Listed members are folks who offer their saved seed through the yearbook. That provision is to protect endangered varieties that need to go into the hands of experienced seed savers so they can grow out and re-offer the variety in future years.
Valentine Reminder While I suspect you might still get flowers delivered by tomorrow from 1-800-Flowers.com If all else fails and you have a good printer, let me suggest visiting Laura Strickland's My Cute Graphics site for some Valentine clip art for a do it yourself card. I like her Brown Owl Hugging a Heart graphic. Friday, February 14, 2014 - Valentine's Day
Propagating Gloxinias with Flower Stem Cuttings Kevin Maciunas, a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, recently wrote me and shared the really interesting way he propagates gloxinia plants. Rather than relate my second hand impression of what he does, I'm going to be lazy and quote parts of his emails.
I found his technique intriguing, and even searched (in vain) through the coffee grounds in our compost bucket for our last, and only trimmed gloxinia stem. I didn't find it, and since we're currently bloom challenged, I'll need to wait until another one of our gloxinias blooms again to try flower stem propagation. Kevin sent along a couple of photos of his technique:
I found it interesting that Kevin noted, "But the dormancy thing is the Gloxinia lottery, in so far as I can remember anyway!" I have to agree with him, as we seem to lose far too many plants during dormancy. I pestered Kevin with questions for several days, and he, obligingly answered them all.
My thanks go out to Kevin for sharing his propagation method and photos with me and our Senior Gardening readers. For now, I'm just going to link to this posting from the propagation section of our gloxinia feature story. I want to try the method myself, photographing it at various stages of rooting, corm formation, and eventually getting the plant into soil before adding it to the article so that I can describe it from firsthand knowledge. But my current reaction is to be simply blown away by what appears to be a much easier way to propagate gloxinias when compared to leaf cuttings. It's interesting to me that it was just a bit over a year ago that another gloxinia grower from Australia, Robyn Wood, shared some gorgeous photos of his gloxinias that grow outside year round in Sidney, Australia. From what Kevin wrote, he's in a region where outside, year round growing isn't possible. Update
When I checked my email this morning, there was a new message from Kevin with a great shot (through heavy glass and water, no less) of a tiny gloxinia plant forming in the water at the base of one of his cuttings. I did massage the image a in Photoshop to bring up the plant leaves a bit. I used its default (auto) setting under "Image>Adjustments>Levels" with what I think are good results. That tool can also put some strange color casts on images at times, though. One More Thing We're supposed to get another 3 inches of fresh snow today with 2-3 more inches coming later this weekend!
The title of a gardening article in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times proclaimed, All that snow might force gardeners to wait a little longer to get growing. This winter's heavy snow accumulations could "prolong the drying process necessary to begin spring planting," according to Loyola University Chicago Urban Agriculture Coordinator, Kevin Erickson. One tip in the article noted that "Mulch, typically a tool for healthy growing, may lock in too much moisture as well," with Erickson recommending "raking it away to dry out soil more quickly after the snow melts and mulch thaws." A phone conversation yesterday with my sister who lives outside Merrifield, Minnesota, reminded me that lots of folks in northern climes won't see the ground again until spring. Like Merrifield, many places remain snow covered from the first snowfall of winter until a spring thaw comes. And in a news flash that could be headlined, Stay Out of the Garage, winter cold and snow cover pushed a skunk to enter our garage Thursday night in search of food. Dogfood dishes were moved around and emptied, with the skunk leaving its scent in the garage and on several of our dogs who hang out there. I need to build a new, slightly larger (and hopefully lighter) cold frame soon. Such projects are usually started in the garage, but I'll have to wait a bit until the odor clears to begin. I may try using 2x2's for the new frame instead of the 2x4's used in our old cold frame to make it a bit easier to move around. I've also toyed with the idea of using PVC pipe for the cold frame, but attaching the clear plastic to such a frame could be a problem, as the necessary clamps are rather expensive. Part of the reason for the early interest in a new cold frame is that we've seeded far more onions this year than usual. Flats of onions take up a lot of precious space under our plant lights, but they can go outside pretty early with a good cold frame over them. The last couple of years, I've set up our cold frame around March 1, although I had to bring trays of plants inside several nights each year.
The herbs I started this month have come up well. I'm still waiting on some parsley and other stuff to germinate, but those were the pots I let flop off a bench and had to reseed a few days ago. I'm going to be very busy very soon splitting up the community pots and getting our herbs into individual pots or fourpack cells. Some of the petunias I started in early January in egg cartons are also ready to be moved to larger quarters. Sunday, February 16, 2014 - Uppotting Petunias
I'd previously trimmed most of our egg cartons to ten cells long so they would fit in a standard 1020 flat. When I pulled the flat of petunias out from under our plant lights today, the egg cartons were barely discernible in many places. These were some healthy petunias. I started with a a standard 1020 flat with a #804 sheet insert. It has eight four-cell divisions, providing space for 32 plants. Since these plants were well past germination stage, I used an unsterilized mix of peat moss and potting soil for the transplanting.
Once the plant and root system is freed from the egg carton, I make a hole in the soil in the fourpack cell with my fingers, push the plant into the hole, and move and firm the surrounding soil around it.
Some of the petunias are already fairly large. As soon as they begin to fill their fourpacks with roots, I'll begin moving some of them into ten inch hanging basket pots, three or four plants per pot. I love having our back porch surrounded with baskets of petunias, and the hummingbirds that visit our feeders seem to appreciate them as well. I ended up spending a very pleasant hour to an hour and a half uppotting the petunias. Processing the photos and writing up the activity took an equal amount of time! (And I still enjoy processing images and writing and coding web pages.) While I've invested a good bit of time in growing our own petunias, our cash outlay for them is rather small. I buy some fresh seed each year, but use old seed as well that we keep in frozen storage. The egg cartons don't add any cost to the project, but I did use a brand new insert today (around 80¢ to a dollar) and some potting mix. And of course, there is the cost of running our plant lights, something I'd be doing anyway, though, for our other plants. Compared to buying plants at a garden center, we will at least break even on growing our own Supercascade, Double Cascade, Celebrity, and Carpet petunias this year. The seed for the varieties planted this year came from Twilley Seed (who sadly, are not a Senior Gardening affiliated advertiser). Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - A Few Nice Days
We still have a heavy blanket of snow on the ground, and of course, the ground remains frozen. As all of the snow melts off, folks downstream are going to face some serious flooding. But ponds and reservoirs in our area will have their depleted levels improved a bit from the runoff. Saving Paper Cups for Cutworm Collars
We've experimented with using old gallon milk jugs, flat cardboard with a hole cut in the middle for the plant stem, and homemade paper cutworm collars over the years, but settled on the used coffee cups because of their effectiveness and availability. (I almost always have a cup of coffee with me when I go to town.)
I'm mentioning this idea now, well before planting time, as there's still plenty of time to begin saving cutworm collars for this spring. We start saving early, as we put out a lot of broccoli, cauliflower, and pepper plants in our various garden plots. Since our tomato plants are pretty robust when we transplant them, we've not found cutworm collars necessary for them. Some gardeners find cutworm protection for tomatoes essential, though. Most of our tomato plants don't go into our main, raised garden bed where we seem to have the most trouble with cutworms. Moles Note that our use of Milky Spore mentioned earlier has been more for control of moles than cutworms in our garden plots. The product does cut down on the number of cutworms present, but doesn't give us the total control we need to prevent the remaining cutworms from mowing down freshly transplanted crops. It does a great job of discouraging the moles.
Leslie was absolute death on critters. I used to despair at the holes she dug in the yard going after moles. She also kept our property clear of raccoons, skunks, and rabbits. When Leslie passed away at seventeen years of age, we went through a number of years with an exploding mole population. Milky Spore helped keep the moles out of the garden plots, but was too expensive to use over our entire property. We tried a variety of mole control products, including mole traps
Petra, and later Daisy, a stray who showed up a year ago, have once again pretty well rid our property of moles. As when Leslie patrolled our yard, I again have to tour the property somewhat regularly with a garden cart of soil, filling in holes where they've dug up moles. But I think we're (they're) thinning out the moles. Of course, I also have to take the same garden cart around the property each spring picking up bones. Area hunters, apparently poaching an extra deer or two out of season (which I don't mind at all if they're taking them to put meat on the table), often field dress their kill, leaving behind the legs and tail of the deer which the dogs drag into the yard to gnaw on. One foolish hunter last fall did a skillful job of skinning a deer and apparently hanging it to dry in the woods, only to have Petra drag it into the yard! Picking up a load of fifty pounds of deer bones isn't all that unusual for us. We're actually quite lucky and blessed to live out in the country where our dogs can roam free. We occasionally have to pen or chain a dog that gets too aggressive with visitors. It's a pretty good life for them and us as well. Thursday, February 20, 2014 - Almost Time to Spray Dormant Oil on Apple Trees
We have a warm, rainy, and windy day today. With temperatures slightly over 60o F and intermittent showers, our snow cover is nearly gone. Looking back towards the barn and pond (from the same window where I take our daily garden shot), one can still see some snow in shady areas and ice on the pond.
To spray dormant oil on apple trees in winter, one needs a 24 hour window of above freezing weather, no rain, and preferably, little wind. I generally look for daytime temperatures of at least 40o F. I usually get such a day or two in February or March. While the temperature today would be good for spraying, the rain (which would wash off the dormant oil) and winds howling at a steady 30-40 MPH make spraying inadvisable. The forecast for tomorrow calls for clear skies and a high of 50o F with an overnight low just above freezing. Wind speeds are predicted to still be strong, but I may be able to spray early or late in the day when the wind usually dies down some. Generally, one can spray a fairly strong solution of dormant oil on apple trees right up until just before blooming. Dilute solutions may also prove effective after bloom drop when the trees have leafed out, but one has to be careful with the strength of the solution to not harm the tree leaves.
The Garden Web has a couple of good forums going on Spray Programs for Apples and Spray Schedules for Fruit Trees. Update: The dormant oil went on the trees late in the day Friday (21st) when the wind finally died down. Disclaimer We've had varied results over the years with apple trees. I'm not an expert on apples. For that matter, I have no agricultural or horticultural degrees. I'm just a retired teacher who enjoys gardening who is thrilled when we get a good crop of apples.
So while I write this blog with some confidence when discussing carrots and tomatoes and melons, my experience with apple trees has been spotty at best. Chick Days at Tractor Supply I don't typically write about advertising promotions on this site, but I received an interesting special offer from our Tractor Supply Company affiliate program last week. I signed up for it because the subject of the offer brought back pleasant memories. TSC is now advertising its Chick Days With many city dwellers now keeping a few laying hens in the back yard, I thought a mention of Chick Days might be in order.
Anyway, the best book I've found on getting into raising chickens is still The Family Poultry Flock
Moving the cauliflower to a full flat made a problem I knew was coming apparent. I'm out of space under our plant lights, and I still need to start lots of other transplants in the next few weeks. I brought this problem on myself by starting way too many onions. I was unsure of the viability of some old onion seed I had on hand and started a test flat of it last December. It grew. Then in January I started our regular seeding of onions, but added another flat of new varieties we're trying this year. And finally, some backordered onion seed came in late but just barely in time to use, so I seeded some of it in a half flat. So now, I have almost three and a half flats of onion seedlings when just over one flat is what I usually put out in our garden and no space left under our plant lights.
Our three full flats of onions all got a haircut today before being moved to the sunroom. I have some very large geraniums that need to be repotted that will probably join the onions on the sunroom shelf.
While I was in town today, I picked up another bag of potting soil. I'd gotten a bag last week to use for seeding, but wanted a different kind for our geraniums and other flowers. For direct seeding, I want potting soil without any fertilizer pellets in it, as they can burn germinating seed. But for our hanging baskets, and especially for the geraniums that desperately need repotting, I like the stuff with fertilizer pellets in it. Since the bags of potting soil had been stored outside at the stores where I bought them, both got to thaw out a bit on our back porch this afternoon. With space available on our plant rack after moving the onions upstairs, I seeded a flat of brassicas this afternoon. I started twelve cells each of Premium Crop and Goliath Later Just at sunset, wind speeds dropped to about 4 MPH. I was able to get a good coating of dormant oil spray on our apple trees.
Since I'd just watered the geraniums yesterday, I was able to put a bit of potting soil in the bottom of each new pot, squish the plant's roots across the pot, and add a bit more soil so the geraniums were lower in their new pots than in the old ones. The only problem I encountered with the transplanting was that the bottom half of the bag of potting soil was still somewhat frozen. While outside, I noticed that some of our garlic had tips emerging. A month or so ago, I thought I saw a garlic tip up. I didn't get a picture of it then, and when I returned the next day when it was much colder, the tip was gone. I suspect garlic may be able to pull its tips back down a bit at times, although I've not read that anywhere. But I could definitely "row" our row of elephant garlic. Had I been a bit more patient yesterday, I could have had a perfect day today for spraying our apple trees with dormant oil. As it was, I got the spray on last evening at dusk. But today's warm temperatures with no wind would have been perfect. Of course, temperatures are predicted to crash this evening with tomorrow's high temperature being 25-30o less than today. And if I'd forgotten, the sight of the pond behind our house still frozen was a quick reminder it's still winter, and will be for a month or more. I also remembered this morning to move our new snapdragon seed from its dark, cool, basement storage area to the freezer. Most seed packets suggest freezing snapdragon seed for at least 48 hours before seeding it. Since our snapdragon seed saved from previous years is already in the freezer, that job is done. We still have several weeks to go before it will be time to start our tomatoes, peppers, and melons. In the intervening weeks, I'll be getting some more flowers started. I finished off my gardening chores for the day by applying a coat of Rust-Oleum Sunday, February 23, 2014 - Winter Weather Returns
After almost a week of moderate temperatures, we're back to winter weather today. From the Weather Channel's 10-Day Forecast, it appears we're in for a lot of cold, gray days before winter gives way to spring.
I did move an extra thermometer to the area, just to make sure I wasn't freezing our precious plants. It read 61o F a few minutes ago, so we're okay for now. But I may have to move the flats to a warmer space early this week with an overnight low of 8o F predicted for Tuesday morning. Thinking of Peas It's a bit too early to plant peas here. Two years ago in the warm winter that preceded the drought of 2012, we planted peas on February 28! Last year under more normal conditions, our peas didn't go into the ground until March 10. And the way the weather is currently going, we may plant our peas much later this spring. But I'm already thinking about planting peas. What got me going on this subject is that I realized last week that I hadn't yet ordered any Spanish Skyscraper peas for this season. We received a free sample of them last year along with some other peas we'd ordered from a fellow Seed Savers Exchange member. I had just a little space for them at the end of our pea trellis, and the peas grew well until they got blown over and off the trellis in a wind storm. But the few peas we got from the vines were excellent. Doing a little research on the pea, I found that the Spanish Skyscraper pea variety was refined by Ken Allen in Ontario, Canada. Various blog and forum postings relate that the vines can grow quite tall, with six feet being fairly normal and one forum writer telling of vines seventeen feet tall. Our small planting last year reached a foot or two above our five foot high trellis before they got blown over. Jennifer Sanders, who blogs under the moniker of "Ferdzy" on Seasonal Ontario Food has a posting about growing peas that includes her experience with the variety and an email about the variety from Ken Allen.
I also included with my order a freebie packet of the Earlirouge tomato variety we saved seed from last season for the first time since 1988. Maybe next year I'll need to make a packet template for Spanish Skyscraper pea seed. Our main planting of peas this year will include Champion of England, Mr. Big Technical Note
Sometimes I find that I'm just sticking in words to be consistent in having a mouseover for each photo. Other times, the text can be quite helpful in describing a photo. My current web editor, Adobe Dreamweaver 11.5, doesn't support such additions (that I can find, anyway), so I have to drop under the standard design mode (WYSIWYG) into the html code to add the image title. It's not hard. It just takes a little time...and care. One incorrect character can really do strange things to a web page. Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - A Seed Swap
I printed up seed packets for some of our favorite varieties of saved, open pollinated vegetable seed to share with other area gardeners. I even included a few packets of our precious, saved gloxinia flower seed. Printing and filling the packets took a good bit of the afternoon, mainly because my main computer was tied up with an all disk virus check from something dumb I'd done over the weekend. It takes a while to scan fourteen million files! The swap turned out to be more of a long lecture about beginning gardening, which seemed somewhat appropriate for many of the attendees. I sat beside a grizzled, veteran gardener who had lost his start of yellow Brandywine tomatoes and was attending in hope of finding some seed for them. It turned out that most of the seed available was commercial seed packets donated by local businesses. I did see one attendee with some interesting seed samples, but lost track of her once the swap part of the meeting began. (The swap sorta reminded me of my one and only foray into Black Friday shopping!) I did suggest to my new gardening buddy to check for the wanted seed on the Seed Savers Exchange online sales catalog. When I got home, I checked, but found the variety not listed. But a later check this morning revealed that lots of SSE members were offering various strains of yellow Brandywine tomato seed via the annual yearbook. While I didn't come away with any new seed, I had a nice time talking to fellow Wabash Valley gardeners, which is pretty much why I went to the swap in the first place. I also noticed the county agent tucking a packet of our seed into his briefcase. Odds 'n' Ends I sorta cringed last night when the speaker recommended expensive, fluorescent grolux bulbs for nurturing indoor plants, stating she often let the plant leaves touch the bulbs. While the special grow lights do run a bit cooler than standard fluorescent tubes, they can still burn and/or bleach plant leaves. And, at almost double the cost of 6500K fluorescent tubes What got me going on this is that I stopped at a hardware chain store last evening after the seed swap to pick up a case of replacement fluorescent tubes. I couldn't find a case of them, but finally found a two-pack of 6500K bulbs. Our annual order from the Greenhouse Megastore came in today. I'd run myself a bit short on four inch pots when I transplanted our geraniums, so I ordered some more of them along with some slotted 1020 standard seed flats. I still use the rather flimsy slotted flats, either paired with a solid flat to hold water and make them sturdier or with a Perma-nest tray. I also got two new Perma-nest trays in the order, a relative extravagance at $12/tray. But the expensive trays last a long time and by ordering just a few each year, I finally have enough of them for our purposes (as long as I don't step on and crack another one I was induced to order the two Perma-nest trays because Amazon of late has listed the trays first as "discontinued by manufacturer," and now as "unavailable." The Megastore seems to still have a good stock of them. Getting back to gardening a bit, our various herb plants are almost all ready to be transplanted from their communal pots into individual pots or fourpacks. The lone exception is the rosemary I seeded. Rosemary's poor germination rates are well documented, and we've just had a couple of plants emerge so far. Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - Transplanting Herbs
Since many of the herbs were still fairly small and had tender stems, I used sterilized potting mix for the transplanting. Although I transplanted just one fourpack of each herb variety other than the sage, which got three fourpacks, I also left one herb plant in what had been the communal pot for seeding. Since there were multiple varieties of some herbs, I ended up with a lot of pots and fourpacks to go back under our plant lights. I transplanted thyme (common), sage (common), dill (Bouquet, Dukat, and Long Island Mammoth), and oregano (Greek and Italian). While I had the sterilized soil out, I started some gloxinia seed and a pot of catnip.
Readers might wonder at the cost of the number of varieties of herbs (and vegetables and flowers) we plant each year. We cut our seed costs by saving our old garden seed as long as possible. All of our herb seed is currently in the freezer of our refrigerator, but will be moved soon to our manual defrost freezer in the garage. As one can see from the image at right of the herb section of our current seed inventory, we use a lot of old seed that is still viable. Doing so saves us a lot of money over ordering seed each year, but also can lead to occasional disappointments when seed from frozen storage goes bad. With our herb seed this year, all of the seed proved to be good, even the packets dating back to 2007. Sunroom Plants
Our overnight low last night was around 10-11o F. The plants came through that in good shape, but we still face some very cold nights in the next ten days. Soon, I'll need to watch daytime temperatures in the room, as it can get quite hot with the sun on the windows and warmer temperatures outside. Because all their light comes from one direction, I find it necessary to turn the flats of plants every day or so. I also have one flat of onions that I got too much peat moss in the soil mix that dries out rather quickly. But all in all, moving the plants to the sunroom is working out well. Thursday, February 27, 2014 - Cold, Followed by More Ice and Snow
If nothing else, I'm tired of having to be careful typing the month "February" and getting it spelled correctly! More Repotting I noticed this morning two geraniums from our December planting that hadn't gotten a larger pot last Saturday when I uppotted the rest of the bunch. I'd run out of pots then and was simply too lazy to run to the basement for more. So I took the geraniums downstairs to move them from their 3" pots to the 4" pots that should do until they're ready to go into the garden. What I'd forgotten was that on Saturday, I'd left the bag of potting soil for such repotting on the back porch. While it was a balmy 65o F on Saturday, the soil was frozen solid today. So I broke off a few chunks of the potting soil with my garden spade, put them in a kettle, and warmed it for an hour in the oven. Even then, there were still some frozen pieces of potting soil, but most of it was loose enough to repot the two geraniums.
Of the 21 geraniums that germinated last December in what was meant to only be a germination test, most of them are Mulitbloom Mixed. A very few Maverick Reds germinated, something we dealt with last year when a once trusted vendor sold us some hard seed. When I saw in December that well over half of the Multibloom seed had germinated (on brown coffee filters), I decided to pot up the germinated seed in potting soil in individual 3" square pots. We have about 30 more geranium plants growing in the basement under our plant lights. They're mostly Maverick Reds and Orbit Mixed (from a different vendor than the one we used last year). When they are ready to be uppotted, I'll be running short on 4" pots once again. I guess that's a good thing. I probably need to just bite the bullet and order a whole case of pots. While we should have more than enough geranium plants for our and a daughter's garden this year, it's sort of sad that we lost a previously good seed vendor over a packet of bad geranium seed. The company's Multibloom seed ended up germinating at an excellent 90% for us last December. But the large packet of Maverick Red seed which apparently contained a goodly percentage of hard seed germinated at only 20% and 40% in two separate tests. Had the company simply admitted they had a problem with the seed (link to the clue that tipped me off to the problem) and made good on it, they'd still have our business and the many free links to their products that used to populate this site. Instead, when I challenged them on the bad seed, they invited me to take my business elsewhere. I did. Indoors, we've had a very productive gardening month. We successfully seeded Patterson onions (that were backordered), celery, leeks, beets, lots of herbs, cauliflower (2 weeks earlier than usual), broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts. The geraniums we started in early December required repotting into 4 and 4 1/2 inch pots. The petunias we started in egg cartons in early January were moved to fourpacks. The flats of onions planted in January required haircuts to keep them from toppling over. And most of the herbs we seeded this month got transplanted to fourpacks. A reader from Australia shared his unique way of propagating gloxinias from their flower stems. And, we got our first spray of dormant oil on our apple trees. Not bad for one of the coldest, snowiest months on record.
From Steve, the at Senior Gardening |
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