The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Saturday, March 1, 2025

Let's hope the weather folklore, "In like a lion, out like a lamb" is true this year. Hoping I might get our early peas seeded in a few days, I raked out the narrow raised bed where they will go. I also dropped off a bag of compost/peat by our asparagus bed. But it was a bit too cold for much outdoor work today. It was twenty degrees warmer yesterday, but with 40 MPH winds!

I'm looking for a non-windy day without rain or a frost in the forecast to spray our apple trees with dormant oil. I also need a non-windy day, preferably after a rain, to burn off the boxes and fallen limbs we've accumulated.

Our plant rack is filling up. And once I move plants out of their communal pots to four- and sixpacks, things may begin to get crowded. To ease the coming crowding, I'll move our tray of geraniums to our sunroom. That room isn't heated and allows the geraniums to toughen up a bit and put on more root than top growth.

Looking ahead, I hope to soon seed broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and lettuce. I rely on past experience on when to start stuff along with some help from Johnny's Selected Seeds Seed-Starting Date Calculator.

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Monday, March 3, 2025 - Planting Peas

We started out this morning with a low of 24°F. But with a predicted afternoon high in the 70s, I hoped to get some outdoor gardening done today. I’d planned to spray dormant oil on our apple trees this morning. But the wind picked up (20 MPH), putting off that activity. But it’s still early, as the trees probably won’t begin to bloom for several weeks.

Despite the wind, I could still plant peas. Our extended weather forecast suggests that warm, wet weather might pop the peas up out of the ground fairly quickly (I hope). I began the planting by measuring the sides of the row in the raised bed and staking and stringing the area. I came in six inches from the north side of the bed and left eighteen inches across the wide row. It actually narrowed down to about fourteen inches wide when I planted.

I spread and hoed in fertilizer, lime, and granular soil inoculant down the bed. Then I thoroughly watered the bed before liberally spreading pea seed. Most sources suggest spacing the seeds an inch apart. Since I had lots of our saved Champion of England and Maxigolt cross seed, I didn't bother spacing the seed. Since it's supposed to be warm out for about ten days, I omitted my usual practice of treating the seed with Captan to prevent seed rot.

I covered and tamped down the row, leaving the seed about an inch and a half deep.

Once the pea plants emerge, I'll surround them with a five foot tall double trellis. With the strong winds we now experience here, the trellises are necessary to keep the pea vines from bending and breaking. When the peas come out, I'll plant a succession crop of tall Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers.

While I had the hose out, I also watered our garlic that's coming up nicely from a fall planting.

I've probably left stuff out here, but I describe in some detail how we grow our peas in a how-to, Another Garden Delicacy: Homegrown Peas.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

It’s just plain nasty outside today. After a couple of windy but fairly warm days, it's cold (35°F), very windy (wind gusts of 40 MPH), and rainy with some snow flurries at times. It turned out that the Weather Underground’s extended forecasts were way off. I had to go out twice today. One trip was to retrieve our mail and the second was necessitated by our roadside trash can blowing into the road!

With this cold, wet spell, I’m a little worried about the early peas I seeded on Monday. But as I was talking with an old friend at the grocery yesterday, we agreed that pea seed seems to know just when to germinate. But at this point, I’m now wishing I’d treated the seed with Captan fungicide.

One job I did get done today was sterilizing a load of potting soil. Taking advantage of the cold weather, I let the kettle of soil cool on the back porch after it baked for an hour and a half at 400°F. Such baking pretty well eliminates any danger of damping off disease.

Friday, March 7, 2025

We had a visual treat this morning. Red bellied woodpeckers often visit our shallow well cover. Today a red headed woodpecker was there. I hadn't seen this type before.

The long beak of the woodpeckers allows them to feast on seeds that have slipped between the boards of the well cover that other birds can't reach.

With some so-so weather yesterday, I chose to stay inside and cook. I first made a loaf of bread, combining an online Vienna bread recipe with our own Grandma's Yeast Rolls recipe. At first, I wasn't satisfied with the bread, but found that I'd not added enough moisture to the dough. But by today, the bread tasted fairly good, although it was pretty crumbly.

My other cooking was making a batch of portofino. I split the batch towards the end of the cooking, adding chicken to one pan and shrimp to another. My wife rarely eats shrimp, and I love it. Cutting a corner, I bought small cooked shrimp. It was good for a shrimp cocktail, but was lousy in the portofino. I'll go with large raw shrimp in the future.

I got outside today and trimmed our one rose bush. It's one I grew out from one of those small potted plants sold in discount stores for Valentines Day and such. I took some cuttings from it and started rooting them from a Facebook suggestion from Barbara Pleasant. She recommended putting the cuttings in potato pieces! While I added some rooting gel to the rose cuttings, I did put them in potatoes and those into potting mix. We'll see how that works out.

While on that side of the house, I grabbed a shot of our daffodils. Probably like many of you, ours have been up for a while. Fortunately, they haven't yet begun to bloom. We still have several freezing mornings in our forecast.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - Little by Little

The parsley and snapdragons I started in communal pots last month were ready to be moved to individual pots or cells today. While there were lots of plants in the pots, I only moved twelve parsley and twelve snapdragons to deep sixpack inserts.

I’m finding that I’m in worse physical shape this year than in previous springs. So I’m working at a little of this and that, not pushing too hard on outdoor work as I gradually get into gardening shape.

I’m about half way through clearing our raised asparagus bed of previous growth. I used lopping shears to cut the old asparagus stalks and lots and lots of tiny trees that had gotten started. The good news of the cutting was that I didn't see any new asparagus emerging. We actually had new asparagus coming up this time last year.

The spent asparagus stalks and our old pepper plants went beside our current compost pile. They’ll sit there until next spring, getting covered with garden refuse and kitchen scraps.

I started one variety of tomatoes yesterday. I seeded twelve cells (2 deep sixpack inserts) to Moiras for our main garden. Our other tomato varieties will get seeded later, as they’ll go into our East Garden that I’m always slow getting planted. I also started sixpacks of Goliath broccoli and Amazing cauliflower.

And buds on the stems of the rosebush cuttings I took recently have begun to open. But when I accidentally knocked one of the cuttings out of its pot, there was no sign of rooting on the bottom of the stem.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

We had some thunderstorms move in last night, but we only got about a quarter inch of rain. While the wind blew some stuff off our back porch, we really didn't have any wind damage like areas south of us got.

When looking out to our garden from the back porch this morning, I was able to see a strong stand of garlic up. There's one bare patch, but beyond that, the raised bed is filled with healthy looking garlic shoots. We'll probably dig garlic in early to mid-June. And that stand will give us enough to last a year, maybe make some garlic powder, and share some with our local food bank.

Our how-to: Growing Garlic.

And in a promising view, I saw a few peas trying to emerge. Planted about two weeks ago, I'd begun to worry that I'd gotten the peas in too early, too deep, or without any fungicide on them. But pea seed seems to know when to emerge in the spring. Our tall early peas are a mix of the Champion of England and Maxigolt varieties that I've allowed to cross over the last few years.

Our how-to: Another Garden Delicacy: Homegrown Peas.

In a case of some success and some failure, our Egg Carton Petunias are up. Only three of the Supercascades germinated and none of the Double Cascades. But the three are enough for one hanging basket. I re-seeded the empty cells of the egg carton with the Celebrity variety, a good one for the garden.

Our tray of geraniums went up to our sunroom today. The room isn't heated, although it doesn't get down below freezing at this time of year. The cold nights are said to improve root growth and the sturdiness of the plants.

I got several communal pots of stuff uppotted to four- and sixpacks today: Two fourpacks of dianthus and one of rosemary. Dill, celery, and thyme went into deep sixpack inserts.

I'd meant to get a shot of our daffodils this morning. But by mid-afternoon, wind gusts had picked up to over 40 MPH. I had to reset my Canon T5i from its usual aperture preferred to a shutter speed of 1/250 to compensate for the flowers blowing violently in the wind. It's definitely March.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

It's warm today, but blustery outside. Other than working on our outside hoses, I didn't do any outdoor work. Our main garden hose had begun to leak terribly at the shutoff and nozzle. And while I tried to get all the old parts off, the shutoff wouldn't budge despite applications of WD-40 and using pipe wrenches on it. So I swapped that hose onto our rain barrel and its hose went onto our hose reel with a new shutoff valve and nozzle.

After moving three of our egg carton petunias to a fourpack, I went out to take our daily splashshot. I also ventured out to our bed of peas. We're finally getting some good germination of the seed I planted on March 3. About half of the 18" wide row is up, suggesting we may get a good crop of early peas by June.

I realized yesterday that I hadn't yet started any vinca. Searching our seed in the big freezer, I didn't find any vinca seed. So I ordered some Cora Cascade and Pacifica seed from Park Seed. The Cora Cascades are great for hanging baskets. The Pacifica do well edging our garden plots.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

We had pork chops for supper a few nights ago, but ended up with a good bit of pork leftover from just two pork chops. So I decided to try my hand at making pork fried rice for the first time. Using a couple of good online recipes got me on my way.

All Recipes
Simply Recipes

I had to make a trip to the garage freezer, as I’d forgotten that good fried rice has broccoli in it. I also forgot at first that I should scramble a couple of eggs for the mix.

Besides brown rice, pork chunks, scrambled egg, and broccoli, the fried rice had carrots, homegrown peas, and celery in it. When done, it proved to be worth the effort.

Still on cooking, I made a nice meatloaf yesterday. Today, we're eating fried rice and meatloaf leftovers.

When I checked our dormant gloxinias today, I found that six of them had broken dormancy and put on new growth. All six got repotted in fresh potting soil and thoroughly bottom watered.

I'd been worried that I might have killed most of our gloxinias. I hadn't thoroughly rinsed the pots and plant trays when I washed them, and some of them retained bleach residue that didn't rinse off. That caused havoc with many of our transplants last year and with our gloxinias.

A bright spot in my day was looking out at our cistern cover which was covered in bird seed by my wife. I saw the first oriole I'd ever seen here.

I'd reseeded our egg carton where our Double Cascade petunias had failed with Celebrity petunia seed. It germinated well. So yesterday, I spread out the tiny petunias, often three per cell, to individual cells. I was pleased today that all the transplanted petunias had survived.

On a trip outside, I saw that our early peas continue to germinate. Yea!

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

I got an almost perfect day today to spray dormant oil on our apple trees. There was only a light breeze with no frost in the immediate future. We have rain predicted, but not until tomorrow afternoon, so the application should work to suppress overwintering bugs and disease.

It was a good thing I got the job done, as some of the buds, especially on our two Stayman Winesap trees, were swelling and almost opening.

One concern I have is that our yellow apple tree doesn't seem to have many buds on it. After several years of plentiful harvests, the tree may be telling me it needs some fertilization.

Another important job completed this morning was trimming our tray of onion plants. We're off to a very good start with them this year, in contrast to last year's almost total failure.

After trimming the onions, I decided to chance putting them outside on our back porch. There's not much danger of frost in our forecast, but our senior cat has been known to use plant trays of onions as a litter box. To discourage him, I sprinkled Repels All over the tray of onions.

A funny thing about that product. While it discourages pests, it can't be legally shipped into Indiana! So...I have it shipped to one of our daughters who lives in Illinois and pick it up from her.

I really thought I was done for the day, but made myself go out and clear out the rest of the old stalks from our raised bed of asparagus. I tired out quickly, but then came upon our first stalk of asparagus of the season. There was just one, but more should soon come from whence it came.

I still have Bonnie's Asparagus Patch to clean up. But since it isn't in a raised bed, I can just run the lawn mower over it a couple of times.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

I did a job this morning that will be part of my usual routine for the next month or so. I picked a little asparagus from our raised bed of it. Bonnie’s Asparagus Patch didn’t have any up. That’s normal, as the variety there comes on later than ours. We don't have enough asparagus to cook yet, but should be able to in a couple of days.

Before the picking, I started two communal pots of Vinca this morning. One pot was of the Cora variety which is good for hanging baskets. The other went to Pacifica, a great performer in our garden plots. This planting is a bit late, as I misplaced our Vinca seed and had to order more.

The Moira tomatoes I seeded on the tenth were a bit too tall and needed to go into larger pots a bit lower in the soil. It's a good thing I had lots of the Moiras up, as I bent and broke a few of the plants when moving them to small round pots.

These tomato plants will go into our main raised garden bed. I still need to start our Quinte, Earlirouge, and Crimson Sprinter tomato plants which will go in our large East Garden plot.

Monday, March 31, 2025

We had some violent storms over the last few days. And the weather folks are saying we'll have more of the same later this week. So much for "out like a lamb."

I started Quinte, Earlirouge, and Crimson Sprinter tomatoes this morning. These later planted tomatoes will go into our East Garden plot sometime in May, hopefully giving us some nice tomatoes well into the fall.

The seeds went in about a quarter inch deep in sterile potting mix. I often put two seeds per cell of the deep sixpack inserts I was using.

Our how-to: Growing Tomatoes.

I also started the onerous job of soaking trays and pots. After the disaster I created several years ago, I didn't add any bleach to the soak water.

In the meantime, I worked on a pot of ham and beans. I’d picked up a dollar a pound ham several weeks ago. I left it frozen until last week when I began cutting the odd cut with a hacksaw. The ham was about fourteen inches long! No wonder the grocery had several such hams left in a freezer case. But it was also one of our favorite varieties of ham (Cumberland Gap).

Our weather has turned a bit colder. There really weren't any asparagus stalks ready to be picked today.

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening