Senior Gardening

One of the Joys of Maturity


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The Old Guy's Garden Record

December 31, 2021


Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Our Senior Garden - December 1, 2021
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Our East Garden - December 1, 2021
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December is our slowest month in the Senior Garden. A bit of garden plot cleanup remains to be done, but not much. Some Wandering Jew cuttings will get started this month and I'll seed our egg carton petunias towards the end of the month.

Ordering seed will be my main endeavour this month. Seed catalogs have been a little slow coming in. But I've already roughed out what seed we need to order. There also will be some tomato seed to be hot water treated. After a disaster of bringing anthracnose into our East Garden on some untreated seed from an outside source several years ago, I hot water treat any tomato seed, ours or others, that I plant.

With the cold mornings we experienced in late November, I'm surprised and pleased that our parsley and kale are still alive. I fertilized the kale today in hopes of a late surge of growth before a really hard freeze kills it. I may even dry some more parsley.

Botanical Interests Burpee Gardening Required FTC Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, Burpee, Renee's Garden, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. Renee's Garden True Leaf Market
 
 

Friday, December 3, 2021

Agri-Fab 44" Lawn SweeperLarge compost pile covered with leavesWe're enjoying a few warm days now. It was sunny with a high temperature of 63° F yesterday. I got out this morning and used our lawn sweeper to rake up leaves and put them on our compost pile. While leaves can be tilled into garden plots to add organic matter to the soil, they generally take more than a winter to break down.

I didn't do all that great a job of clearing the leaves. They were wet and it took two passes over any area to get most of the leaves up. Since I still need to mulch the narrow raised garden bed where our early peas will go, I'll go back tomorrow or another warm day to rake up some leaves for that.

Required FTC Disclosure Statement

Some of our text links go to the sites of our Senior Gardening Advertisers. Clicking through one of our banner ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

I started to put away our charcoal grill for the winter last week. Then I remembered that I had T-bone steaks in the freezer and some possibly warm days coming up. So I began marinating the steaks in Lawry's Steak & Chop Marinade, lemon juice, garlic powder, and Swanson's Beef Broth yesterday. The grill will go to the garage tomorrow.

Even though the weather was nearly perfect yesterday, I didn't do any gardening outside. I was still way too gimpy from digging carrots on Tuesday. Since my accident in July, I find I often have to take a day or two off to recover after a day of serious physical activity. That's a real bummer, but certainly better than the alternative.

Pane Bread and Asiago Cheese and Tortellini Soup

Old compost pile in foreground
Old compost pile and my $1 wheelbarrow

Rows of kaleConfined to the house yesterday, I did a lot of low effort indoor jobs such as laundry and dishes. But the real fun of the day was making Asiago Cheese & Tortellini Soup and Italian Pane Bread. The soup is an old favorite of ours, while this was my first try at making this kind of bread. I sort of combined two recipes from A Taste of Home (1, 2). I mostly followed #2 for the ingredients but sized the batch to #1.

When I went out this afternoon to grab a shot of the leaves on our compost pile, I first took a shot of our kale. While there still aren't enough kale leaves to make our annual batch of Portuguese Kale Soup, there is a lot of kale there. If the weather cooperates, I might yet be able to make a small batch of the soup. And if not, I love kale boiled with onion and bacon seasoning.

And as I walked to our new compost pile, I passed our old one that has a good bit of usable compost remaining that I need to screen and store. Good compost is garden gold and shouldn't be wasted.

As usual, the old wheelbarow I picked up at a farm auction over forty years ago for a buck stands guard over the old compost pile. I wonder how old that wheelbarrow really is.

Crushed asparagus berries and seed

And I'm almost done crushing asparagus berries to release their seed. I've had a cookie sheet of the berries drying on a high bookshelf for a few weeks. I'm to the point that when we get a windy day, I'll winnow the seed and be done with it. With two asparagus patches we tend to, I still save a little asparagus seed each year, just in case.

Burpee Seed Company

Enjoy 25% off your next purchase when you use code 25EARLY22 at checkout. Valid online only until 11:59 P.M. on 1/31/22.

Saturday, December 4, 2021 - More Parsley

Ragged parsley plant after picking
Dehydrator tray filled with parsley leaves

Parsley remaining in main garden bedI pulled the small parsley plants from our main raised garden bed this morning. There were only six plants left, and they didn't have all that much new growth on them since I last harvested them. Our two full season parsley plants in our herb garden had lots of leaves left even after a trimming today, although the plants looked pretty rough after the picking.

Picking the parsley took only a few minutes. It took about an hour to wash and trim the parsley leaves into the four trays of our Nesco Food Dehydrator. Set at 95° F, the dehydrator will take about 24 hours to dry the parsley leaves.

One can also dry parsley in an oven, possibly even quicker. I've done so in the past. But since we have a good food dehydrator and it eliminates the possibility of burning the leaves, I go with it.

Unless we open an Italian restaurant, we now have enough dried parsley to last us for about two years.

Basil Seed

Basil seed spikesStaying with herbs, I picked more basil seed today. We already have saved basil seed this year, but I just couldn't resist stripping some seed off the seed spikes of a now dead basil plant in our herb garden. To strip the seed, one only needs to grip a seed baring stem below the first seed, squeeze gently, and pull upward. The seed pods strip off easily. Separating the basil seed from the chaff is another matter. But planting basil seed that has plant trash with it usually works out well for us.

I sneezed after completing the last paragraph and my hands still reeked of basil even after a thorough hand washing. grin There are far worse aromas.

Compost

Compost remaining in our old compost pileI dumped the remains of the parsley plants from our main raised bed and the last of our porch plants on our new compost pile. Then I began screening the compost in our old compost pile. I was surprised at how much good compost remained. After filling our four cubic foot garden cart a little over half way with finished/screened compost, I quit for the day.

At this point, I'm not sure what I want to do with the compost! In most years, the bulk of our compost goes to our asparagus patches. But after experiencing incredible growth and production from our tomato plants in our East Garden this year where each plant got a shovelful of compost, I'm tempted to save the compost for plantings next spring.

Other

Our old Weber grill has now been cleaned and is stored in the garage for the winter. The T-bones grilled last evening were delicious. Their leftovers got pulled and mixed with some beef gravy for beef manhattans.

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Sunday, December 5, 2021 - Shopping Guides

Gifts for GardenersShopping guide for garden itemsSeveral years ago, I put together a couple of shopping guides. The first was intended for an audience of non-gardeners shopping for gifts for a gardener. The second guide was more of a general guide to basic tools most gardeners might want.

Many of the items featured are ones I actually have and use. It seems that shovel, hoe, and rake brands change every few years, so my recommendations on those items is based on what I've seen on vendors' sites.

Items listed on the pages run in price from moderate ($20ish) to a deluxe 30 quart pressure canner for $449.95! The gift guide has a section of moderately priced Fun and Silly Stuff that might fit in a Christmas stocking. One of my favorites is the Gardening Is Cheaper Than Therapy And You Get Tomatoes Coffee Mug. Upon checking that section of the page, I realized that it would take a tall stocking to hold my AcuRite Big-Read Rain Gauge or Droll Yankees Bird Feeder.

This is about where I should add the required FTC disclosure statement: Some of our text links go to the sites of our Senior Gardening Advertisers. Clicking through one of our banner ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

Parsley driedSunset at 5:30 pmThe parsley I began drying around noon yesterday was fully dry and ready to be crushed this morning.

When returning to the house at around 5:30 P.M. yesterday, I snapped the shot at right that overlooks our garden. It sure gets dark early this time of the year.

Botannical Interests

Monday, December 6, 2021 - Top Ten Features/How-To's/Recipes

Growing Asparagus Gloxinia blog
Mulching with Grass Cl;ippings Growing Geraniums from Seed

I'm going to indulge again in some end-of-the year self-promotion. As I do each December, I've assembled a listing of our most visited pages other than this home page and indexes. Here are, in order, the ten most read feature stories, how-to's, and recipes on Senior Gardening for 2021. Last year's rankings are in parentheses.

  1. Growing Asparagus (10)
  2. Gloxinias (blog) (7)
  3. Mulching with Grass Clippings (1)
  4. Growing Geraniums from Seed (-)
  5. Building a Raised Garden Bed (8)
  6. Our Tomato Cages (5)
  7. Growing Melons (6)
  8. Making a Sterile Potting Mix (9)
  9. Cutworm Collars (4)
  10. Growing a Buckwheat Cover/Smother Crop (-)

Totally falling out of the Top 10 this year were Sweet Pickle Relish (2) and Growing Sweet Corn (3).

Cold, but Sunny

Asparagus seedIt's sunny, cold, and windy here today. We had thunderstorms with lots of lightning and strong winds last night. But when I stepped outside this morning, the sunshine felt good.

I took advantage of some continuing strong winds to winnow the asparagus seed I'd saved. Most of the red to gray berries had popped when squeezed between my fingers, releasing the black asparagus seed.

St. Jude Children's Research HospitalWhile it's possible to start a good bed of asparagus from seed (I've done it twice.), I don't recommend it. Getting a good harvest of asparagus spears from seed usually takes three years! Starting from purchased crowns, the wait is cut to two years.

Now that I've recommended against it, if you want to try your hand at growing some asparagus from seed, drop me an email with your mailing address. (My email address is at the bottom of the page, as always.) With either asparagus started from seed or crowns, soil preparation is probably the most important thing in getting a good stand.

Terracotta Composting 50-Plant Garden Tower by Garden Tower Project

Thursday, December 9, 2021

I put up our Christmas tree yesterday. It took all of a half hour to pull the tree from its trash bag, straighten a few limbs, and hang more ornaments on it. With our kids grown and no family coming in for the holiday, we've made do with our two foot tall tree the last few years.

Our Christmas Tree - 2021

The tree is on our dining room table between a couple of flats of gloxinia plants that are putting on buds. The flats are there to weigh down a lovely but slick tablecloth Annie found. Our cats seem to love pushing or pulling the tablecloth off the table. So hopefully, the weight of the plants will keep things in place.

These gloxinia plants are from cuttings I started months ago. The parent plants were double magenta and double pink gloxinias. So we may have gloxinias in bloom around Christmastime for the first time in years.

Walmart

Friday, December 10, 2021 - Seed Orders

Our Senior Garden - December 10, 2021Turtle Tree LogoI placed our first garden seed order for the 2022 season this morning. It went to the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative, a non-profit I really like. As a retired regular and special educator, I appreciate that Turtle Tree serves people with developmental differences in Camphill Village, located outside the small, rural town of Copake, New York.

Several years ago, I sent Turtle Tree some of our saved tomato seed. They grew out the then endangered varieties and now offer the Earlirouge and Quinte tomato varieties. I still offer the tomato seed varieties via the Grassroots Seed Network and the Seed Savers Exchange, as our seed may be better adapted for folks with similar growing conditions that we have here in west central Indiana.

Today's Turtle Tree order included kale (1, 2), onion, and celery seed along with a hundred blank seed packets.

I've been a bit frustrated of late as print garden catalogs are a slow coming in this year. Several of our favorite vendors have delayed sending out catalogs until late this month or early January. For folks like me that start things like geraniums, onions, and petunias in January, that's cutting things a bit close. And I want a print catalog as they can save me money in the long run. Paging through a seed catalog, I often find items that weren't on my order list that should have been. Placing multiple orders with the same seed vendor creates multiple shipping charges!

A New Seed Catalog

Seed Savers Exchange 2022 catalog coverSSE catalog pg 16After writing the paragraphs above, I was pleased to find that our print copy of the Seed Savers Exchange 2022 seed catalog arrived in today's mail. I immediately began to page through their lovely catalog. I was stunned but happy to see page 16 featured The Exchange where SSE members and others can list to share or purchase seed saved by other gardeners. In the past I've been highly critical of the Seed Savers Exchange for downplaying the exchange that got the whole thing started in favor of their own seed sales.

A change in leadership at SSE allowed me to back off my criticisms and rejoin the organization. Sadly, an email today from SSE's Development Director, Heather Haynes, related that the relatively new SSE Executive Director, Emily Rose Haga, "has stepped down from her position due to health-related reasons."

At this writing, I'm only on page 42 (cucumbers) of 156 pages going through the seed catalog. That was far enough to notice a fifty cent across the board price increase for seed packets, but still a fairly reasonable $3.75 per packet.

Gardening

Our weather forecast for today initially called for a high temperature of around 61° F. I had several outdoor chores I hoped to do before some predicted rain showers arrived. The rain came early, so I only got a few things done. I potted up a couple of dianthus plants I'd been torturing on the back porch since spring. Dianthus are a biennial (sometimes triennial), so I hope the plants will stay healthy all winter. They went to our sunroom along with the eight sage plants I never got around to transplanting at the corners and halfway points of our East Garden. Plants that have been outside never go back into our basement plant room, as they may carry bugs or disease.

I also transferred the screened compost I'd left in our garden cart to sealed buckets now stored in our garage. The cart then got rinsed and filled with plant trays and hanging baskets soaking in bleach water. Trays and pots that have been outside always get a bleach treatment before being returned to some shelves in the plant room.

David's Cookies

Sunday, December 12, 2021 - Cuttings

Wandering Jew plant before trimmingWandering Jew plant after trimmingThe storms that ripped through several states Friday night causing deaths and unbelievable damage missed us. We had rain and very high winds, of course, but only lost a few dead limbs off of trees. But because the high winds continued into yesterday, I just let the trays and pots I had soaking in bleach water in our garden cart sit.

Instead, I trimmed back the Wandering Jew plant that hangs in a kitchen window. It had put on lots of growth and was getting in the way of kitchen activities on our limited kitchen counter space. When I trimmed, I also took stem cuttings from the plant. Wandering Jew plants seem to thrive for only about 12-18 months. This plant, about the tenth or eleventh generation from a plant one of our daughters gave us, was already showing signs of decline with lots of dead leaves and stems in it. Taking cuttings each year has allowed us to have a lovely plant in our kitchen window for years.

I used a good pair of stainless steel shears to trim the plant and take six inch stem cuttings. I broke leaves off of the stem cuttings, leaving two or three leaves at the top of each stem. I let the cuttings sit overnight in a glass of water, but dipped them in Clonex Rooting Gel today and put them in some sterile potting mix in a deep sixpack insert.

While Wandering Jew stems usually root pretty readily, I'll take one more set of cuttings in a month to be sure I get a successor to our current plant.

Wandering Jew cuttings potted and under plant lights

Trays

I reuse a lot of plant trays and garden pots to save a bit of money. To ensure they don't carry over bug eggs or disease, I soak our trays and pots in bleach water for a day or so to help clean them. I'd done a couple of such loads already this season, but still had several trays, hanging baskets and four inch pots to clean.

I began soaking the trays and such in bleach water Friday afternoon. Cold temperatures and high winds made finishing the job yesterday a no-go. The trays and pots would have blown away in the wind when I laid them out to dry.

Trays and pots drying on lawn

While today wasn't exactly balmy, it was sunny, and the wind didn't pick up until late afternoon. So I scrubbed the trays and pots with a scrubbie and a brush, rinsed them, and laid them out on the lawn in the back yard to dry. By late afternoon, the wind had begun to play with the small pots a bit, but I got everything in and stored in our basement plant room before anything blew away.

Gardening Spam

I read a really good column by Gail Collins in the New York Times this week, Everybody Wants to Be Your Email Buddy. It struck a nerve with me, as I've been receiving lots of spam lately from folks running for office and gardening companies. Generally, I quickly unsubscribe to such emails, only to have them pop up again in a few months. One I haven't unsubscribed from is the daily text messages from Trump organizations. I delight in them wasting their time and money texting me!

More of my email woes come from garden outlets. While most of them can't seem to get their print garden catalogs out in a timely fashion, they fill my inbox with messages about their "wonderful" offerings each day. I haven't as yet unsubscribed from many of them, as they occasionally include a 10-25% off offer that I might use. Currently, Burpee Gardens, Johnny's Selected Seeds, and True Leaf Market are the worst offenders. Two of those three are Senior Gardening Affiliate Advertisers.

Botanical Interests Burpee Gardening Required FTC Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, Burpee, Renee's Garden, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. Renee's Garden True Leaf Market

Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - Preparing Asparagus Patches

Cutting asparagus stalksRaised asparagus bed with stalks removedWe're blessed to have two wonderful asparagus patches. I started one over ten years ago from transplants I grew from seed. The second patch is an old one just off our property. It was hidden by weeds for years when the farm renter took care of the ground the patch sits on. He'd mow down the area a couple of times each summer, effectively hiding the asparagus. When we took over mowing the area, we discovered Bonnie's Asparagus Patch (named after the landowner) and began fertilizing and weeding it.

One of my End-of-Season Gardening Chores was to remove the asparagus stalks, screen some compost, and spread it over the patches. Part of our success with asparagus has been removing old growth from the areas each fall and giving the patches a liberal spread of finished compost most years. I got the asparagus stalks cut and composted yesterday, but ended up with a nasty runny nose today that suggested outside work should wait a day or so.

I think I have enough unscreened compost left to put an inch or two of the gardening black gold over both of our asparagus patches.

Gloxinia from leaf cutting getting ready to bloom

Brightening my days a bit, one of the gloxinia plants I started from a leaf cutting during the summer has put on a robust bud. The bud is showing some color now. It looks to be pink, but the plastic plant label says "magenta." I'll know in a few days. And unlike first year gloxinias from seed, this plant has a lot more buds maturing.

A2 Web Hosting

Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - An f/11 Day

an f/11 dayMagenta bloom on gloxinia from leaf cuttingIt's an f/11 day today. On bright, sunny days, I shoot our near daily splashshot for the top of this page at an aperture (or lens opening) of f/16, letting my Canon T5i determine the appropriate shutter speed to balance a good exposure. When I stop down the camera to f/11, it's a sign of a cloudy and possibly dreary day like today. F/8 days are dark, gloomy days.

But today was a truly f/11 day with a surprisingly record high temperature of 63.9° F for this date and steady winds of 30 MPH. While I enjoyed walking to our mailbox and out to our East Garden to dump a bucket of compost, my lingering cold suggested I refrain from any outside work today.

Brightening an otherwise dreary day was the gloxinia bloom I showed yesterday that had opened to a lovely double magenta bloom today. The plant shows real promise, as it has several more blooms maturing. A sister plant from the same cutting is also about to bloom.

A very sick gloxiniaHuge gloxinia cormOn the other end of things, the cutting I took from our spectacular double pink gloxinia is very sick. I took the plant to the basement this morning and watered it with a Serenade biofungicide solution. Even though getting gloxinia leaves wet is a no-no, I sprayed the leaves with Fungonil fungicide. The plant is currently isolated in its own tray on its own plant shelf.

Other than the few new gloxinias I have upstairs protecting our tiny Christmas tree, all but two of our gloxinias are now in their annual required period of dormancy. One of the still somewhat active gloxinias is the parent plant of the sad plant shown at left.

The parent gloxinia has the largest corm I've ever dealt with. When it emerged from its last dormancy, I was at a loss of what size pot I could put it in. It had grown to the very edges of its previous six inch pot. I finally decided to give it a home in a hanging basket pot, the only eight inch pot I had on hand at the time.

Baking

Having had a success a little over a week ago making pane bread, I gave it another shot today. The oven was already hot as I had a small beef roast with potatoes, onions, and carrots cooking in it. The recipe again was a hybrid from two A Taste of Home recipes (1, 2).

Italian Pane Bread

I formed my loaves a little too wide, but the bread looks like it should be good.

1800Flowers

Thursday, December 16, 2021 - Seed Orders Completed

Seed Orders for 2022

Twilley Seeds (10)
Johnny's Selected Seeds (7)
Turtle Tree Seed Initiative (5)
Seed Savers Exchange (4)
Baker Creek Heirloom Seed (2)
Fedco Seeds (2)
High Mowing Organic Seeds (1)
Homegrown Seed Company (1)
Reimer Seeds (1)

numbers in parentheses indicate the number of items ordered

Minimum Shipping Rates (2021-2022)

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - free shipping
Seed Savers Exchange - $3.00 ↑
Turtle Tree Seed Initiative - $3.00 ↑
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - $3.50 ↑ (orders up to $10 )
Botanical Interests - $3.95 ↑
BurpeeBurpee Seed Company - ($3.95 flat rate on seed orders)
Annie's Heirloom Seeds - $3.99 ↑
Johnny's Selected Seeds - $4 ↑ (orders up to $10)
True Leaf Market $4.50 ↑
High Mowing Organic Seeds - $4.95 ↓ (free on orders of $50 or more)
Twilley Seed - $5 ↓
Reimer Seeds - $5.95
Fedco - $6 ↓ (free shipping for orders over $30)
Victory Seeds - $6.45 ↑
Territorial Seed Company - $7.95 ↑
George's Plant Farm
- varies by state

I stayed up late last night/this morning and filed our seed orders. I'd been waiting on print seed catalogs to arrive in the mail, but needed to get orders filed that have onions, petunias, and/or geraniums in them. I typically start those transplants in early January and occasionally in late December.

My order total turned out to be unusually expensive this year. I ordered several new sh2 sweet corn varieties as I search for varieties to replace my old discontinued favorites. Quality sweet corn seed is always expensive. I also needed to order one or two items from several vendors. I really got zapped on shipping charges for those orders, other than Baker Creek that doesn't charge extra for shipping seeds. Shipping is included in the seed packet price.

On the other extreme in shipping, I paid $10.54 total for a $4.90 packet of Who Gets Kissed? sweet corn seed from High Mowing Organic Seeds. They tried including shipping in seed packet prices in 2016 before backsliding in recent years. And they're not the worst. If you want to order a single packet of seed from the folks towards the bottom of the table at right, be prepared for a shock.

Obviously, Twilley Seed and Johnny's Selected Seeds got the bulk of our orders. I decided after four years of keeping Twilley in my doghouse for selling old seed to let them out. That proved to be an expensive decision, as I found three pricey sh2 sweet corn varieties that I wanted to try. Then I got lost in their inexpensive flower seeds.

Johnny's seed packet prices are always a bit steep, but the quality of their loose lettuce seed is excellent. Their unused seed stored in our manual defrost freezer seems to stay good nearly forever.

The Plunging Red Line

Weather Underground Extended Forecast

Our current Weather Underground Extended Forecast shows its red temperature line plunging and staying in overnight freezing temperatures. I guess winter had to come. Fortunately, we don't have anything growing on our back porch anymore. We do have some kale still in one of our narrow raised beds.

Charity: Water

Monday, December 20, 2021 - Seed Orders Arriving

Our Senior Garden - December 20, 2021Seed packetsThe garden seed orders I placed on Thursday have begun to arrive. I unpacked and recorded orders from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Johnny's Selected Seeds, and the Seed Savers Exchange today. We have orders from the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative and Reimer Seeds due to arrive tomorrow and Wednesday according to USPS tracking. Considering the Christmas shipping volume, the Post Office appears to be doing a pretty good job. Last year, we had one seed order wander around various New England Post Offices for about twelve days before escaping to us in the Midwest.

Our other orders all have understandable delays. Fedco doesn't begin shipping orders until January. Some sweet corn seed from High Mowing Organic Seeds is backordered until March. And our Twilley order was mailed on Thursday, as Twilley still doesn't have online ordering. Only the Twilley order is time critical, as it calls for petunia and geranium seed, both of which we start in January.

All of the seed went into a Ziplock bag and into our freezer.

Soup and Bread

We still had some of the first loaf of bread I baked on Wednesday, I made another batch of Asiago Cheese & Tortellini Soup today, as homemade bread goes really well with it. The soup was great. I had it for both lunch and dinner today. The second loaf from Wednesday got cut in half with the halves frozen.

Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - Winter Solstice 2021

Winter Solstice 2021

Today is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. From Wikipedia, "...the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky." With today and tomorrow being our shortest days of sunlight of the year, daylight will begin getting slightly longer here the day after tomorrow. If you live in Atqasuk, Alaska, where it's 4 below zero at this writing, they'll still have little to no daylight for some time.

The northern hemisphere will move to equal periods of light and dark on March 20, 2022, the Spring Equinox. And we'll finally top out on daylight during the Summer Solstice on June 21.

Supplies

Nylon Trellis NettingI'd gotten busy ordering garden supplies we'll need for the coming season when I filed our seed orders. We've been receiving stuff like Quick Start liquid fertilizer that our local garden center or Walmart rarely carry and several coco liners for a hanging basket planter.

Required FTC Disclosure Statement

Some of our text links go to the sites of our Senior Gardening Advertisers. Clicking through one of our banner ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

When I checked for today's arrivals, I found that our Turtle Tree Seed Initiative order should arrive in the mail. I also saw that some Gardeneer By Dalen Trellis Netting Heavy-Duty Nylon Tangle-Free Net 5' x 30' should come in via UPS. Hung by clothesline wire supported by T-posts, the netting has proved ideal for the double trellis we use each year to support our early peas and succession cucumbers and protect them from the strong winds that sweep in from the field west of us.

And while writing this posting, I realized that I hadn't yet ordered deep sixpack inserts, slotted 1020 trays, and more hanging baskets form the Greenhouse Megastore. I quickly remedied that ommission, punching a hole in another credit card. Between Christmas shopping and garden shopping, it's an expensive time of year.

TurboTax - Grr!

I've been struggling to get one more backup of my main external drive before I upgrade its operating system. This work has been necessitated by TurboTax not supporting my 2018 Mojave (OS X 10.14.6) operating system on my tricked out 2018 Mac Mini (1 TB solid state storage, 32 GB RAM). I'm currently waiting on the Mini to make a .dmg file of the external drive and transfer it to my trusty old 2010 Mac Mini.

If this trick fails, it will be goodbye Intuit and their lazy TurboTax programmers for not supporting a three year old Mac operating system. I'll find another tax preparation application.

1800Flowers

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 - Egg Cartons and Wax Paper Travel Cups

Brown and white eggsSaved paper cupsWhen I was at the grocery yesterday, I picked up a dozen white eggs. I grabbed another dozen today. While we currently have plenty of eggs, I'm going to need several styrofoam egg cartons soon to start our Egg Carton Petunias. We don't build up that many saved styrofoam egg cartons, as I alternately buy brown eggs that come in cardboard cartons to help rotate our eggs in our egg keeper. Also, the brown eggs consistently have thicker shells.

When I got home, I was careful to save the wax paper travel cup that had held my coffee to serve in the future as a Cutworm Collar. In getting our seed and supplies ordered, I'd totally forgotten about saving common supplies such as egg cartons and paper cups we reuse for gardening.

Renee's Garden

Friday, December 24, 2021

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange 2022 catalog coverI received an email this morning announcing the 2022 Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog. The message had the bad news that their print catalog won't be available until "the first and second weeks of January," due to a paper shortage. (Hmm?)

But their web site has been updated and the 2022 catalog is available as a PDF download.

Computer Stuff

Installing CatalinaInstead of gardening, I've been struggling this week with a computer upgrade. I decided to try upgrading an external drive's OS so that it could run TurboTax 2021. The folks at Intuit aren't very good about supporting older operating systems with their software. And when I finally installed TurboTax, there was a message that I'd have to upgrade my system again next year to use that year's version of TurboTax. But since I've now gotten around having to change disk formats, that shouldn't be a big deal, as the OS upgrade is free from Apple.

I seemed to do everything wrong for a while. I tried installing Mac OS Catalina (10.15.6) over a copy of my Mojave (10.14.6) installation. That turned out to be a disaster.

So...I copied the external drive and partitioned it to hold the previous Mojave installation, using the other partition to install Catalina. While I got a good install, I then had to begin reinstalling essential software I wanted to use. One of the reasons for staying with Mojave was that it still supports my old 32 bit Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) and Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.) applications, where Catalina does not.

I have standins for the lost 32 bit applications, as I have a good license for GraphicConverter and downloaded the latest, 64 bit, version of the free, open source Open Office. I haven't found a good replacement yet for the Drag Thing launcher, but did find a gem in XMenu to replace Max Menus. Besides downloading and installing those items, there were about a dozen other applications to be installed.

One missing item is an affordable replacement for Dreamweaver, the application I use to write this blog. I've explored a number of alternatives, but haven't found a good one for me as yet. Fortunately, I really don't have to compose for this site in the new OS, but someday...

A couple of real standouts in the upgrade were Mike Bombich's' Carbon Copy Cloner and the open source Sheepshaver. I used CCC free for years under an educator's license when I was cloning files to our iBooks in my classroom. When I retired, I got honest and bought a five computer license. CCC flawlessly copies and transfers bootable files from drive to drive.

Sheepshaver is a free, open source application that allows users to access older operating systems in newer computers. I use Sheepshaver to access things in the classic Mac OS 9. I can view, edit, and write new info in the old ClarisWorks/Appleworks application. It also runs my favorite old game, Risk II.

Chewy

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Saturday, December 25, 2020 - Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.

Luke 2:10-11 (ASV)

The image above is a "scene from a life size nativity at the Luxembourg Christmas market." It was taken in 2006 by graphic artist Debbie Schiel who lives in Far North Queensland, Australia, and shared on the royalty-free stock.xchng site.

Best wishes from Annie and I to you for a joyous and fulfilling holiday season.

Sunday, December 26, 2021 - Our Seed Listings

We're certainly not in the business of selling garden seed, but I do share some of our favorite seed varieties through a couple of outlets. While we save seed from lots of vegetable and herb varieties, we only share our superstars. Listed below are our seed offerings for 2022 from seed mostly grown out this last year (2021). The varieties offered can be obtained via the Grassroots Seed Network (GSN) and/or the Seed Savers Member Exchange (SSE). Two of the tomato varieties are also available from the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative (TTSI).

Quinte tomatoesThree MoirasQuinte Tomatoes - 70 days-to-maturity - Also known as Easy Peel, our Quinte plants have produced unusually large tomatoes the last two years in great volume. Quintes are a Jack Metcalf variety. As with most of his releases, they are a semi-determinate, open pollinated plant. GSN SSE TTSI

Moira Tomatoes - 66 days-to-maturity - Another Metcalf variety, Moiras were once our favorite variety until we began growing Earlirouges. Like the related Quinte variety, our Moiras this year produced heavy crops of somewhat larger than normal tomatoes. And as with all the Metcalf varieties we grow, Moiras have deep red interiors and excellent flavor. GSN SSE

Earlirouge tomatoesEarlirouge Tomatoes - 65 days-to-maturity - Earlirouges were Jack Metcalf's most commercially successful tomato variety release. Along with the Quinte variety, they proved good enough for the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative to begin growing and offering both varieties commercially from seed we shared with them. Our Earlirouges stunted early in the season, first from cold weather conditions and later from drought. Eventually, they produced lots of delicious deep red tomatoes. GSN SSE TTSI

Underripe Crimson Sprinter tomatoesCrimson Sprinter - An early, medium sized Canadian heirloom slicer developed by Professor Thomas Graham at the Ontario Agricultural College. It is said to be “the earliest [65 days-to-maturity] cultivar to carry the famous crimson gene for high lycopene.” Its semi-determinate vines filled and overflowed our five foot tall tomato cages and produced lots of ripe fruit with deep red interiors and delicious flavor. GSN SSE

I obviously like tomatoes with great flavor and deep red interiors. Who doesn't? Something about these varieties is mentioned in the The Long Island Seed Project:

The original source of the high crimson gene used to breed HIGH CRIMSON was KANATTO, a selection by Canadian breeder T. Graham of an ungainly sprawling Philippines wild tomato. Graham developed HIGH CRIMSON and a sister-line, CRIMSON SPRINTER. Metcalf, in turn used this genetic material to breed QUINTE, BELLESTAR and EARLIBRIGHT, all sister lines of MOIRA .

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Loaded red pepper plantEarliest Red Sweet Peppers - 65 days-to-maturity - The Earliest Red Sweet bell pepper variety produces peppers a bit smaller than the popular hybrids. But what its peppers lack in size, it makes up for with an incredible volume of peppers, especially late in the season. Our ERS plants produced well all season, but saved seed from them only tested at 70% at best, ten percent below our acceptable germination for seed sharing. So unlike my other listings, the ERS seed shared was produced in 2020 (and tested at appropriate levels). Note that I often add some ERS peppers to our Hungarian Paprika peppers when making ground paprika. GSN SSE

Here's a tip on growing peppers if they usually don't perform well for you. For years, our pepper plants looked good right up until the time they set fruit. Then they'd languish and eventually die. On a luckshot, I began adding a little Maxicrop soluble seaweed powder to my transplant solution for the peppers. Our pepper problems magically vanished. Apparently the seaweed had some necessary element in it that our soil lacked. Maxicrop is a bit expensive, but it doesn't take much of it to do the trick.

Japanese Long Pickling cucumberHomemade relish on hot dogJapanese Long Pickling Cucumbers - 60 days-to-maturity - I'd grown Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers for years. But after a five year hiatus from gardening after I lost our farm, I found that seed for the excellent variety was no longer available. I did, however, still have a few seeds preserved in the freezer over the years. Just one seed germinated, so I began saving seed and propagating the variety. Things went really well for the long, thin cucumbers for several years before we ran into inbreeding depression. So I bred in some cucumbers of the same name from Reimer Seeds, only saving seed from our cucumber plants. The crossing revitalized our strain of the excellent cucumber. GSN SSE

We use JLPs for pickles and pickle relish. They're also good for slicing, although not quite as good as pure slicing varieties. Note that JLPs require trellising, as the vigorous vines grow over five feet tall.

Japanese Long Pickling cucumber vines

We grow our JLP cucumbers as a succession crop after our tall, early peas. Since the variety is sixty days from direct seeding to mature cucumbers and even quicker from transplants, the cukes have plenty of time to produce despite being planted a bit late.

Abundant Bloomsdale spinachSpinach SaladAbundant Bloomsdale Spinach - 47 days-to-maturity - A relatively new (2015) savoyed, dark green variety bred by the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) in partnership with organic farmers. Note that this seed may require soaking (stratification/scarification) to germinate well. GSN SSE

Note the required OSSI pledge: "You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives."

Abundant Bloomsdale spinach seed may also be available from either the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange or High Mowing Organic Seeds. When I recently checked those links, HMOS was out of the seed.

Gloxinias - Our gloxinia seed was derived from crosses of the Empress, Cranberry Tiger, and Double Brocade varieties. It produces a variety of colors in single and double blooms. GSN SSE

Gloxinias on our dining room table

Backstories - For additional information on some of the varieties offered, here are a few of our pages that give the backstory of how we started saving the seed.

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Monday, December 27, 2021 - Portuguese Kale Soup

Crockett's Victory GardenI started a batch of Portuguese Kale Soup yesterday at around noon. Our recipe isn't all that different than the one I started with years ago from Crockett's Victory Garden.

Kale is an all but unknown vegetable these days, so let me do my part to publicize its cause by passing along the bare outlines of a delicious recipe for Portuguese kale soup. There are dozens of variations of this recipe, but my favorite includes kale (or collards), garlic-seasoned smoked pork sausage, chopped onions and garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, and freshly cooked kidney beans in a chicken stock. Short of making the soup for you myself, I can do no more.

Our Kal;e Rows - December 26, 2021I knew when I started the soup that it would be a multi-day effort. I brought in a couple of containers of chicken and broth from our big freezer and began thawing them in a big kettle with a couple of quarts of whole tomatoes and juice.

I only picked one of our two rows of kale, as a cold wind had my hands cold. And one row half filled my five gallon picking bucket. The kale soaked in water for an hour or so before I began stemming it.

Our kale this year started off slowly with poor germination. After several re-seedings, I finally got an acceptable stand of it, but it grew slowly in very dry weather. Even at this late date, much of the kale was small, but surprisingly in good shape after numerous frosts and freezes. The small leaves made stemming the kale a long job.

Kale in potI didn't get started picking the second row of kale until this afternoon. I'd slept in, worn out I guess from yesterday's effort. I also had to run to town to pick up more canning lids!

Today's picking went much easier as many of the kale plants were a bit bigger than yesterday. In less than a half hour, I'd filled the five gallon picking bucket three quarters full of kale leaves.

This year's kale soup has kale, peas, kidney beans, carrots, onions, and garlic from our garden. I bought and used peeled red potatoes as they are said to maintain their shape better than brown potatoes. Even so, I added raw potato chunks to the canning jars and soup to help not overcook the potatoes through the long canning process.

Ball Complete Book of Home PreservingI followed the canning directions from my new copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. With my paperback copy of the old Ball Blue Book in tatters, my lovely wife, Annie, had gone to our daughter's bookstore in Bloomington, Morgenstern Books, to buy it and other books for Christmas gifts.

Baker Creek Heirloom  Seeds 2022 catalog coverThis batch made 18 pints canned plus a quart or more that went into the fridge. And of course, Annie and I each had a bowl for supper. Most of the soup will be consumed when we're fighting off colds and flu, as it's loaded with vitamins and minerals.

At one point this year, I thought we'd not make a crop of kale. This is, of course, the latest in the season I've ever picked kale.

Catalog Overload

Five seed catalogs and one seed order arrived in today's mail. The catalogs were from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Burpee Seed, Johnny's Selected Seeds, the Territorial Seed Company, and Willhite Seed. While our seed orders have all been placed and all but one received, I'll still enjoy paging through the catalogs.

The seed order was from Twilley Seed. It was an order I will need soon as it included geranium, petunia, and vinca seed that I will be starting in January.

Burpee Fruit Seeds & Plants

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Baker Creek Damaun
Territorial Damaun

I really should not page through seed catalogs after I've placed my seed orders for the next season. But you do see and learn some things. I only got to page 48 of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog before I found myself ordering a packet of Damaun KS Super Sweet Corn, a new open pollinated supersweet variety. With Baker Creek's free shipping on seed packets, the order only set me back $4.82 with tax.

I do have a couple of criticisms of Baker Creek's lovely catalog. They omitted both a table of contents and an index!

When I moved on to perusing the Territorial Seed Company catalog, I found that they too carried the new open pollinated supersweet corn variety. But their listing carried some interesting information about the development of the variety.

80 days. Introducing the result of the world's first successful dehybridization of sh2 corn! This very exciting, biodynamically bred supersweet variety is unlike other OP sweet corns, since it retains its sweet flavor post-harvest. Vigorous plants produce very hefty ears packed with delicious, classic, yellow kernels. It retains the best qualities of a hybrid, and since it’s open-pollinated, you can save the seed. Plants stand 80” tall with 8.5” ears.

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Since I'm a longtime fan of sh2 sweet corns, my order had me back to redoing my East Garden plan for next season. I'll probably violate my own rotation rules and create an area for the Damaun variety along with another open pollinated corn, Who Gets Kissed? Our sh2s will go in another area for isolation.

Going through the Territorial catalog didn't cost me any money, as their $7.95 base shipping charge puts me off. But I was seriously tempted when reading about their mini-tubers. I will add here that the last time I had to order garlic, theirs was far and above the best I received.

Kale Soup

The Portuguese Kale Soup I canned last night is delicious. Of the eighteen pint jars that went into our pressure canner, seventeen sealed. When I dumped the one jar that didn't seal into the kale soup I'd put in the refrigerator, I realized the leftover didn't have any potatoes in it. So this morning, I peeled and cut up a potato and cooked the pieces in water in our microwave before adding them to the soup. Both Annie and I had Portuguese Kale Soup for breakfast this morning.

This and That

Our bare Senior Garden - December 28, 2021Gloxinias in bloom around our Christmas treeThis morning is the first morning of the season that our garden plots are bare of any actively growing crops. Getting the last of our kale picked yesterday cleared the narrow bed the kale had shared with our fall carrots. There is, however, a heavily mulched area of our main raised garden bed planted to garlic in October. With the warm weather we have experienced, we may see some early sprouts from the garlic.

Our warm spell has ended with a cooler, rainy day today. It's pretty much gray outside.

Brightening our home are the gloxinias from leaf cuttings that are putting on blooms. Grrr, I have to wash those bay windows! But I'm still not allowed up on a ladder. In talking to my neurosurgeon son-in-law on Christmas Day, he told me it typically takes six to twelve months to fully recover from an injury like the one I suffered in July. And, he added that I'm right on schedule with my recovery. So I'll just be happy with the pretty blooms and keep on healing. (Possibly TMI?)

Rollbacks & Clearance

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Dog damage to garlic areaElephant garlic up on December 30When I took the splashshot photo from our sunroom window this afternoon, I noticed the mulch was pulled back over part of our planting of garlic. When I went out to inspect, I found that one of our dogs had dug in the area, uprooting several sprouted garlic cloves. I quickly scooped the soil back in place putting some dug up garlics in a row, although I fear I didn't find all of them.

Since I hadn't been out near that area recently, I'd missed that our entire row of elephant garlics had sprouted and emerged, some as tall as six inches! That sometimes happens in a warm winter. But I've never had it happen so early.

After cleaning up the garlic and mulch and photographing the row, I spread the last of our Repels All animal repellent over the area. When I got inside, I tried to order more of the product, only to find that it can't be shipped to Indiana (or New Mexico).

One product I finally found available online was Ivermectin 1% injectable from Revival Animal Health. With a vet's approval, we use it to prevent heartworm in our dogs and actually treat one of our dogs that tested positive years ago for heart worms. Do note that sheepdogs don't do well with this treatment.

After collecting some hosta seed this fall, I put the seed in a sandwich bag and put it in the refrigerator...and forgot all about it. Having happened upon the bag of seed this week, I spread a little of it over sterile potting mix today and lightly covered it with vermiculite.

Hoss Tools

Friday, December 31, 2021 - End of Year Ruminations

Our Senior Garden through 2021It's been quite a year both in our garden plots and in the world. We've worn masks, isolated, and been vaccinated repeatedly. And yet the virus is spreading more than ever with the omicron variant. We saw a new President sworn in after the outgoing one tried to foment a coup d'etat. We became distanced from our friends and family to protect them and ourselves from the virus. And violence continued to grow across our nation.

Is it any wonder that some of us seek the solace of quietly working in the garden. Enough of that and on to gardening.

My gardening year was once again diminished by an injury. As I age, that seems to happen more and more. The fall I took in July cut a hole in our gardening season, although we had a great start and wound up with a pleasing finish. Lost in the hole were our brassicas, melons, squash, and sweet corn. But our tomatoes and peppers were already planted and didn't mind that I couldn't take proper care of them for a time.

Our freezer and pantry are filled with garden delights: sweet peas; onions; garlic; green beans; canned tomatoes; carrots; and beets. We dried lots of parsley and paprika. We saved a lot of seed for future plantings. And we had lovely gloxinias in bloom on our dining room table all summer. As a bonus, several gloxinias from cuttings taken in June burst into bloom at Christmastime.

I thank the Lord for another year of life, gardening, and good health for my family. Wishing the same for you and yours for the coming year.

Happy New Year 2022

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