Today I carried my first pots to work, with the intentions of planting them out in the garden later today. I put my peat pots in little Gladware containers, and carry them on the bus like that. For the bigger tomatoes, I think I'll need to carry them in a 5-gallon bucket, since they're both large and top heavy. I'm setting out one tomato in honor of the traditional "you can plant tomatoes on Memorial Day in Madison" folklore. The weather is wavering between hot, thunderstormy, and cool - 44 this morning. By far, I'm not the first person to put out tomatoes - there were some in the garden at least two weeks ago, but they appear not to have grown much. Some people even have peppers out. So my goal is to carry a few to work and then to the garden each day until the only thing beneath my grow lights is my indoor sprout/salad mix collection, and an indoor tea garden. The lemon balm is finally shaping up nicely under the lights; I think with a little outdoor time, it will be perfectly happy.
The Amish Paste I'm setting out today is among the least happy. Thin, leggy, and small. I'm hoping that it will either thrive or die quickly so I don't have to kill it myself. I'm also setting out a lemon balm, a lovage, and what I suspect is a sweet marjoram. Cooking delinquent that I am, I'm not really sure what to do with sweet marjoram, but fragrant plants are always welcome. (Unless you're mint.) Or comfrey, which is actually an issue around the edges of my plot.
Anyway, these plants give me an opportunity to see good green in the plot, and to experiment with my hole-digging technique. The tiller has stood me up for the third time, so I think I'm just going to start working the soil the old-fashioned way- lots of sweating, blisters, and water gulped from the hose. (Beer is a luxury reserved for people who live in houses and don't have to haul the bottles up a hill and find a way to keep them cool.) I've got 1-3 inches of leaves over the whole plot, which makes it look nice and really does cut down on weeds. Not as much as I'd hope, but some.
Showing posts with label seedlings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seedlings. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Remembering the Fallen
Yesterday, I made a last-ditch attempt to rescue some of my seedlings. It's at least another week before I put out the first of the hardiest of the summer seedlings (tomatoes) and probably two or three before I think about eggplant, peppers, or cucumbers. So a little tidying up was in order.
Two 4' shelves seems like a lot of space when you begin planting things, but as the plants expand, the space quickly becomes tighter and tighter. Sacrifices must be made. Up-potting must be done (again). And as in eany good expansion effort, some must give their lives to the cause.
There's the eggplant that the cat ate the first leaves right off of. The Sandia pepper I accidentally brushed with the force of falling water. The tomato I crushed with my elbow. The tomato I forgot that was sandwiched behind the bigger, meaner tomatoes (I'll get to them in a moment) and so, cut off from water and light, shrank to nothing. The cucumber that got caught in a draft on a cold spring night, and remained sullen for weeks - it was just recovering when I ripped it out so I could rescue a pepper from the clutches of the giant tomato plants. An eight-pack of onions, and another of nasturtiums, given for the same cause.
A mass dispersal was necessary because some of my tomatoes have grown large and mean under their pampered conditions. Without the aid of fertilizer, they grew stews thicker than pencils, branches that extended across the lights, and tendrils that shaded out shorter, less aggressive plants - mostly eggplant and pepper, but even some of the smaller tomatoes. These bullies are almost exclusively Fedco heirlooms tomatoes. I don't know if it's the freshness of the seed (most of the other seed was packed for 2006 or 2007), or the variety (Big Mean Bully will be the name of my first created cultivar), or what - I treated these tomatoes exactly the same as the others. To be fair, one of my yellow tomatoes (Giant Yellow Gourmet Stuffer, I think) is also large, but less invasive. My tomatillos are very happy, too, but my peppers and eggplant remain healthy but not enormous. So the shorter plants got moved into space vacated by less important plants. It gave me a chance to eat a large portion of plants - onions, nasturtiums, cucumber roots, a basil, a thyme, a lemon balm. Sort of a weird impromptu salad. It was fun.
Pepper update: I have *one* Sandia pepper sprout, among 12 seeds planted. I'm praying it survives. I have two Thai hots, two Georgia Flames, and a couple others, but peppers are definitely not the winning species at Chez Chick. I overplanted on the seed, with good results for everything else, but not so much with the peppers. I know the germination is supposed to be erratic, but still.
So: several small tomatoes I hope will thrive eventually, plus 4-7 big tomatoes I have high hopes for, plus a few "rescues" that replanted themselves and thus have been allowed to live for awhile. 2 enthusiastic tomatillos. 5-6 eggplants that seem very happy, plus one or two that don't. 6ish peppers, plus rescues. Sage, thyme, lovage, 10ish happy basil plants, 2 sullen holy basils. All in all, not a bad haul. If even 25% of these make out, I should have home-grown tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and herbs. If they all do, I will have to start sneaking around the farmer's market, dropping eggplants and tomatoes into baby carriages and unattended bags. Next year, I want to start peppers earlier, and tomatoes later. The eggplants have worked out fine.
Interesting note: Cucumber roots have an aftertaste *just like* cucumber. Who knew?
Two 4' shelves seems like a lot of space when you begin planting things, but as the plants expand, the space quickly becomes tighter and tighter. Sacrifices must be made. Up-potting must be done (again). And as in eany good expansion effort, some must give their lives to the cause.
There's the eggplant that the cat ate the first leaves right off of. The Sandia pepper I accidentally brushed with the force of falling water. The tomato I crushed with my elbow. The tomato I forgot that was sandwiched behind the bigger, meaner tomatoes (I'll get to them in a moment) and so, cut off from water and light, shrank to nothing. The cucumber that got caught in a draft on a cold spring night, and remained sullen for weeks - it was just recovering when I ripped it out so I could rescue a pepper from the clutches of the giant tomato plants. An eight-pack of onions, and another of nasturtiums, given for the same cause.
A mass dispersal was necessary because some of my tomatoes have grown large and mean under their pampered conditions. Without the aid of fertilizer, they grew stews thicker than pencils, branches that extended across the lights, and tendrils that shaded out shorter, less aggressive plants - mostly eggplant and pepper, but even some of the smaller tomatoes. These bullies are almost exclusively Fedco heirlooms tomatoes. I don't know if it's the freshness of the seed (most of the other seed was packed for 2006 or 2007), or the variety (Big Mean Bully will be the name of my first created cultivar), or what - I treated these tomatoes exactly the same as the others. To be fair, one of my yellow tomatoes (Giant Yellow Gourmet Stuffer, I think) is also large, but less invasive. My tomatillos are very happy, too, but my peppers and eggplant remain healthy but not enormous. So the shorter plants got moved into space vacated by less important plants. It gave me a chance to eat a large portion of plants - onions, nasturtiums, cucumber roots, a basil, a thyme, a lemon balm. Sort of a weird impromptu salad. It was fun.
Pepper update: I have *one* Sandia pepper sprout, among 12 seeds planted. I'm praying it survives. I have two Thai hots, two Georgia Flames, and a couple others, but peppers are definitely not the winning species at Chez Chick. I overplanted on the seed, with good results for everything else, but not so much with the peppers. I know the germination is supposed to be erratic, but still.
So: several small tomatoes I hope will thrive eventually, plus 4-7 big tomatoes I have high hopes for, plus a few "rescues" that replanted themselves and thus have been allowed to live for awhile. 2 enthusiastic tomatillos. 5-6 eggplants that seem very happy, plus one or two that don't. 6ish peppers, plus rescues. Sage, thyme, lovage, 10ish happy basil plants, 2 sullen holy basils. All in all, not a bad haul. If even 25% of these make out, I should have home-grown tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and herbs. If they all do, I will have to start sneaking around the farmer's market, dropping eggplants and tomatoes into baby carriages and unattended bags. Next year, I want to start peppers earlier, and tomatoes later. The eggplants have worked out fine.
Interesting note: Cucumber roots have an aftertaste *just like* cucumber. Who knew?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
So a gardener walks into a plot . . .
Monday I found my plot. For one thing, it's quite a bit smaller than I expected; 14x23', roughly. (Yes, I took my tape measure.) That's about half the size I'd been planning on, so that throws things off. Most of that area I had planned to put in beans and squash, so I have to decide what I'm going to do without. Potatoes, probably, for starters, and much fewer/no carrots and parsnips and other veggies that require loose soil.
My plot's pretty new; it was only cultivated for the first time last year, by people who my neighbor described as "planting a whole bunch of stuff and vanishing." It shows; the remaining stalks showed that something grew last year. I found plastic tags indicating tomatoes and peppers (the boring kind you get from the greenhouse). And there are two onions that somehow survived the winter without protection of any kind. I hate to take them out, but they're in the middle of my planned beds, and I need to dig in stuff around them.
There's a fair amount of junk I need to haul away; bottles, broken plant containers, and random trash. I scratched my arm pretty badly pulling up one of those hideous short green mesh fences with SHARP WIRE EDGES. Thank goodness I remember my last tetanus shot (May 2005) - sometimes travel has peripheral advantages. I took out the worst of the weeds, piled up most of the organic matter from weeds and dead tomatoes on one end of the plot (to be hauled/composted), and dug up a bed approximately 14x2.5'. One wheelbarrow provided ~1 inch of organic matter, and a healthy quantity of worms. I put in a few onions, a sprinkle of forget-me-nots, and a few salad greens.
I'm seriously considering tilling - just once. There can't be that much microlife in the soil now; I found an entirety of one worm in the clay I disturbed. Not a good ratio at all. I've been reading a lot about not tilling, to avoid disturbing the fungi hyphae, which create a giant web throughout the undisturbed soil, doing all sorts of good things for plants and bacteria, but physically loosening and mixing in compost is incredibly difficult work, and I'm not convinced that the bed I "prepared" is properly prepped at all. It should have been better mixed and loosened deeper.
Something bit me, and my arm is now covered in lovely strawberry-pink dots. (I was examining this in class while my prof was lecturing on the dangers of Scarlet Fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other Really Scary Diseases. Allergies pale in comparison to those scary things, but I did spend an unhappy few hours last night wondering why I had neglected to stock my medicine cabinet with hydrocortisone cream. Fun fact: vodka, applied topically, actually helps with the itching. Another fun fact: Just because you enjoy putting your hands in mulch, dirt, and weeds doesn't necessarily mean that's the best idea you ever had.
Also, one Red Ruffled Eggplant is up (barely, as of this morning). This is a Hmong variety, which is appropriate considering the large Hmong population in the area. I really want my Purple Laos to sprout; I haven't given up hope, although I'm beginning to wonder about some of the tomatoes I planted two-three weeks ago. The radish seeds I planted Sunday were up last night; I knew they were fast-sprouting, but that's *awesome*. They're very cute. (And doomed; they're part of my indoor green collection, which is destined to be added to the rice cooker as an American version of Seven-Herb Rice Porridge, a traditional Japanese food for the 7th of January. It's not the 7th of January, of course, but then it's not going to have seven herbs, either.
My plot's pretty new; it was only cultivated for the first time last year, by people who my neighbor described as "planting a whole bunch of stuff and vanishing." It shows; the remaining stalks showed that something grew last year. I found plastic tags indicating tomatoes and peppers (the boring kind you get from the greenhouse). And there are two onions that somehow survived the winter without protection of any kind. I hate to take them out, but they're in the middle of my planned beds, and I need to dig in stuff around them.
There's a fair amount of junk I need to haul away; bottles, broken plant containers, and random trash. I scratched my arm pretty badly pulling up one of those hideous short green mesh fences with SHARP WIRE EDGES. Thank goodness I remember my last tetanus shot (May 2005) - sometimes travel has peripheral advantages. I took out the worst of the weeds, piled up most of the organic matter from weeds and dead tomatoes on one end of the plot (to be hauled/composted), and dug up a bed approximately 14x2.5'. One wheelbarrow provided ~1 inch of organic matter, and a healthy quantity of worms. I put in a few onions, a sprinkle of forget-me-nots, and a few salad greens.
I'm seriously considering tilling - just once. There can't be that much microlife in the soil now; I found an entirety of one worm in the clay I disturbed. Not a good ratio at all. I've been reading a lot about not tilling, to avoid disturbing the fungi hyphae, which create a giant web throughout the undisturbed soil, doing all sorts of good things for plants and bacteria, but physically loosening and mixing in compost is incredibly difficult work, and I'm not convinced that the bed I "prepared" is properly prepped at all. It should have been better mixed and loosened deeper.
Something bit me, and my arm is now covered in lovely strawberry-pink dots. (I was examining this in class while my prof was lecturing on the dangers of Scarlet Fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other Really Scary Diseases. Allergies pale in comparison to those scary things, but I did spend an unhappy few hours last night wondering why I had neglected to stock my medicine cabinet with hydrocortisone cream. Fun fact: vodka, applied topically, actually helps with the itching. Another fun fact: Just because you enjoy putting your hands in mulch, dirt, and weeds doesn't necessarily mean that's the best idea you ever had.
Also, one Red Ruffled Eggplant is up (barely, as of this morning). This is a Hmong variety, which is appropriate considering the large Hmong population in the area. I really want my Purple Laos to sprout; I haven't given up hope, although I'm beginning to wonder about some of the tomatoes I planted two-three weeks ago. The radish seeds I planted Sunday were up last night; I knew they were fast-sprouting, but that's *awesome*. They're very cute. (And doomed; they're part of my indoor green collection, which is destined to be added to the rice cooker as an American version of Seven-Herb Rice Porridge, a traditional Japanese food for the 7th of January. It's not the 7th of January, of course, but then it's not going to have seven herbs, either.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Seedlings up!
The first seedlings are up - not from the seeds I planted first, under my desk light, but the others - which means that in slightly less than a week, the following have germinated:
-All my sweet basil
- The Turkish Orange Eggplant
- Representatives from each pot of heirloom mix tomatoes
- Probably a piece of Amish Paste (I didn't want to poke it - it's pretty freshly emerged)
- Giant Syrian
- Excellent sprouting of marjoram and thyme (which look more or less identical - it's a good thing I remembered to write everything down.
- One tomatillo
- Both lemon balms
Not a bad showing at all. I'm going to the nursery tomorrow, and plan to pick up "real" seedling trays and fertilizer (among other things), so I'll probably do a little more sowing tomorrow night. Does this mean I should give up on my lamp plants? Probably so; the quality of light under the compact fluorescent may not be good, and I only put one seed per pot, which was a mistake. And there's some pretty happy green algae growth there. It may be time to admit defeat and scrap them. We'll see - I may wait another couple days. I know there will be a point where I feel vindictive enough to dig out the soil and look for sprouting. I just have to wait for it.
Next quandry: pre-sprout anything else? I have quite a few summer flowers, but I could always use more herbs and hot-weather vegetables. I'd like to set up a permanent apartment herb-and-baby-green tray. Hmm. Something to chew over.
Until then, I better go to bed. Tomorrow morning, maybe more things will have sprouted!
Update: One of the desk tomatos heard my threat, and has emerged. Maybe it will survive. Another tomatillo shoot is up - no peppers as of yet. It's really cool how fast the seedlings can emerge; from a little spindly thread of stem to distinct leaves to some of my heirloom mix, which are a good 1.5-2" tall.
-All my sweet basil
- The Turkish Orange Eggplant
- Representatives from each pot of heirloom mix tomatoes
- Probably a piece of Amish Paste (I didn't want to poke it - it's pretty freshly emerged)
- Giant Syrian
- Excellent sprouting of marjoram and thyme (which look more or less identical - it's a good thing I remembered to write everything down.
- One tomatillo
- Both lemon balms
Not a bad showing at all. I'm going to the nursery tomorrow, and plan to pick up "real" seedling trays and fertilizer (among other things), so I'll probably do a little more sowing tomorrow night. Does this mean I should give up on my lamp plants? Probably so; the quality of light under the compact fluorescent may not be good, and I only put one seed per pot, which was a mistake. And there's some pretty happy green algae growth there. It may be time to admit defeat and scrap them. We'll see - I may wait another couple days. I know there will be a point where I feel vindictive enough to dig out the soil and look for sprouting. I just have to wait for it.
Next quandry: pre-sprout anything else? I have quite a few summer flowers, but I could always use more herbs and hot-weather vegetables. I'd like to set up a permanent apartment herb-and-baby-green tray. Hmm. Something to chew over.
Until then, I better go to bed. Tomorrow morning, maybe more things will have sprouted!
Update: One of the desk tomatos heard my threat, and has emerged. Maybe it will survive. Another tomatillo shoot is up - no peppers as of yet. It's really cool how fast the seedlings can emerge; from a little spindly thread of stem to distinct leaves to some of my heirloom mix, which are a good 1.5-2" tall.
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