March Greenhouse Status

Just journaling about the progress of stuff in the greenhouse.

Hanging pot full of alyssum.

No idea how this will turn out, but they've germinated.

They're reported to like acid soil, so I've given them some lime (in water). Might have over-done it.

One of the warm beds.

The front is impatiens flowers. The white did great. the colors are mostly a fail.

Got little bits going on: some lemon cuke, some squashes, a little bit of basil.

Observation: Most things that I started early did not benefit from the early start. Tomatoes are the exception. And Impatiens.

Lots more has not yet germinated.

In the center, sunflowers. Looking to have enough for cut flowers.

In the back: not a clue. I think it may give me a flower later. I forgot to label it.

Other, fresher, sunflower seeds have yet to germinate.

This is amazing. This is a licorice mint. It smells as much like licorice as it does mint.

I plan to harvest leaves and try to make tea.

I also plan to start several more of these.

The other hot bed.

Lots of tomatoes in front. These are mostly slicers (Legend)

In the back, some starts: licorice mint, rosemary, etc.

Oh, and the Frankenflower seeds are soaking there, on a warming mat.

This is the part under the plastic.

The tray on the right: one row of petunia seeds, one of rosemary seeds.

The tray on the left: lavender seeds, lemon pepper seeds (the really important one!), chinese lantern seeds, and some more impatiens (colors). 

You can probably tell, I'm tired of paying lots of money for annuals; going to try to get a bunch from seed here.

Embarrassing. I don't remember what these starts are. I think Swiss chard is among them.

It is completely ridiculous to have such good tomato starts this early in the year. They are almost ready to go into the garden, but 8 weeks early. That's what you get when you start the seeds in January. It's going to be interesting to see if this is good or bad in the long run.

First hanging pot full of tomatoes. Most of them are chocolate cherries. One is a mystery. We'll see what that turns into.

Going to have a pot full of nasturtiums, too. For grazing.

More tomato starts.

Yellow zucchini, more sunflowers (red ones), and some cantaloupes.

Some pepper starts, several varieties. Many of them are bell peppers, but there's a cayenne pepper there, and two yellow reapers.

Some globe amaranth was included with a seed order. Gonna try that. And some tubs ready to plant later.

One of my favorites: schizanthus (the poor man's orchid) in a hanging pot. I love these beautiful flowers.

Onions sprouting.

The super hot peppers didn't do terrifically. So I replanted them. The back is San Marzano peppers, the front is Fresno peppers.

 A variety of seedlings. Dill (on the left) is the most successful. One pattypan squash. No sign of the Anaheim peppers or the bench peppers. Last year, the bench peppers were habaneros.

Some of the more successful starts.

Some Legend (slicing) tomatoes. And some sugar peas. I'm planting some of those outside every day.

Romaine lettuce and swiss chard are doing well.

Spinach and coriander are not.

Salad. A variety of lettuces. These won't be transplanted. These will be harvested from this container. Micro-greens.

On the left: feldsalat vs corn salad.

On the right, flowers: marigolds, blackeyed susans, cardinal climbers.




We discovered some purple potatoes sprouting in a cupboard (from last year's harvest). So I planted them. Potato sack is indoors for now. It'll go out shortly.

And they're sprouting!

This is one of the more exciting photos on this page: buds on the lemon tree.

Two young avocado trees.

Hold it. This is one of the more exciting things on this page.

This is a lemon drop pepper plant that's survived through the winter, and is budding again.

I wonder if it will give me more fruit this year. That would be really cool.

Lemon drop peppers are my favorite spicy pepper to grow: hard to find anywhere, and incredibly delicious! My daughter discovered them.





This is the 4-year-old (or so) avocado tree. Strong and healthy.Turns out it needs lots of water over winter. It's putting on a lot of new growth.






And the olive tree is fruitful, too. Thirty or forty. I haven't picked them. What would I do with them?

March Status of the Garden

Peas out.

Beginning to bring out some starts from the greenhouse, but lots more seed planted here.

Also have radish and carrots in front of the peas




Brought out some lettuce starts. Under the cold frame. 

Carrots and swiss chard. This will be under a cold frame.










Lettuce from seed a couple of weeks ago. Under a cold frame.












This is exciting! Feldsalat, from German seeds. Also under a cold frame. We'll see how this does.









Our first asparagus sprout in their new  home! Woot! I didn't kill them all!

A Trellis for Peas.

One of the advantaged about raised beds is that it adds a third dimension to the gardening. In this case, we're going up and over, from one bed to another.

In another case, I'll be growing pumpkins, maybe cucumbers, that vine over the edge, to the ground thirty inches below.

This trellis is made from some cedar fencing, and some fencing that I'd used for potato pots a few years back. I've planted sugar peas under each end.

We never expect to "harvest" peas. Peas, like raspberries, are for grazing.

And it makes kind of a nice entry way into the garden.

Once the peas are done, we are thinking we might do pole beans. This would be a good place for scarlet runners, don't you think?

The Big Bin, For the Win

So the new garden space has a whole lot of 8' x 3' beds. Right in the middle of those, taking the space of two of them, I decided that I wanted one larger bed.

Partly, this is to break up the monotony of a tank farm for a garden.

And partly, this is to make up for some of the lost square footage (despite the increased cubic footage) of the new beds. It's also less expensive per square foot.


We had to special order the 8' diameter tank.

Then we needed to find a way to get it home. That's a big plant pot.

As with the others, I cut out the bottom of the tank, and set it on cinder blocks.

Then we had to fill it. The best calculation is that this took a thousand gallons of dirt. That's 4.95 cubic yards.

That's a lot of dirt. All shoveled twice by hand.


We had a yard or two already, from having emptied some other locations, and we added three yards from the soil store.

Busted a wheelbarrow in the process.

Filled it mostly with "Garden Mix." One third topsoil and two thirds mushroom compost.

Can't wait for spring to really land, so we can fill this up. 

Since we will have a challenge reaching the very middle of this bed, we stuck a rosemary plant there.

And if you look closely, you'll see the pipe for the garden's primary sprinkler next to the rosemary.