First Day of Daylight Savings

March 12th, 2013. I did a fair bit of work in the garden this weekend.    

I started by topping up the soil in all of the raised beds. It took a full cubic yard altogether. Lot of shoveling. 
 
I used the Garden Mix from Western Soils: 1/3 manure, 2/3 topsoil, or so. Pretty rich. 
 
The soil in the raised beds had settled a fair bit during the last couple of years. 
 
That's partly because soil settles, and partly because I filled the bottoms of the raised beds with scrap wood; an attempt at hugelkultur: a permaculture technique that involves branches and wood under the soil, decomposing, for long-term enrichment of the soil. 
 
Before I filled the bins, I removed the things growing there (well, most of them). In the process, I found a whole bunch of red onion starts. I think one of my red onion flowers last year went to seed before I got to it and this spring, I have scads of little baby red onion starts!  

I was terrifically excited to find all these free onion starts, and my favorite onions at that! So I planted all the volunteer onion starts, and some of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion starts that I'd been working on all winter in the greenhouse. We'll see how well they do.
 
After two days of shoveling and raking, I looked into what could be planted already. 

I've always waited until later for a lot of my spring gardening, but several seeds said, "Plant as early as soil can be worked." And I'd clearly been working the soil. So I planted some things.
Four rows of things here. The first was supposed to be radishes, but when I planted them, it turns out they were beet seeds. Whoops. Well, they're both red, found root crops, aren't they?
Then carrots, then more beets (on purpose this time) and finally, some actual radishes. 

I also planted a row of sugar snap peas (I soaked the seeds for a day in advance). Actually, I laid the (soaked) seeds on the soil, and added the new soil on top.
Yesterday, I had dug into the soil under that space and added both blood meal and bone meal. Hoping for good peas again. Excellent for friends and family grazing opportunities. 

Note that the first bed in the back has been growing garlic all winter. I added to it (there was some elephant garlic among the little onion starts, rescued from the other beds). 

I've also got some Swiss chard growing on the near end of this bed: it's been out and under cover for a week or more (with one out from under cover), and they seem to be doing pretty well. 

There's one Romaine lettuce under cover at the other end of the bed; been there for a week, too. 

Mid-winter, we'd discovered some red potatoes growing in a dark cupboard. I stuck those in dirt, hoping they'd survive and maybe grow. They're growing well.

2023 Winter Update

A friend wanted an update on the Red Door Green House.

I didn't have time to take (and edit) photos or to write (and edit) a lot of text. 

Let's see if we can do this as a video, shall we? 

Midwinter, Early March

I admit. I'm really looking forward to Spring.

A guy down at the greenhouse shop said that he was was starting his brassicas mid-January to put out into his garden mid-February.

I thought I would try that. 

Well, the brassicas did survive, but barely. I'm not impressed. I forgot how much the bugs (and apparently birds) like brassicas.

So I thought maybe carrot starts would do better in the garden this winter and then other things.

 

And the bugs aren't overly fond of carrots.

I started these indoors, same time: mid-January. Transplanting them outdoors a few at a time since mid-February.

They seem to be thriving. Nice!

 

On the other hand, I've been harvesting last year's carrots all winter long. Pretty yummy.

And now, second week in March, the rhubarb is beginning to come up. Nice.

New Growth on Old Plants

I'm surprised this winter by how much new growth is popping out on the peppers and fuchsias from last year. 

 

I was expecting them to die. These are reportedly annuals. They're clearly not dead. 

Mid February Update

My to do list says that February 15th is time to plant some of last month's brassica starts into the garden. I put one out there (under a dome) a couple of days ago. We'll see if it survives.

I don't think I'll be able to plant things into the garden this weekend. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other thing on the list for this weekend was to start tomatoes and sweet peppers.This is a little early, but I want really strong starts come early May, when it's time for them to go into the garden. And I'll probably give a few away, too.

 

These are on a heating pad, under a dome, inside the greenhouse. I'm looking forward to these, too.  

Choices this year: 

Slicing Tomatoes:
• Brandywine for flavor, even though they're low producers. Indeterminate.
• Cherokee Purple, also for flavor. We'll see how they produce. Also indeterminate. 

• Delicious. I hope they live up to their name. Indeterminate heavy producers.
• Legend: Determinate. For in the greenhouse, where indeterminate gets out of control pretty quickly.

Cooking Tomatoes: 

• San Marzano. Is there any reason to try anything else? Indeterminate, heavy producers. 

Cherry Tomatoes: 

• Chocolate Cherry, because it's yummy. 

• Unlabeled red cherry tomatoes from previous years. 

(I'm planning to restrict cherry tomatoes to pots this year, particularly hanging pots.)

Sweet Peppers: 

• Poblano. I've never grown these before. Looking forward to it. 

• Big Jim. For roasting on the grille. 

• California Wonder: just your basic bell pepper. 

• Big Ol' Bell. Not sure what this is; seeds from online somewhere.

February Tomatoes

I'm still getting cherry tomatoes from a 2020 plant. They're pretty good especially for fresh tomatoes in February. 

My goal is to have tomatoes from a 2021 plant before the 2020 plant is done. 

 

This is my leading candidate. I don't know what variety this is, since it's a weed; I suspect that it's a cherry tomato of some sort. 

Winter Mulch

Neighborhood cut down a tree, and was chipping up the branches. I decided it was the right time to mulch the garden.

Last year's mulch had mostly composted except the top inch. 

The front two beds needed more depth. I scraped off the top inch of chips, added an inch of fresh compost and another inch of well-mulched chips before adding a couple of inches of fresh chips on top.

All other beds got a topping of fresh chips over their existing chips; between 1" and 3" depending on the bed. 

It's going to be interesting to see how seeds and plants do in this environment.

Christmas 2020 Planting

On December 23rd, I planted more.

- purchased Ghost pepper seeds. 

 

- purchased Jamaican Red Hot seeds. [A little research suggests that these are actually a red Scotch Bonnet.]

 

- purchased yellow Scotch Bonnet. [I've recently learned that these are twice as hot as habaneros. Half the heat of Ghost.]

 

- Ed Hume chili variety pack. ["Included, depending on availability, are cayenne, Hungarian wax, serrano, habenero, hot cherry, and other hot chile types."] I'm thankful for more moderate heat in the pepper mix. 

 

- also started some spinach and lettuce, and some flowers for in the greenhouse.

December 2010: the 2021 Garden Begins

First week of December, planted some peppers.

- Ghost peppers from seeds left over from dehydrating.

 

- Lemon Drop from dehydrator seeds 

 

- Purple Serrano from fresh peppers 

 

- Ghost peppers from very fresh peppers 

 

- Fresno peppers (jalapeño variety) from seeds I'd saved. 

 

- Habanero from seeds I'd saved 

Fresh Ghost pepper seeds sprouted immediately. 

 

Fresh Serrano and saved Fresno also sprouted quickly. 

It's Daylight Savings. Must Garden!

Planted Swiss Chard this weekend.

Package said, "Plant January through March."

















Had some kale starts. Set them out. Probably too early for these, not because of the calendar, but because they're too little. We'll see.
















Planted some peas. Sugar snaps.


















Set out some lettuce starts. Some Romaine, some Butter Crunch.

















Didn't do anything to the rhubarb, but it's coming up.

Hydroponic Fun! Why.

I've been learning a thing or two about how to take advantage of hydroponic gardening, without a full hydroponic rig.

(I'll document HOW I'm doing this in this post.)

Advantages of hydroponics, compared to growing in dirt:

• Starts are reported to grow MUCH faster.
• If you set them up right, they don't need watering nearly as often, which means less work for me.
• I'm led to believe that I can leave peppers and other (small) veggies in these small hydroponic containers forever: no need to up-pot. (I'm guessing that tomatoes will be too big, but we'll see.)
• I can grow stuff in the winter. More specifically, I can work on growing stuff in the winter.
• It's new and different and cool. I get to try new things.


Disadvantages of hydroponics, compared to growing in dirt.

• I'll need to be careful transplanting hydroponically started plants into dirt.
• I don't know how to make hydroponic nutrition, and buying them is more expensive than making compost from grass and leaves and chicken poop.
• A full hydroponic system (which I do not have) will be far more complex than dirt gardening.


So far I've started some tomatoes and some lettuce (romaine) in hydroponics pots. The real goal is the pepper plants, but they're being slow to germinate.

Hydroponic Fun! How.

I've been learning a thing or two about how to take advantage of hydroponic gardening, without a full hydroponic rig. This system works for a simple, low-maintenance (not maintenance free) hydroponic system.

(I'll document WHY I'm doing this in another post.)

You'll need:

• Hydroponics Net Cups. I use a 2" size.

• A (plastic?) container with a lid. (More on this in a minute.)

• Spray paint (dark-ish) to make the container opaque.

• Rock wool cubes that fit the cups.

• A hole saw that fits the cups size you're using. 

• Hydroponic nutrients. (More on this later.)

Here’s how I did it. (The pictures show a lot of it, but probably not every step. You can figure it out.)

1.       Gather your lidded containers. These need to be opaque (to keep algae from growing in the nutrient solution), so paint them if you need to. Have fun with the paint if you like. The plants won’t care.

2.       Guy your supplies: You’ll need the net cups and the paint sooner than the rock wool.

3.       Use the hole saw that fits your net cups and cut a hole in the lids for the net cups to fit comfortably into. (Or cut them first and paint them later, if you like them prettier.)

4.       Mix your hydroponic nutrients according to their directions. Fill the containers up to the bottom of the net cup.

5.       I generally cut out the center of the bottom of the net cup, so that the seedling’s root will fit through easily, and also so that if/when I decide to plant these in the garden, I can get the roots out.

6.       Cut your rock wool cubes to fit the net cup if necessary. Slice it open. Nestle the seedling in the rock wool. Put this into the net cup, with the roots dangling below the net cup.

7.       Put the lid with the hole on the container. Stick the net cup / rock wool / seedling into the hole prepared for it. Ensure that the roots are dangling in the nutrient solution. Set them in a well-lighted place. 

8.    Check the levels of the nutrient fluid every week or two. You'll want to keep it up to the bottom of the net cup. If it develops funny colors, pour it out and replace it with fresh nutrients.

9.       Congratulate yourself on successfully starting hydroponic gardening.

A word about the nutrient solution:   Starter nutrition is sometimes different from Ongoing nutrition. The seedlings need a gentler solution, a different solution, and it will take care of the plants from seedlings (or cuttings, if you’re cloning) until they’re six or eight inches tall. At that point, you’ll probably want to graduate to the more mature nutrient solution.

Winterizing the Garden

Winterizing the garden beds.

Winter Rye and maple leaf mulch. There's some red clover in there, too, but I think the mulch may have overwhelmed it.

I like how it looks.

The 2019 Garden Season Started Today

And so it begins...

Last year, I started the hot peppers between Christmas and New Year's. That was too late.

The Lemon Drop peppers started fruiting in October, but the Reapers started blossoming in November. It's now December and they are still plugging (slowly) along.

Might have fruit by spring. Or they might start over with blossoms in spring. Who knows. One Lemon Drop that produced a mediocre crop last year survived over the winter and gave me eight or nine crops this year.

I'm getting a little bit more of a running start this year. I started eight batches of peppers today, December 16th. Some of these are not as slow as the "super-hots," and I'm just getting a terribly early start this year. 

 

About half of these are seeds I've saved from the last couple of years; the rest are from growers around the country. Some came as a gift.

I also started some Impatiens this week. They took so terribly long to mature last year. It might have been better to start these in January or February, but it's too late now. I got excited. 

I also started a batch of Schizanthus. I was in a hurry and the package looked like an Impatiens package. Well, this will be interesting.

Also, I picked some lemon drop peppers and a lemon this week.