Sterilizing some dirt for starts.

Our compost is not hot enough to kill seeds, because our compost is the chicken yard. So we have to kill the seeds manually. I will probably grind this into smaller pieces a little later.

Peas

 

Peas

First batch of Pea seeds, dry, south end of Pea trellis. 

 

Planted hot peppers.​

Carolina reaper, ghost, red habanero, Scotch bonnet, lemon drop.

Peppers & Tomatoes for '24

Peppers:

• Bell peppers: seeds from grocery store peppers.
• Baby bell peppers:  red, yellow & orange, also from grocery store peppers.
• Aji peppers (little bit of heat): seeds came with another order.  
• Shishito (almost no heat): seeds from last year's plants
• Lemon Drop (hot & citrus): last year's plants.
• Scotch Bonnet (hot & spicy): last year's plants.
• Carolina Reaper (record-breaking heat): Etsy. 

Note: All peppers are started. 

 

Tomatoes:

•  Stewing Tomatoes: San Marzano.
• Cherry Tomatoes: 
• Assorted leftovers from years gone by. (Hanging pots & ground pots)
  
• "Spoon" pea-size tomatoes (hanging pots only)
  
• Slicing Tomatoes
• Brandywine
• Fireworks
• Green Zebra
• Cherokee Carbon. I have high hopes.
• Assorted leftovers from previous years. 
• Greenhouse Tomatoes: 
• Brandywine
• Cherokee Carbon
• Fireworks
  

Note: A few Brandywine started, for greenhouse. Will start the rest in early March / late February.
 

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? 

2022 Starts

12/15/2021: Planted papaya seeds, from a papaya from the grocery store.

12/20/2021: Planted pomegranate seeds, from a pomegranate from the grocery store.

Both sprouted well. 

1/15/2022: Planted a number of peppers. These are always slow to sprout. 

1/15/2022: Started some cuttings from a lime tree. These did not take. 😢

1/20/2022: Finished pruning all the pepper plants that are over-wintering. Nearly all of them are in good shape. 

1/28/2021: Planted squash and cucumber seeds. Martini cucumbers sprouted very quickly.

1/28/2021: Planted various brassica seeds. Broccoli is first to germinate. 

2/5/2022: Planted a few tomato seeds. Yeah, it's too early, but I'm excited for spring. 

2/5/2022: Planted yellow onion seeds. These are later than I'd like.