Update on the Tater Towers

A week or three ago, I showed the setup of the Tater Towers. I've been able to update them with fresh straw. Soon, the plants will poke through the dirt & mulch, and be ready for another layer of dirt in the middle. I'm ready for 'em!

Actually, I probably didn't need to add this yet, but I was excited. I wanted to see how it worked with fresh straw. Answer: it works really well.

Now when the tater plants start growing, I'll add more dirt inside the straw.

The Garden Planning Center

Every garden needs a planning center: a place where notes are kept, schedules are posted.

We built our greenhouse on the south end of our garage, and there was already a window there. So we have a window - which we never open - between the garage and the "toolroom" portion of the greenhouse. (A lovely view, though! NOT!)

But the window makes a fine whiteboard. And we've posted the "When to Plant What" information. We've also got post-it notes and some pens.

So far, we use it mostly for love notes. . . .

Soaking Seeds

Some seeds need some help germinating. So we soak them. (Some, we also freeze first, but that depends on the seeds.)

I did this last fall with Gala Apple seeds. It took longer than I expected, but it certainly worked!

It's really complicated: put 'em in a sealed bag with wet paper towels. Forget about 'em for a few weeks. Come back later and see what germinated. (Don't take them out until - rule of thumb - the starts have their first set of real leaves: more than just a sprouted seed.)

We have two more batches going, as of the first weekend in March.

On the left are some lemon seeds ("pips"). These actually came from Germany, though I don't know where the actual lemons were grown. I also don't know how old the seeds are; at least a year or two. I've got half of them starting to soak. Lemon trees are kind of a bear, but they sure smell great. So we'll soak the seeds for a good long while. 

The second set is dated 1992. That's 11 years ago. But they come from my mother-in-law's greenhouse (she had a wonderful green thumb!). They're labeled (best I can tell) "Oelock." Don't know what that means. And I'm not sure that 11 year old seeds will sprout. But we're going to try.

Successful Starts (So Far)

Inventoried the successful starts this weekend: 

 

Spinach, yellow alyssum (but not purple alyssum!), white onions, sweet onions (going to have too many onion starts!), kohlrabi, heritage rainbow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, possibly one sun sugar tomato, lots and lots of basil (goliath basil, lettuce basil, sweet basil, Thai basil, amaretto basil), thyme, cumin, two kinds of dill, cilantro, sweet peas, sugar snap peas, a poppy mix, two butterfly flower mixes, a “butterfly weed,” two kinds of lavender, tomatillas, yellow sunflowers, red sunflowers, cat grass and gala apple trees. 

 

And in one of the pots that should be growing violets, a carrot seems to be sprouting.

Whoops. Nasturtium starts were up by nightfall as well. Cool.

Warming the Pots

I've been having trouble with several kinds of seeds not germinating. The one I was most concerned about was the basil: I want to grow a lot of basil this year, for myself, for my kids, for my brother, for making pesto.

I asked at The Barn, and they said that basil is notoriously challenging to start this time of year. It wants warm soil. In fact, they don't usually even try to get starts for a couple of months.

I took an old heating pad and wrapped it in several layers of plastic, turned it on high, and set the a bunch of pots (including basil) on it.

I ended up double stacking the basil starts on top of a whole bunch of smaller pots with starts in them: tomatillas, tomatoes, chrysanthemums, peppers, and yes, more basil underneath.

Two days later, I had chrysanthemums sprouting. The next day, the basil was sprouting, and more come through the soil everyday.

The idea worked so well, that I'm trying to make use of pretty much every warm thing in the greenhouse. I have a heater that I use to take the edge of cold nights. I now have chiles and tomatoes on top of that. (I'll throw a cover on it.)

And I've got lemon grass on top of one of the dehydrators.

We'll see how that goes.

Raw Materials for the Dehydrator

I'm going to have a happy dehydrator!

The apples and bananas are for slicing, drying, and munching.

I'll also slice and dry the red onions and garlic, but then we'll make red onion powder & garlic powder. (Comment: red onion powder is completely different than sweet onion powder. More piquant, for one thing. And more colorful.)

The basil won't reach the dehydrator quite yet. I've re-potted it, and I'm going to let it get big and bushy first. Then for drying and grinding. But fresh basil is also yummy as green leaves. (I use it instead of lettuce in sandwiches, for example.).

Future Herbs and Spices

I've discovered over the past several months that home-made onion powder is substantially better than even the best of the store-bought stuff.

I am now trying to keep three different kinds of onion powder around: white onion, sweet onion and red onion.

These are sweet onions, on their way to becoming onion powder. This came from 6 or 7 medium size sweet onions, and it will make about half a cup of really amazing onion powder, that really does taste like sweet onions!

And as long as we're documenting things, here's the first sage crop of the year.The active dehydrator finished this off in about 30 hours, though it might have not needed even that. Then I ground it up in a $5.00 food processor from Goodwill, to a fine powder, and loaded it into the Sage canister in the herb collection.

And rosemary does well in the winter as well. I harvested a goodly chunk, and filled the greenhouse with its fragrance. Soon we'll have fresh rosemary powder.