Last of the seed orders.

The Cherokee Purple and Green Shiso seeds arrived today.  If i can continue reigning myself in,  this is all the seeds for the year.  The only thing left to arrive will be the Adirondack Blue potato starts that should come in the Spring.

The seeds from the eBay seller look good,  nice and clean seeds, little to no chaff, plenty of them too.

Its been too chaotic so far today to get those pots i set out filled,  so no starting seeds yet.  A few days delay won't hurt since i am on the cusp of the starting dates.

I hope to get it started and completed this weekend at least.

We also got the weather station figured out.  Hubby went out and got a second one from Mardens so we could both have receivers.  It ended up costing us about $9 for the two sets because we had a gift card.
The station shows wind speed, direction, humidity, barometric pressure, indoor and outdoor temps,   forecast icon and calculates windchill.
Its nice to have this information at a glance.

Weather and seed starting

Forecast for Friday.... 6-12 inches of snow.  Happy April Fools? We did get snow a few days after April first last year.  But this just isn't right.

Oh, almost killed the Cherokee Purple seedling. I moved the stuff around and set up the light shelf and somewhere in that time it wilted. I don't know if i smacked it by mistake or what, but it did look a tiny bit dry so i watered it and in the last 3 hours it has perked up better. Still not sure its ok, but it does look better.

I caved about starting the tomatoes. I went ahead and did it. I still think its too early, but i've been brainwashed by what i have been reading.
I have them indoors and under a double set of lights (two double shop lights = four bulbs) and its in one of the cooler rooms in the house. They don't need the light yet, but the peppers and eggplants are sharing the same shelf and lamps. That is pretty much all i will be starting indoors this year.

I planted:
Sweet Chelsea - large cherry type
Pruden's Purple- Brandywine type
German Orange Strawberry - oxheart type
Banana Legs - yellow paste
San Marzano- red paste

I thought i still had Roma seeds, but didn't find them so i didn't go crazy looking.  Five types are plenty for my garden. I have paste types and salad types so that will work and if one variety goes kaput i have redundancies.

Ok, so hopefully this storm for Friday ends up being a rain storm and not snow. 



gotta go, toddler is trying to eat Playdoh

Wind...its a big pain in the tusch.

So, i got my new Flower Tower mini greenhouse this morning. I put it together.

Its nice, a tad bigger than my other one and probably about as sturdy, the clear vinyl cover is more heavy duty and the  seams are reinforced. The zippers are also more rugged.

It wasn't windy at all this morning when i started putting it together and it was only slightly breezy when it was done. Just enough to move your hair a bit... i set the Tower up next to the long side of the house.
I didn't figure it would be smart to put anything in it without bracing it with something, so i put a couple bricks and a short piece of 2x4 on the bottom shelf along with 2 extra bags of seed starting mix for good measure. Then i took the seed trays i had prepared this morning- herbs, some veggies and a type of flower or two and put them on the second to the bottom shelf, figuring it wouldn't be wise to make it top heavy.  I left the zippered door open and the vent it has on the back-  thought this would keep it from catching a gust under the cover and lifting it.  Still only lightly breezy out...  went into the house to do some household stuff...   about 20 minutes later i heard a noise that could only be a lightweight, hobby style greenhouse falling over...

It had fallen over in a rogue gust and tipped my seed trays out into the clear domes... ok.... this stinks... but i won't get mad.
I took an empty Sterilite tote and just dumped the soil into it. I had planted some large seeds- like Okra, Birdhouse Gourd and some Nasturtiums.

Easy to ID and find.
So i found all of those seeds ok.

Other seeds i planted were tiny stuff, oregano, marjoram, peppermint... total loss there. I didn't want to waste the soil and even putting it in the compost would be a waste cause its seed starting mix and i only have so much of that. So i decided to just leave it in the tote and i can use it a bit later to sow my onions into it... onion sprouts are distinctive enough that if any of the herbs sprout i won't have a bunch of mystery seedlings.

So, since i emptied the flats for reuse later i set them aside and moved the greenhouse a bit more snug to the house, replaced the weights and went back inside.  A few minutes later, i hear a really strange noise...  it sounds like a small, hobby greenhouse flying through the air.

Ok.... somehow, the wind got under it in a way that it had to have lifted it about 10-15 feet in the air to move it between the basketball hoop and the roof edge (which is too narrow for it to pass between) and set it down about 20 feet away, scattering the wire shelves, wiping out my now-empty seed trays and distributing my plastic seed labels all over the back yard.  It somehow bucked out the weight items and took off.

Greenhouse still with barely a scratch...  amazing. lol  The seed trays are amazingly still intact as well.

So, now i have it under the overhang, pinched between the stroller, the step and the gas grill....  let's see it try to fly away now.


Sometime later today i will get the chance to re-plant the seeds i lost.

*sigh*

I just hope this isn't a preview of things to come: Me, chasing 30' lengths of white row cover all over the yard, out the driveway and down the street.

But in a way it is funny, i bet it looked really cool up about 10 feet in the air. It must have landed gently cause it isn't the worse for wear.

I thought i was going to get ahead of things today. I woke up really early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so i got up and made myself a coffee. With nobody to bother me or get in my way, i had the kitchen cleaned and the dishes done. I picked up the living room too and everyone got up just before i took the vacuum around the house. 
So it looked like i was going to be able to get more seeds going--and i did until the flying greenhouse incident.

I didn't get any pictures.

I think the little one is going to be having finger-foods for lunch today so i can sit with her, but i can be replanting instead of  feeding and dodging purees.

Many things...

Rainy out today.  I was having a hard time getting the Agribon-19 in the dimensions i needed. I must have it at least 12' wide. The Agribon is available in 12' widths, but the  only place i fount it was at Vesey's, and only of 50' lengths.  I expect to have four rows needing 29 feet or so (gotta have extra at the ends to close them off) each.  Tried emailing them to see if they can get me 150' in continuous length, but i doubt they will be able to even if they are willing, often the stores get them precut and packaged and they dole out the pieces.

  But on the way back from visiting my Grampy at the hospital, my sister and i stopped at Paris Farmer's Union to see what they might have, and they looked in their catalog. Found something called Remay (or Reemay, a search for "Remay" bears  results in both spellings). This should be a very similar spun material like Agribon. Internet search results in a number of short mentions of the  Remay material, seems all positive-  for uses such as bug repelling, light frost protection, increased direct-sown seed germination, soil warmer, wind protection, sun protection, & small critter and bird baffler.  Just what i need.  Paris can get me continuous 300' for the same price as 3 packages- equaling 150' from Vesey's --- and no shipping charges.  Yeah it could be way more than may need this year,  but for the same price...  it was going to cost that much no matter what i did anyway.  Might as well get twice the material.

So it should be in today at the earliest.  They will call. I'm  going out with my sister to see our Grampy again today so i will check in after that because i will probably be out when they call the house.

I really hope its the right stuff. All this plotting, planning and obsessing....!

Been too busy hanging out with my sister to get any more seeds started,  but she's only here until Thursday morning and its back to California. And Grampy's operation is tomorrow.  It will be a little scary.



Hubby took me to Lowe's on Saturday and we got the PVC for the hoops.  I poked the ground with a shovel the other day to see how deep the frost was, its still there, so no rototilling yet even if it wasn't raining,  but the rain will soften it a good bit.

The Winter Rye has taken off again, very green out there, not even Easter yet.

Not sure what to do with the apple trees.  I don't dare to prune them myself,  i have a book to read about it though, just need the time and the daring.  But i guess i can't make them any worse.  Next i have to look in on what sort of things i can use to organically control what is bugging them.  Companion planting tells me to grow onion family plants around them... i think a bed of chives will do much for them, and chives are easy. Maybe toss in a few Welsh Onions....

Gave my sister a huge basket of yarn the other day.  I opened up my stash and told her to grab whatever she wanted, don't be shy.  Very glad of it, i have lots of nice yarn but no time. She is a knitter and knitting brings out the best in the yarns i had, crocheting does not do them justice since you get a bulkier result. At least with the stitches i use.  We are going to have to mail it to her in a box because it will be too expensive to send on the plane,  think laundry basket of yarn...lol

So, we will see what today brings.

Photo Tutorials and odd root veggies:

 I read quite a few blogs. Normally they are gardening or crafting blogs where the author is constructing some fascinating contraption or modifying something in order to repurpose it.  I decided that i am jealous of never having done my own photo tutorial. So, i think today is the day!

So, to set the stage:

I love the seed starting product known as Peat Pellets.  They are very convenient.  They allow me to sow seeds without having to buy anything but them and the seeds.  I can place the Peat Pellets in most every container i want.  What works best for me is to save  styrofoam meat trays and set the PPs on those. The trays take a Sharpie marker very well and there is plenty of room to write.

But, like i said, they aren't very cheap. I usually buy them by the bag - about $15. for 100.
It saves the work of having to individually fill those rotten 6-pack trays, which always give me trouble,  and they are more compact to store than bags of soil.

My mom gave us her Keurig coffee pot a few months ago, the timer on it ceased to function so she was getting a new one. We don't use timers on coffee pots, so it was a good match for us.  Now the one-cup system always sort of bothered me,  i'm not an environmentalist- really.  But the one-use plastic cup just kinda irked me even though i absolutely adore the brewing system.

Being the seed-starter than i am (i'm a better seed-starter than a gardener, big plans, bad luck, little follow-through) i pretty quickly realized that they were about the same size as my peat pellets. And better, by function, they already have a drain hole precision- punched into the bottom. All that needs to be done is to  remove the lid, the grounds and a quick rinse.  This is a project that is well within my skill level.

So i saved the K-cups over a number of months (about 130 saved), disemboweled them and set them aside (much to my hubby's annoyance) until around now.
Here are the Disemboweling instructions for making the Keurig K-Cup into a little pot for seedling propagation.

 This is a K-Cup. Recently used. Its good to clean them out shortly after they cool off or else things get a bit scary in there.

 Perfect seed-starting size.

Break the foil lid and peel it off. It is a little harder to pull off than usual foil tops because these are not really made to be removed.

It dosen't take very long even though it might separate into a few pieces, the cup is tough enough.

Now, dump out the coffee grounds. They stick to the mini filter, but that is ok. Usually i dump the grounds into a bowl (when i do 20 kcups at a time) and feed them to my worms.

 Then i poke my finger through the center of the paper filter, hook it and yank, peeling it away from the edges.

Dismantling complete.

I don't even have to poke a drainage hole.

Just a quick rinse...

Don't even need to use soap.

All clean and ready to be filled with potting soil.

 The white cups are best because they take a label so well. They also come in black plastic, but i only use those if i must.

They fit 50 to a standard flat, just like the Peat Pellets, and if you drink the coffee anyway, they are technically free.


Yay! My first tutorial.  LOL



So, you see, it is pretty simple :)


I spent some time looking up some info on growing a couple of the unusual root vegetables that i want to try this year.
Burdock is one of them.
Apparently it is quite good, shows up on cooking shous occasionally and is said to be loaded in good vitamins and minerals. Its downside is that the roots can grow about 3' long,  can get quite large around and are tenacious- so harvesting them is challenging!
But i came upon an ingenious idea for making the harvest much easier- if not the prep work:

From one of our customers, W. Takahashi:
I have a tip for growing Gobo without the intense digging normally associated with gobo. I start seeds early inside on a hot pad (Zone 5). Garden prep: Cut 4" PVC into 36" Lengths and then in half lengthwise. Bury the PVC starting 2"-3" deep at surface and the deepest end at 12" (at a cant). I plant the seedlings at the top end, positioned to ensure roots will follow PVC, keeping plants watered & fertilized. Once established, I mulch heavily with straw. I normally overlap each PVC with a 15" spacing of the plants requiring harvesting from the last plant first. Harvesting requires minimal efforts.  Source

I think its brilliant.  Hubby just sees it as more work. I'm wondering it it might be worth it, its a great idea but i don't know if it will ever happen, to be honest. But at least i know the best way to do it if ever!

The Salsify seems pretty straightforward, they are like thinner, foot-long carrots. But i learned that the foliage can also be eaten since salsify is related to the dandelion.

So, off to read a couple more gardening books. "Cash from Square Foot Gardening" and "Garden Encyclopedia".  The Cash book is basically the original "Square Foot Gardening" book, but with extra tips for making it a backyard business... not terribly interested in that- though i hope to be getting enough produce to both donate (and not just tomatoes and zucchini) and put away, bit it was the only square foot book we coulf find for free on the internet.

The Garden Encyclopedia is full of info, as it should be. It even has a section to help me decide how much of each item to grow- production estimates. This will keep me from getting carried away and planting too much of one thing and barely enough of another- while allowing for the plans to preserve.

Between the two books, i am being reminded to also stagger the planting of multi-harvest crops, like lettuce, cabbage, radishes and bush beans, so i don't have them all coming to bear in one week, but that we have one or two harvestables at a time.

More reading, graphing, planning, calculating and thinking.   Yay!

During the little one's nap today, i hope to get the onions, shallots and welsh onions (similar to chives) started and set outdoors with the other wintersown flats.

Any number of things

Added a count down timer for the first planting day of next spring. Its not really necessary now, but i think it will be pretty cool to watch come March!  Up here we don't plant out until the last full moon and that is usually on Memorial day.
Normally we are away at camp on Memorial Day so planting does not happen until the next day at the soonest.

I was thinking about winter sowing again today, and wondering why it seems to be so "new" of an idea. Really,  how did people do it before grow lamps, heat mats, plastic trays, sterile potting mix, nurseries that start it all for you... etc?  The way we do things today, our ancestors would have starved.  Apparently, wintersowing is not a new thing, it is a method that almost died out.  It is something worth re-learning. Especially since it means less clutter!
But i still want a greenhouse.
But that will never happen.  Even if we were to have the money, i don't think the hubbs would support it.  He's never been interested in my hobbies, i think they are more of a nuisance to him.  But i think he has finally learned that at least with the small stuff, he is not a deterrent. lol

I have to remember to research pressure canners, though i don't know if i will ever have the nerve to use it. Time, possibly...energy, hopefully...  but i never trust myself with these sort of things. I have to run through the whole process once by myself first, its getting that first time out of the way that is important.
But i want a good canner. I know i tend to go off the deep end at times i always have to get the bigger one or the one with more options, but its mainly because i am unsure with what i am doing, i at least want to have the right equipment so i can troubleshoot the method.  If your equipment is bad and you don't know it, no method is going to work to fix any problems...and i always assume i'm going to have a disaster because somewhere along the line i decided that i can't do anything right.

I also don't know where i'd store all the cans,  i know the full ones would go in the pantry, but where to store the empties?  My house is so small, we don't even have a bedroom for the baby to use when she gets bigger. Moving is not an option. Its funny tho that since we moved in here (thought it was far better than any apartment and i am grateful for my house) i have been dreaming almost every night that this house has more rooms.  There are always extra rooms that i forgot about in my dreams,  ones we don't use...and some of them are full of the previous owner's things. Always antiques, or nice 'old lady' things,  not junk or anything that should be thrown away.  But in my dream i will have something that needs to be put away and i will say, "oh, i can put it in that room over there",  and i will open a door that dosen't exist, and there the room is.  Or the rooms will be full of fascinating things. One time i had a whole forgotten library.... 

So, add to the things i want or need to do...



....Cold frames....

those too.  I think i know where to put some in... if i ever could do it.

Right here:

Right now (this picture is not current) it is my nursery bed now. I have 4 Native Beach Plum plants and a variegated Elderberry plant in there to winter over. I hope they make it!  I got the Beach Plums from Oikos Tree Crops,  they are an interesting company. I got 3 of my 5 types of Jerusalem Artichokes from them,  Red Rover, White Fuseau and i forget the other.... maybe it was just two...hmmm...

  This is why i journal, memory is so bad!  I could look at  back pages of  this journal later.  But i did check out the website to Oikos, and it looks like they have added to their root varieties... they have one called Clearwater that apparently they sourced up here in Maine and they have another called Waldspinel from Austria....  i have only tasted sunchokes once, but i want these two varieties now.  Uggh.   I am still curious about the phantom variety i saw being sold on a Canadian website, the seller called them Passamaquoddy Potatoes.  My MIL has never heard of them and she is Passamaquoddy and my hubby grew up on the reservation, so its a mystery to me.  Of course the seller could have flat out invented the name,  or was misled by her source for the roots.  The Canadian company does not have the proper permits to sell me the roots, so i can't try them out, which is a bummer. I wonder if they are just Red Fuseaus...But these are the silly things that keep me up at night...not really.  My leg does tho, and this is what i think about that lets me ignore that. Ha ha.

I need to think about Asparagus also,  i adore asparagus and the fact that it is one of the first garden edibles in the spring makes it even better.   Pinetree sells it by seed and by root.  They have Martha Washington by seed i think and i can't remember which one they have by root.  But i think i'll get both. I bet i could wintersow the seed with great results.

I tried to get the open pollinated heirloom types in the catalog this year. I like a little history with my veggies and i like the idea that i could potentially fertilize and save the seeds and get something like their parent plants.

Jacob's Cattle beans are one that i totally remember. My grandfather had them hanging up all over the sun room in their old house. They make a good dry bean for baking, but are very good picked fresh out of the garden in the summer.  They make a large baking bean, bigger than navy, but not as big as the one i think they call Scarlet Runner...  speaking of which, that's another one i need to get....  it makes great bean teepees. I planted Jacob's Cattle the summer before this last and they did great as always.

Another garden veg i remember are the yellow pear tomatoes. My grandfather planted those too, there is something about the taste of a fresh tomato still warm from the sun that can't be beat by anything else.  Especially the yellow pear tomatoes.  When i was a kid, they were the perfect size and shape for eating in the field.  Of course my grandfather had a field of them... see where i get my overambitious gardening tendencies?  Anyway, the unique shape is the key,  you bite off the narrow part and squeeze and suck the juice out of the fruit, then you pop the rest in your mouth and its one of those things i won't forget. Standing in the middle of the huge garden wearing a soggy swimsuit and waterlogged rubber boots (fresh from hanging out in the frog pond), popping yellow pear tomatoes in the hot summer sun, cicadas droning in the pine trees. It was one of those things that make having been a kid worthwhile.

So, i have to plant those too...i wish i could find the heirloom type that my grandfather planted i saw it one day in a magazine i think,  but Pinetree does not have it this year at least, maybe Johnny's has it... i'll have to look.

I thought it was odd that i already got Pinetree's catalog this year. They must be seriously trying to keep up,  they got swamped so bad last year they were almost begging people to not order from them until later ...and the online seed place ratings site, they got so many bad reviews for late shipments. It was awful to see, they have always been a great company i hated to see them so roundly bashed just for getting overwhelmed. Its the economy  and the surge in people wanting to grow their own food.  The world is so nasty now though that any mess up or mistake a company makes, they get slammed with the worst of obnoxious criticism.  So, i'm ordering from them first from now on because they have always been good to me. I like Johnny's too, but they are so expensive, its almost ridiculous- like if LL Bean had a seed store- that type of expensive.  One year i did a test order of seeds. I filled out one order form from Johnny's and one from Pinetree, same exact items, and Pinetree was almost half the price of Johnny's.  So if i can get it from Pinetree, i will go there first.

Well i have my seed list made, with my highlighter and calculator. I'll start saving a few bucks a week until i can submit my order. I always get too many seeds, too many types, but since i don't buy jewelery or shoes i think i can splurge on garden seeds...plus i can share out any extras or trade them on GardenWeb like i used to. I still have my Cardamom plant from years ago.  Ahhh...remember when postage was cheap?

I want to mail my sister some extra yarn i have that i won't be using anytime soon that she would probably be able to work up quickly,  but i'm scared to try mailing it until i have at least $20 to spare.  I have a feeling it might cost close that for Priority.  Maybe i won't need to ship it priority,  i'm so used to shipping live or delicate things that it seems weird to me to let it take a week or two to ship. Maybe i should get over that! lol

Snow, rain, washouts...etc.

 It did snow a couple weeks ago, it didn't really cover much,  just dusted the parts where the shade lasts the longest and the ground is therefore cooler.  Good to see that my garden is going to be situated in the area where the snow didn't stick.




This should mean that i chose wisely situating it here, even though i do worry about the way the runoff channels the soil out there.

This is what i mean:

So the grass is this high now...

....And it kinda is helping.

Did some more wintersowing  research and found this site http://www.gardensandcrafts.com/wintersowing.html

I'm really gaining confidence that that method is going to be just the thing i need to get a good start on the season.