Well, i'll be....

I just got my email notification from Henry Field's. My Fig plant has been shipped.  Yay.  On a Friday.

Its funny cause i just checked into my account on Wednesday (i think) to see what was up. Last i knew it was supposed to be shipped around a week ago. I'll have to check to be sure,  but anyway, last time i checked the ship date was for the middle of this month and i was too irritated to even bother saying anything about it.  But this morning i get a ship notification.  I have not gotten a tracking number yet, but a number appears on my HF's website account... but its the number for my already-delivered citrus assortment.

Well, hopefully all goes well and they are sending me a nice plant.
So far the Meyer Lemon and the Key Lime are looking good, the Venous Orange is struggling... The leaves that were curling when it arrived have fallen off and the wind actually blew it out of its pot the other day, so i plunked it back in and put a small bamboo stick against it to prop it up. It seems to be no worse for the wear due to that. It seems to be simply hanging on.

My Big Hip Roses should be delivered today, i got them from one of Oikos Tree Crops' eBay auctions. Five plants for $20, shipping included.   The tracking page states that the package is out for delivery.

My Stark's order is scheduled to be shipped this coming Monday.  That has my grapes, blueberries and lingonberries.
Burpee has not sent me a ship estimate yet. They have my Edelweiss grapes and that weed barrier fabric.

I finished the "Food Drying" book. It was quite useful to read, many recipes for using your dried items and of course, the instructions on how to dry them.
I was particularly interested in the dry soup mixes. Soup is so convenient when you have a bunch of things on hand that need to be used, but not a lot of time to babysit a frying pan or an oven.  You can put anything in a soup.  I have.  Radishes and lettuce work surprisingly well in soup.

I'm also wondering if i slice eggplant into long strips and use them in a casserole (without rehydrating them) if they would make a great noodle substitute in a lasagna.  I have tried doing a low starch lasagna  using savoy cabbage or fresh zucchini slices in place of the noodles, but it ends up being watery and the cabbage and zucchini have no cling or body.  I hope dried eggplant will absorb juices and stay just a tad firm through the cooking process.  Hopefully my Slim Jim plants will do me a favor and produce a lot so i can experiment.

I am going to plant corn today. I have to.  I have to do some real weeding too and direct sow some herbs.
And lay out some cardboard.

Flying fig and string-marking the garden.

The delivery estimate for my fig tree from Henry field's has changed. It used to have an estimated ship date of 5-3-10/5-10-10. Now it is scheduled for 5-11-10/5-18-10.

Oh, i can't forget to make room in the garden planner for my popping sorghum...!

11:30 am update.

It took me almost 2 hours cause i am so slow,  but i got the garden all marked out.

First thing i did was re-peg the corners. My dad plowed under one or two and in some places he tilled well within where i had marked. Its ok, but i have to recalculate some square footage because of it.

When i got the pegs in, i strung the pegs together to mark out the perimeter. Once that was done, i used our 100' flexible tape measure to mark the string with a Sharpie in 1' increments. Then i took fluorescent survey tape and made little flags and numbered them and tied them on.  If i didn't do that i would have had to run back and forth along the garden to count the Sharpie marks to be sure my rows were corresponding from one end  to the other.

 It is all strung here.
I was thrilled to see that i still ended up with 5 rows and plenty of walking room between.  The last row toward the trees is even bigger than i had expected. It is 6 feet wide so it will be the perfect spot for all the melons, cucumbers and winter  squash...and those gourds.

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I made a 1' edging along the starting side so that we will have room to put some boards or bricks to make a sharp border,  if we don't  it will at least be a buffer between the lawn mower and the garden pants.

In the picture below, i used clothes pins to mark the per foot measurements. The pink flags were great, but it was time consuming. While i was rifling around for my other shoes, i noticed i had a whole pack of new clothespins. They will still be usable for laundry after this, so why not?

I'm hoping this won't be an issue...  but i am 1.5' short over here... This should be 28' long.  I might get out the mantis or just hand-straighten it.

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This end is fine. :0)

Measuring the squash and melon bed.  I love extra room!
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The apples are officially in bloom....

Are they supposed to smell?  Cause i'm not getting even a whiff...  but i have had so many bad sinus infections, my sense of smell is almost gone.

I don't know what this is all about. Maybe the branch was damaged and its being weird or maybe the Bonide can't  fix whatever this issue  is?  I'll have to look it up

I can see a chewed leaf right up against the white post.  Maybe my Bonide mixture was too weak?

Or maybe it really just reduces insect damage...  i guess that makes sense. Eliminating it entirely might not be as good as it sounds,  chemical overkill.
I don't know.  All products sell themselves as a cure-all.

Well, i am beat.  It is very nice out, but hot in the sun. The ground is uneven in the garden where it was tilled... the soft spots were a killer on my leg.  I hope to get the walkways scooped and the soil up on the beds tomorrow.

I'm debating on whether to use the Ortho snail-be-gone stuff yet.  It has been a fairly dry spring for us here.. Last year it was so wet that all my plants were snail eaten. The earwigs were coming into the house and getting trapped in our clean dishes! It was disgusting.  Since the snails have not been a bother yet, i'm not sure what to do. The earwigs have always been a problem. Every year they destroy my sweet peppers by boring holes into the fruit and then feasting on it all cozy-like from the interior. They also attack my corn,  worse than the caterpillars. But i have not seen any yet.  I don't know if i should be proactive or if it might be too late by the time i realize they are an issue...

I think i will treat...  it might rain this evening or overnight and the instructions say to use it on damp ground for best results. So i might do this later tonight or tomorrow in the morning.  I have to watch the dog around the area i put it.

Oh... and before i forget, i need to get ready to plant carrots and parsnips. This  means i need to get ready to make the seed tape for easier planting, better seed economy and  almost no thinning. So i hope to be able to make up a sort of tutorial to post for fun.

Also i need to remind myself of something i came across recently. When planting seeds directly in the ground that are the type that can only be covered thinly (like carrots and parsnips), the way to keep them moist is to cover the planted area with a board.  Plant the seeds, cover them normally, water them in and then cover with a board. Check daily for signs of germination then remove the board but continue to water frequently.

Three trees...

My citrus trees came in today and i am actually impressed.
They weren't in the ridiculous plastic bag that i remember Henry Field's used to ship things in...  they were in a real cardboard box packed with inner sleeves and air pillows.

I still wasn't sure what i'd find...

Sturdy shipping sleeves

This is the Meyer Lemon,  much bigger than expected and looks rather healthier than i hoped!

Next, the Key Lime

A bit small, but this was the size i was expecting them all to be, but i didn't expect this size both healthy and leafy!

Last is the Venous Orange.  Leaves are a bit pale and rolled, but they are soft leaves, i think its just how they grow in.

No sign of scale, spider mite, whitefly or anything else. I can see roots in the soil that was loosened in shipping, but that means these are well rooted plants and  not recently propagated cuttings just barely started.

So i am relieved and pleased. For about $10 each, shipping included, i got some nice plants from a company with a poor reputation.  I hope this is a sign of a company on the move upward.

   I hope my little Fig plant arrives looking as well as these do.  It is scheduled for shipment around the first week of May.

*****

Another gorgeous weather day today. A bit before noon and its almost 65 degrees and the sun is shining.

Later on i plan to take a few more reference pictures of the seedlings in the mini greenhouses.  Things are popping up all over in there!

More seeds and my notes on bokashi composting

I managed to get some more things started yesterday. The Echinacea paradoxa are being stratified in the fridge. They need cold strat for one to 12 months...
I also planted the Sea-Buckthorn seeds and they are in the fridge with the Echinacea. The Sea-Buckthorn only need cold stratifying of about one month.
The Gojiberry seeds have been planted... and i was surprised when i got the seed packet. It was thick and felt strange.

Richters sends you a packet of dried berries for $2.50. I thought that was funny, and i was a little concerned. It seemed a bit shady at first since they sell whole, dried berries too and list the seeds separately and call them "seeds", not "whole, dried, seed-containing berries".

But i did some searching and i found this informative discussion at a board in Ireland, where a person planted the dried berries and got great plants. Instead of separating the seeds (which are similar in size and shape to rather small sweet pepper seeds)  i just broke the berries in two pieces and planted those in the soil.  I should see something from them in no less than 11 days.
 So, though it seems odd, it really isn't a big deal...and i bet its probably just as well for the seeds to be kept in their fruity little cocoon  until planting time.

I keep checking the greenhouses and it looks like everything is going to make it..so far. Its just so chilly out there, but the greenhouses seem to stay about 10 degrees warmer in the daytime even with no real sun, and about 3-5 degrees warmer overnight.  I was not able to put any hot water bottles in them like i had considered doing.  I sort of wanted to see if i could go without.
But i am learning what things can be wintersown and what can't... too much interfering will skew my results.  Also, just because they sprouted, does not mean the seedlings won't be stunted when planting-out time comes.

But then it can't be too bad out there, since the basil is sprouting. Ha ha.

This year's garden is pretty much 90% experiment.
It kind of makes me wistful for my tiny little plots that got a bag of compost from the garden center and got all of our household and yard compost put into it each spring.

I know 28'x30' isn't huge, but i wonder if i am crazy for thinking i can do it. The book i just read by Steve Solomon seems to imply that if i have a good, sharp hoe, weeding should not be a problem even for me and my bad leg.  I sure hope it turns out to be true, cause otherwise this garden is going to rope my hubby into something that he shouldn't really be responsible for. He already has to do the refined tilling with the Mantis and will have to help me with the row hoops and covers.
Not to mention, if i want to do a root cellar...guess who will have to be doing most of  the construction on that?
Of course, if my garden utterly fails this year, i won't need a root cellar anyway. lol

I got my shipping confirmation from Henry Fields on Saturday. It says so far that billing info has been received at the UPS site. I hope this means that my plants are not sitting in their mailing package someplace on a UPS loading dock, to sit there over the weekend.  HF has an irritating habit of mailing their stuff in ridiculous, flimsy plastic bags. So i hope UPS only has the delivery info and not the actual goods and hopefully the goods are someplace conducive to plant life.  I think it would be completely foolish of that company to ship live vegetation on weekends. So i hope they haven't.
My fig tree has not shipped yet, which is fine.


My Hens & Chicks seedlings are doing well. Growing slow, but they are coming up all over the place in the flat.
I had brought the Rosemary in and they are also growing slowly but steady.

Um, what else do i have to write down...?

Oh, yeah..the Bokashi thing (also spelled Bocashi).  Its a type of composting that you can put proteins in.  I understand that if done right it can be done indoors, but i don't know that i want another indoor compost thing going on. One of the only reasons the worm bin is in the house is so that i have a place i can dump scraps without having to go to the back yard and because the red wiggler worms that are the best animal type composters are not able to survive our winters here.

Anyway the bokashi system is basically an effective microbe-innoculated bran material that is sprinkled in 
layers on top of the scrap waste. The effective microbes (EM) are basically lactobacillus.... and is apparently similar to, if not the same as what makes milk into yogurt.  EM cultures can be bought (EM1 containing a more diverse number of organisms) , but i am reading about people having the same results using the liquid that you get when straining yogurt to make yo-cheese.
I have also read of people using  newspaper sheets instead of rice or wheat bran to hold the EM.

So, what you do is get the newspaper, drench it in a mixture of water (6 parts), some molasses (1 part) and the yogurt liquid (1 part).

Put the wet, but not dripping, newspaper into plastic bags (i think a medium trash bag would work) squeeze out as much air as you can, then let it ferment for 10-14 days. Open the bags and spread the sheets to let it dry out.
I imagine the newspaper can be inoculated with the EM by spritzing the sheets with a regular spray bottle, then after they are fermented and dried, store in a used paper feed bag or a burlap sack, then put that someplace cool and dry.


To use,  layer a few pieces on the bottom of a 5 gallon pail with a tight fitting lid.   Place your scraps on that layer, then add another layer of the innoculated paper. Close the lid and repeat the next time you have more scraps, as often as once a day. They say the more you press down on the layers, the better it works.  The solid paper probably helps keep this less messy than sprinkling bran.

If you want to get a compost tea from this, you can get another bucket, attach a spigot to it, drill holes in the other (it will be the inner bucket) , put screening in the bottom, then stack the buckets.

For it to work at maximim, the pH should be around 3. This high acidity tends to taper off as the compost becomes finished.

Alternative materials besides newspaper can be shredded junk mail, wood chips, saw dust and pet bedding shavings.

Other sources of EM organisms include: kimchee, sauerkraut, natto, kefir and possibly kombucha.

The waste that it can utilize is veggies, meat, cheese, fruit, dairy (they say to exclude milk as its too much liquid) eggs, bread and the usual spent coffee grinds and  tea bags.
What makes this different from vermicomposting is the proteins and bread. What differs from standard backyard composting is the  proteins.

There is some mention of putting bones in the compost.  With a few discussions it isn't successful. One mentioned the outdoor setup was raided by wild animals.  But i think small bones like chicken wings and rib sections would deteriorate quite quickly when the acidity gets at the calcium (remember the chicken egg in vinegar science project?  we made 'rubber' eggs ), i think it wouldn't work so well with large bones such as the picnic shoulder of a pork roast. I think larger bins would have enough microbial activity  to process chicken thigh bones and maybe beef bones that come with some steaks.  Pork chop bones would probably work as well since they are thinner and the marrow is exposed.

Anyhow, i think this method might prove to be a  more complete fertilizer since it would contain composted animal products... acting much like blood, feather and bonemeal fertilizers-  but instead of buying it, it would be made of things you'd throw out otherwise.
Things you are already paying for.
When you pay $1.49/# for chicken thighs, you are also paying $1.49 /# for the bones too. Would you pay $1.49 for a pound of bones just to throw them away?

Sources:
Wildlife gardeners
Greenliving
And myriad anecdotal internet search results.

Risky business...

Maybe it was early onset Spring Fever...  but i did it.  In early February, i tempted fate and granted the mail-order plant company with one of the worst reputations about $39 of my own money in exchange for some miniature citrus plants. 
According to my account, the plants will begin being shipped within a few days:

I don't like to be skeptical, cause being skeptical insinuates that i should have known better. But i feel i need to plead some sort of insanity...  of course i am also holding out that this company, despite all the evidence against it, will man up and send me something alive and in generally decent health.
I'm not expecting the Rutaceaen version of a mighty sequoia to be shipped to me in a box with fruit ready to be harvested...  but i would like to get more than a scale covered stick that dies within 2 weeks.

I have ordered from them before, with so-so results. I admit, at the time i ordered from them, i was even more a novice then than i am now. Some of he items came bare root and looked like something i fished out of a clogged sink...  but other things looked fine.
If i remember correctly i got some Japanese Toad Lilies, some English daisies, Ranunculus and i ordered some Manchurian Apricots.

The toad lilies did well enough and bloomed the year i got them. I think the bare root daisy may have had a better shot had i known what i was doing.  But it was a bust.

The ranunculus grew but never flowered.

The apricots never arrived. I was told they were backordered, and when it was shipped, i was sent a really nice looking forsythia by mistake.  I was told i could keep it, so i gave it to my parents- but they never planted it. That really bugged me because it was actually pretty nice.

They ended up sending me a store credit for the price of the apricots (about $7) that i never used, because the following spring they had filed for reorganisation bankruptcy or sale - and were shutting down during that time. So i kept the voucher but never used it.  I had planned on buying their multi packs of old fashioned lilacs with that voucher, but in a way i'm glad i did not because when we bought the new yard, i ended up with more lilacs than i could give away!


But i will try to be optimistic that i get the correct items, that  they arrive healthy, if probably smaller than i'd like, and they ship quickly because our weather is a bit odd in this "El Nino" year.

I am eagerly awaiting my Richters order. I want to get some of those seeds started. A number of them are hardy types that can be sown now. I got the ship notification on the 9th, so it should only be a few more days.

I think everything in the greenhouses did ok overnight. Before it got too cold, i put a heavy blanket over each one just to keep in whatever heat the containers had absorbed.

I need to write a list of what has sprouted already, just so i won't forget next year.  Many things have been up for a number of days, but i have been too busy to write down small details like that.

The Buttercrunch lettuce looks like it will be edible quite soon....

I cannot believe that these Tomatillo seeds as old as they are, are sprouted and look pretty good!

  A bit fuzzy, but i think these are the Polfast. The stick is facing the wrong way for me to read the name and i forgot already.

Pruden's Purple tomatoes

Yellow Pear tomatoes

Gypsy broccoli

Welsh onions and Mirage shallots

Collards...  i should have had faith and sown one seed per pellet. Now i have to thin them. Glad i only sowed two seeds each. I have had great luck storing seeds, so i tend to think of every thinned seedling as a whole plant wasted since i can keep my seeds in high germination ratios for many years.

Pak Choi...  I can't wait to grill up a few of these!  I need to do successive sowings of this!

Mixed flat of assorteds...in the front on the left is Burdock, on the right is Kolrabi
in the back i can see the tag for the Oregano, but no sprouts...  on the right, i can't remember what that is and i can't see the tag, but its obviously some sort of cole crop.
See why i need to write everything down? lol

Some brave little  tomatoes are sprouting in there...  both from seed that is over 7 years old.

Mixed flat...  the Swiss Chard and Point One cabbage are waking up.

Finally, the Rosemary...  it has been cold, but they have made it very well.  Now that i have the light setup, i might bring them inside.  I will need to pot them up soon or i will damage them too much if their roots get tangled.

The Electric Fence kit i bought from Tractor Supply has come in, i just need to go pick it up. Maybe later today. There is no real rush since i can't install it yet- nothing to guard.... and i don't want to have it too long before installing in case the warrantee is too short.  I have at least 30 days before i will need it and most return policies are "within 30 days".  So i won't get it until we can test it some weekend.  Lay it out and make sure it is sturdy and complete.

I saw my first cabbage butterfly yesterday...  i felt kind of bad giving it the stink eye as it merrily fluttered across the yard.  I covet my future broccoli and cabbage plants, if the electric fence keeps the woodchucks out, i don't want to lose everything else to caterpillars! Even with the row covers, i don't want to have to use a bunch of bug killers to fend off a plague.

Soon i have to clean out the Worm Farm.  The red wigglers have been happily munching away at kitchen scraps all winter. The topmost bin is looking quite full. I am not sure i know how to remove all that black gold without losing half my worms.  Its too cold for them to live up here through winter, so if i lose any to the garden they won't last. I know they are just worms, but they do such a good job :0)

Well i have cleaning to do and if i get it done before nap time is over, i might get to read a little too! Yay.