Seed flats... and cost calculations.

I have not been visited by the sprout fairy yet... which i understand is a good thing. If stuff sprouts too early any hard freezes might wipe things out.
But i took some pictures:

This is what i have gotten done so far, the tray on the bottom with no condensation in it is the Mary Washington asparagus i finally got planted.  Just before i was about to plant them i read on the package that they needed soaking...  so i put them in a quart jar full of water.  Then i remembered the cool thing about wintersowing... it bypasses all steps like soaking, knicking, stratifying, cold treating and other time consuming steps. Duh.  But after i started them soaking, i could not find the time to plant them.

 This is where most of  the tomatoes live. I started them in the black plastic meat trays that 2 1/2 pounds of hamburger comes in if you buy it at Walmart.  They are only a little larger in dimension as the cardboard trays i have bought tomato seedlings in at the nursery. They also fit perfectly in the fruit and vegetable bags from the grocery store. The yellow tray is lettuce, Buttercrunch.

This row has two flats of mixed seeds. I have 5 of each planted, 10 different seeds per tray. So, 20 different things in total. They are a tomato or two, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, melons, cucumbers, etc.  The little deli tray on the top is Striped German tomato... very old seed. So old that the company i got them from went out of business more than 5 years ago!  And they tiny white meat tray behind the Striped Germans has 5 peat pellets of Siberia Tomato.

This shelf has the mentioned Mary Washington asparagus and the other tray contains Welsh Onions and  Mirage Shallots

Sixty-five days till planting time! My blog gadget ticker stopped working and when i tried to reinstall it, my computer gave me a virus warning. So i have to count on my paper calender,  but 65 days is how long i have until any hope of planting is advised.

I did some pricing of hoop house materials. I was going to go the metal electircal conduit route for the hoops, but the prices online at Lowe's and Home Depot were showing me that that was going to be way more expensive than i had thought. Most of my sources were saying or implying that the metal would be cheaper in the long run because it was supposedly less expensive per length... but if the online prices are correct, it is not true. Lowes had 1/2" conduit for $1.87 per 10' length. Home Depot had the same online price.  Schedule 40 1/2" PVC in 10' lengths  at Lowe's is $1.13,  Home Depot has it for $1.03.
I also had read at first that the PVC would have to be painted for long term outdoor use, but researching it further, it should hold up for more than 3 years of use without any treatment. It is inherently UV resistant due to its makeup.
So, not only is the PVC cheaper, but it needs no treatment.
The metal conduit might be sturdier, but it is more expensive by too much of a margin, and then i'd have to bend it... a bender for 1/2" conduit is around $38-$45.  Then, since i can't shove the conduit into the ground about 18' without it hanging up or kinking the smooth shape, i'll have to construct anchor pegs- i have seen rebar and dowel pegs used. The rebar is worth a couple dollars each and the dowels need cutting and sharpening even though they are cheap...

Now i do plan to do much of my garden. The corn will be mulched simply with black plastic to heat the soil,  so that part won't need hoops, but the rest i do want to at least start the growing season with them.

HOOPS:
*7 rows
*24' per row
*1 hoop per 4' = 7 hoops per row + end hoops
 = 49 hoops (PVC lengths)

AGRIBON: (AG-19)
*7 rows
*30' of Agribon per row (allowing for extra at the end to close)
*Agribon 6' wide
=  210' Agribon

Whether we use metal or PVC, we still need ground anchors. Hubby and i decided that it would be best to use 3/4 inch PVC lengths about 18" long, sunk 12" deep, leaving 6" sockets for the hoops. Each 10' 3/4 PVC will yield at least 5 anchors.  We will need 98.  So we will need 20  of those.

According to HD, the PVC total before tax will be $79.30
If i go with Vesey's 6' wide Agribon-19 i will need to buy 3, 6'x100' lengths and i'd have 50' to spare, the cost would be with shipping $124.80

About $204.00

If i go with the AG-19 from Johnny's, their 83"x250 is only $45 and about $10 shipping.
And i realized that 6' width won't get me enough edging to anchor it to the ground if i my hoops are up to a 6' span.  I could cut the hoops in half and get 2x as many and have them be shorter but i'd really like the taller hoops and the excess Agribon  on the sides will make a mess if the hoops are too low.

The more i think about it, the lower the cost estimate becomes

My original original estimate with the metal conduit was around $225
Then with PVC replacing the metal it was $204
Now with the wider Agribon from Johnny's, it looks like $135. will do it.

I hope my calculations are correct and that Home Depot will give me the online prices if the store price is different. But, if not, Lowe's will price-match HD and i think the Price Protection policy will apply to PVC.   That is the scary part. Hubby said he saw the 1/2 PVC was around $3 a length when he went there the other day. But the online price is very different:

Now i will need clips to hold the Agribon to the hoops, that should only add a couple more lengths of PVC to the order. The instructions i have seen for making PVC clips is as simple as cutting a 1/4 inch strip out of the entire length of the PVC, then cutting the length into 2" pieces. One 10' length of PVC  should yield about 60 clips. Adding another $2.50 to the total.

So if the prices work out this will be great... if not i will be miffed.

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.

Weather and aspirin...

Colorful radar this morning:

It says we are in snow, but it must be melting before it comes down low enough to see.

I decided to abandon researching this Planting by the Moon stuff.  For one thing, it seems too rigid, who has time for rigidity when it comes to spring gardening? And i suspect it is 95% superstition, and we all know how ridiculously limiting superstitions can be.  The 5% that i think is not superstitious mainly has to do with coastal tides and the weather effects of this.  This far inland, any effect is limited... and i'm not going to fret over a missed planting date and then wait around for the next 'window of opportunity'...  so there is that.


But i did recall something about Aspirin being useful to plants. Aspirin is a derivative of willow and i remember my grandfather doing the trick of soaking willow twigs in a bucket, then using that willow tea to root woody cuttings.  Apparently it makes a good foliar spray (1 or 1/2 tablet per gallon of water)  and acts as something of a tonic and helps the plant fare better all around, fighting off insects and diseases. Something of an echinacea for plants.  I figure it is worth a try, since the dollar stores sell aspirin for  $1 a bottle of more than 100.  So, we are going to try that this year.

I still have my gallon  bottle of beer fertilizer concentrate waiting for the lawn to wake up.  I wonder if i should pop an aspirin in there too.

Oh and slugs, added to the research list (they reach plague proportions here)....and a few articles:
http://www.paghat.com/slugcontrol.html
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/781/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/901446/

Since it is raining, there won't be any yard work happening today... not just  because of the rain, but because when the snow melts in the spring my parents' yard gets so soggy my dad won't be able to get the big tractor out for a while.  So that will halt things quite a bit unless we get some really dry weather for a bit.
 We have not gotten nearly as much rain and snow as the rest of the state and those blizzards that hit last month, they barely grazed us.  Although we did get one storm a couple weeks ago that brought us a huge amount of rain.  This current system is not doing much to us right now.  Very light precip,  but i guess it has drenched everyone south of us.

Still thinking about hoop houses. I want them for the whole garden...  well, most of it anyway. Not for the corn...   But i'm thinking pest control, season extension, frost protection....  i don't want to use or buy a bunch of bug sprays and such.  I will have to for the apple trees, but i simply don't want to spend money like that.  It is expensive and i always feel like i need to take a shower after dousing my plants with the stuff. I'm not a stickler for Organics, but i like to avoid unnecessary steps and expenses.  If i can eliminate most pest and disease issues with reusable Agribon, Diatomaceous Earth, Aspirin, companion planting and beer traps, i am willing to try it.

I am also thinking that it might be interesting to combine the hoop houses with beneficial insects.  I have wanted to try ladybugs,  i understand they will eat spidermites. We have a lot of spidermites. They even attack the weeds- i have never seen so many, its quite amazing.  What has kept me from trying ladybugs is that i have such a small yard, i bet they'd just all fly away.  So i wonder if i were to release a few in my sealed up hoop houses, they would sort of have to hang around and eat what they find. They would get air and moisture and light, and it would be lots of room, not like putting them in a glass jar where its so small they know it is something they should try to escape.  I'd stick my houseplants in there to be 'cleaned'...  my houseplants get infested so bad that Safer's soap hardly helps.  But i think i might dig out my bar of Fel's Naptha soap and see if that might help.  I only bought it to make my own laundry cleaner, but it is said to have many other fine uses (like everything over 50 years old does).

I found some marigold seeds among my stash, they were from 2006, which is within decent germination expectancy  range. And i have a ton of K-cups saved up for planting in. I'm hoping to get the Asparagus seeds started today.

Final plan:

Ok, i think i will stick with this plan. Now i just have to decide how many repellent plants (chives, oregano, basil, marigolds, etc.) i need to get ready for.  Park Seeds is giving free shipping right now with a coupon code (SAVEGREEN) so i will be getting some new Heirloom Marigolds, oregano and Chive seed as well as a packet of Hens & Chicks mix to replace the ones hubby thought were dead from overwintering....he threw them out.  I have had them forever, and i tried to not be upset... but i'll just plant some more. *Sigh*  I need to get 25' of trellis netting, and it will be placed closer than i drew it on the plan. Burpee has a really good price on it, but i'm going to try and save shipping if i can find it locally.

Off to order more seeds...!  Really?...Yup!

Oh, i hate the mornings...

Well not always, really. Just the ones where you wake up to the reality that you do indeed have a cold.
But dad is coming over today to assess things...  the other project that needs doing is that retaining wall at the back fence. It needs to be made to retain better.  One good thing about the former owners of the yard is that some of the trash they left behind has turned out to be somewhat useful. There is a rigid but flexible pool wall out there that the guys think they can cut into a length and use. They are going to take down the fence panels, pull out the posts and dig the retaining wall trench out, then lay the pool wall against the retaining logs, backfill, then reinstall the posts and fence.

After that it will be time to get the garden going.

I have to re-plan it now. I finished my graph with the new dimensions, took my seed list, counted up what plants i expected to get out of the starts (i assumed less than half to be safe) accounted for direct-sow items and stuff yet to be started....

And now i decided, after looking at lots of pictures of small gardens on the web, that i probably can get away with 2-2.5' between rows rather than a full 3'. Or it might be a better idea to make my planting rows be 2' and have 2' walking rows between them. I was graphing 1' wide plant rows and 3' wide walking rows.   Until i realized that it was not going to work if i expected to do the mini hoop house idea,  even floating row covers might not work  with that spacing.  Also,  hubby found me a square foot gardening book online and i plan to study that to see just how much i can cram or not cram into how much space.

So,  between studying that and re-plotting my graphs....  i have stuff to do this weekend.

I'm also looking forward to getting a dog. I'm anxious to get her here and get the cat used to her so she can blend in as a seamless part of the family. Transitions make me nervous, so i like to just get things going...  but we thought it would be best for her family to spend as much time with her as they can, so we won't have her until a bit before they begin packing up.

Ok, off to play with graph paper, rulers and pencils...

Ahhh, visualisation...

I just finished mapping the garden out, stakes and surveying tape.  Now i know i drew up plans for a 20x30' garden... but i could not resist taping it out 25x30'. This would give me an extra row to work with and if hubby is ok with it i will be happy. If he wants an extra row of lawn i can let it go i guess... but the little bit of lawn we do have tends to tire him out mowing... he's a very smart guy but he works at a desk and he can't do a lot of physical labor even though he is willing... so i really think that he is going to almost regret having a wider expanse of lawn to mow. He may almost "order" me to plow more of it into garden space by the end of this summer.  But then, i have to be able to handle gardening myself. This disabled leg of mine is going to give me trouble. Just taping out the dimensions is going to have me eating Tylenol like candy.
I plan on mulching deep to discourage weeds and i'm going to have to work my 11-year-old like a rented mule this summer. lol

Ok, so here are the pics:

I did not include the plot of JA's in my dimensions, since i didn't plan for them before i planted (it was kind of a rush job) and i need to bed some asparagus between that plot and  the taped off garden.
The garden is 7' forward of the back fence and i didn't measure the distance from the side fence next to the apple trees.


now i need to decide which beneficial herbs  i might start today
Oh i can't wait to get this going!

Update:
Hubby came home this afternoon and he looked at the area i taped out and he's fine with the size,  he had expected me to take over much more than that so we have a pretty good balance. There will be plenty of room left for his intentions and also for the kids to enjoy.  When i was a kid i considered my parents' garden a part of my play area, i spent a lot of time in it.
So this means one more full row in the front since i am going with the lengthwise row setup.

Changing weather... and a Basset on the horizon...

There may be a Basset Hound in our future.  The Basset is a 4 or 5 year old ladydog named Molly. Her owners are divorced and her family can't keep her. Her family are the nice neighbors across the street. They asked us last night if we'd take her, so the hubby and i decided that we would be willing.  So i spent a good deal of time last night researching the Basset.
Now i wouldn't say that i am not a dog person, but i admit i am much more a cat person... and a Basset is a very dog dog.  Molly is a good dog, so i think things will go well once the cat adjusts. My only concern is that if we are taking the dog it needs to be permanent, i don't want to end up being expected to relinquish the dog after a few months or years of bonding and ownership expenses, only to have them expect us to just hand her back.  My youngest daughter will grow up thinking of Molly as if she has always been ours, it won't be fair to take her away. A similar thing happened to my sister when she was little and 30 years later she still remembers it sadly.
So i do have to be sure that this won't happen, not that i expect it to, they have always shown themselves to be decent people, but emotions change things...

As a side note- and this concept makes me giddy (so i keep repeating it over in my head, almost savoring it)...  i may have found my solution to the woodchuck issue! 
Her simple presence and occasional lunge in their direction might scare the dickens out of them and the scent of her presence i hope would keep them away.
Of course just having a dog again will be nice even if it makes no difference to the 'chucks. I was raised with Shelties, so this will be different indeed. Shelties are a dignified and fastidious breed,  Bassets are.... well, let's just say they are not. lol


And now for the weather...
Well...  its supposed to be partly cloudy today, but they keep changing the forecast on me for the weekend and next week. Yesterday evening they were expecting 50's  next week, and now maybe 40's and overnight lows in the 20's...  this should be ok since i have no sprouts in the WS containers.  This i understand is the point, that the seeds don't sprout too early.  Its keeping them cool right from the start which is the key. I guess if there is too much of a freeze after they sprout, that is when the problem arises.  I do have a heat mat that fits inside the mini greenhouse. If we expect true freezing weather i might plug it in on an empty shelf and hopefully it will warm just a few degrees to ward off the worst ice crystals.

Here is a simple site on row sized hoop houses:
http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-build-a-hoop-house/index.html

I might try the PVC pipe method this year, i understand the PVC will break down sooner rather than later, unless painted but i will simply have to cut a few corners where i expect to run out of time quickly.  I have tried to find the clips for the covering, but if i am looking in the right places, the things are priced a bit too high for what they are. I have a large amount of somewhat stiff vinyl tubing, i have a feeling a few short lengths of that with one side cut through will make a reasonably secure clip.  I'll have to get some material together and play with it.

The plan for the garden is to almost literally "install" the soil that the plants will grow in.  My dad has been building a large compost pile in the last 10 years or so of grass clippings, pine and deciduous leaf litter.  This is what we plan to use for the garden.  I am wanting him to dig the shape of the garden out of the existing dirt- which is mostly builder's sand and gravel and then back-fill it with a few large loads of this compost material.  The dirt from the hole will be used to level off the rest of the back yard and fill in some of the washouts.  The compost will be tilled in well (with our own great kitchen scrap compost and my worm bin's black gold) and then i will get the hoop houses installed ASAP.
I have no idea if this can be a one weekend project or how soon it can be done, my parents do have other things to do around their own home. lol

I am really hoping to  get things ready to plant under the hoops before we go to camp on Memorial weekend.  We may have to rethink our standing plans on that since we may have the dog by then and the campsite used to allow dogs- which would have been great, but some irresponsible butthead messed it up a couple years ago.
So my dilemma is whether the plants will be safe from woodchucks in the hoophouse and i'm not sure we will stay the whole weekend on account of a new family member.
Since the entire family goes to the same camp, it will be difficult to either find a dog sitter or for someone to look in on her at least 2x a day. 

But the real rush is going to simply get the plants out there so they don't linger in the flats either getting leggy or too demanding of water or needing to be moved in and out of sun and shelter.


Off to do more dog and garden research!

I'm going crazy...

Somewhere between the first flat of seeds and the one i planted yesterday...there was another bunch of seeds that i planted.  But since they are outside and bundled up, i can't see the date i planted them. But the list goes thusly:

Winter Squash-  Red Eye, 2008,  ( these were sooo yummy when i planted them in 2008, i will always plant these if i can)
Winter Squash- acorn,  Carnival 2008, pretty- if you don't eat them, decorate with them!
Melon-  Rocky Ford , 2010
Melon- Hale’s Best, 2010
Brussels Sprouts- Bubbles, 2008
Summer Squash-  Sundance ("very prolific"- is an understatement even as far as SS & Zucchini go ) 2008
Cucumber- Summer Dance, 2008
Winter Squash-  Long Island Cheese, 2008
Artichoke-  Imperial Star, 2008 - this is the one that i messed up last time, i hope to get beyond seedling this try
Cucumber- Alibi, 2008
Melon- Banana, 2008

So, that brings me to around 30 planted items.  And i still have more to go. I have gotten some graph paper to plot out what sort of trouble i have gotten myself into. This is based on the garden being 20x30'.  I made sure hubby knows that i expect this to be a minimum dimension, at least for this year. If i find that i cannot handle that size garden, i will agree to make it smaller. I would really like to have it 40x20' but for now and planning purposes 15x30' is good to start... i think i will have lots of stuff crammed a bit.


I did plant 5 of each packet of seeds, but i don't plan to keep all of them and i don't expect 100% germination anyway. If 5 sprout i will keep 2 and send 3 to my parents for their garden.  If 2 sprout, i will either split with them or depending on what it is, i may keep both if it is something they won't use.


I am also trying to plot which direction i need to place my rows to maximize the space, i planned for 3 feet between planted rows and it looks like i am losing a lot of planting area, but i know when stuff fills in, i will be glad i put that much room between things.  Especially the tomatoes which are almost all indeterminate types!

Scale is 1/4"=1'. The shaded areas are the walking paths and the white sections to the right are where the corn and beans and asparagus is destined. the back row in the top picture is where i plan to put the cukes, melons, radishes and winter squashes.

I hope to install some trellis netting in the back so the vines don't ramble too much, the orientation of the garden is pretty good. North is to the Left, so the sun will rise to the back and the space to the "front" of the garden is wide open for full summer sun all day long.

I did some more research on companion plantings and jotted down some  notes:

Plant the bush beans to the left of the corn to shade them
Start some basil seedlings to plant within the tomatoes
Start some parsley to grow between the asparagus
Remember  to divide the chives and plant them under the apple trees
Don’t plant the kohlrabi near the tomatoes
No sage near the cucumbers
Onions with chamomile , but not near the beans
Start borage to plant around the squashes, tomatoes…and oregano also deters stuff
No dill  or kohlrabi near the tomatoes
Broccoli likes dill and mint
Rosemary or sage  repels cabbage  butterflies
Thyme for flea beetles
No fennel near caraway, or coriander
Carrots next to sage and onions and chervil
Eggplant is protected by amaranth
Marjoram  and oregano everywhere
Nasturtiums are traps for aphid

So, now i have to get started on my herbs!


I did also get to check on some over wintered stuff i got from  Oikos Tree Crops. I bought 4 Beach Plum plants from them last year (they sent me 5) and though it looks like only three made it through winter i consider it pretty successful considering that my husband and dad kept forgetting that the fluorescent pink tape all over the flower box meant that something was living there....and dropped landscape timbers and construction debris all over them.... Great prices, discount on multiple items and they are no smaller than the sad little twigs i have gotten from other less reputable companies. But the Oikos stuff is really very nice.  I plan to get some blueberries from either them or from Pinetree.  Oikos also has stuff like hazelnuts and persimmons, medlar, pawpaw etc.  Got the JA's there too.


Ok, have to go plot the plant spacing on the garden graphs now...

Another beautiful weather day, maybe too beautiful. I'm not sure it this is good... for the last 3, maybe 5 years we have still had snow on the ground at Easter. But for the last few days i can have the windows open and incense floating in the breeze. No snow anywhere except the shady areas of the street edges.

I hope this does not cause problems for my wintersowing attempt, i'm afraid that the seeds will all sprout too quickly and get big, then it will turn cold.  I decided to stroll on over to the Gardenweb forums and check out the Wintersown forum, i asked about this but have not gotten a reply as of yet.

AS it is, i planted some more today:

Watermelon- Pony Yellow, 2010, Pinetree
Watermelon, Tom Watson, Heirloom, 2010, Pinetree
Summer Squash- Patty pan "Sunburst", 2002, Johnny's
Tomato-  Roma VFN, 2000,  Better Homes and Gardens
Pepper- Fooled You, no heat jalapeno, 2008, Pinetree
Pepper-New Ace, sweet pepper, 2008, Pinetree
Eggplant- Slim Jim, 2008, Pinetree
Pepper- Zsa Zsa, sweet pepper, 2010, Pinetree
Tomato- Black from Tula, heriloom, Totally Tomatoes

I know i have a lot of tomato plants, there are five in each batch that i am doing. But many of these seeds are 8 years old and if i don't get good germination out of them i will probably give them one last shot by mixing them together and direct sowing them someplace- or i will have to throw them  straight into the compost. If  i get good germination i will keep planting them until they are gone,  many of the seeds are heirloom types and i might have good luck saving seed from them, so its worth a shot even if i am overloaded in tomatoes.  If we can't eat them i can give them away, preserve them (dehydrate or can) or enrich the compost with the excess fruit. That will be a blessing any way you slice it.

I'm not certain of the wisdom of starting the melons this early because they do tend to rot away in cold soil, but it seems that the soil in my flats is anything but cold.  I may even end up having to move them in and out of shelter each day if they do sprout early...Eep!

I might plant some more today... most of the veggies, besides the ones i plan to direct sow (corn, green beans, shell beans, soybeans) or make seed tape with, are planted now (like parsnips and carrots for seed tape and direct "toss" sowing like radishes). There are a few Perennial veggies or other long season types that i have not decided if i should start in peat pellets, the recycled K-Cups or in larger pots like 2 liter soda bottles...  Salsify, Burdock and the Asparagus.  Also some of the things like Kohlrabi, Collards, Kale, Bok Choy, the ones that are one harvest from each seed items... the tiny, bunching types- onions, shallots etc...and some i have to decide if i am even going to do this year, edible Amaranths, Swiss Chard, and then there is the Shiso.  I haven't even gotten to the herbs, which need enough of a head start to be companion plants or beneficial attractants,  pest repellents or decoys.

Hmmm, looks like i'm not as close to done as i thought i was, lol.

Wintersowing

I began the great wintersowing project last week and managed to get a tiny bit more done today.
I am planting a mix of new seeds from this year, seeds from 2008 and some older seeds from as far back as 2002 and  even 2000!

This is what i have planted so far:

3-3-10
Tomato- Pruden's Purple (2008)
Tomato- Yellow Pear (2010)
Tomatillos- Purple (2002)
Cauliflower- Graffiti (2010)
Broccoli- Gypsy (2010)
Tomato- Polfast (2008)

Everything  but the Tomatillos were from Pinetree Garden Seeds. They are, in my opinion, the best seed place by far. They sell seed packs in home gardener size and the prices average about $1.20 a packet. They still have some seeds that are only .99 a pack.
The Tomatillos were from Johnny's and they are also a good source for seed, but i suffer from sticker shock every time i open their catalog. I love them, but i can't afford them anymore.
I once did a side-by-side wish list with Johnny's prices vs. Pinetree and Pinetree beat Johnny's by almost half. I think there were only two seed items that Johnny's had that Pinetree didn't (but i found similar items that were very much alike)... my list was about 60 items long. I have been a loyal customer of Pinetree ever since.

So those seeds are planted and covered in plastic baggies, sitting outside under the overhang by the back door. I have one of those little 4-shelf greenhouses that have the zippered plastic cover.  I need another one if i can find them. I bought mine for $50 a few years ago, they are now around $60 or more. I may get a larger size instead of another small one.

Ok, so back to the stuff i have planted -
 i think it was Sunday i planted some Buttercrunch lettuce. A seed packet i got at the grocery store (Liberty Garden) last year and planned to plant but never did.

Today i got a tray ready of 50 #7 peat pellets, but so far i have not gotten anything in that, but i did plant a small flat of Siberian Tomatoes from a pack of seeds i bought from Totally Tomatoes in 2002. I went tomato crazy that year, it was the year that i was going to try growing in planters on the balcony of the apartment we lived in at that time.  I bought about 20 different tomato seeds and was able to use maybe 3 or 4 seeds from each of perhaps 5 varieties.  I just couldn't decide what to limit myself to, so i went crazy and i have grown at least one variety from that order almost every year since, but this is the first try of the Siberian.
The experiment worked out so-so, the slats on the balcony were too narrow for much sun to get through to the plants and i had started planting a bit too late because i had to save up for everything.  Then they were hard to water because my husband kept throwing out my milk jug that i was using....  its hard to water plants in a 20 gallon Rubbermaid tote with a 12oz drinking glass.


The only other thing i planted today was Caraway seed, straight out of the Spice Islands bottle :)
I was doing some quick research on companion planting and there was something that said caraway attracts some winged critter that is good, i can't remember off the top of my head, but i will figure it out or read it again.  Hopefully they will sprout and grow.


I printed out a few pages on companion planting to read later and i am thinking about looking into some of the planting by the moon stuff. First i need to make sure that isn't some old wives' tale sort of hooey. It could be scientifically sound, but unstudied - companion planting is sound but it is being studied a bit, but even that has been invaded by new agers a little bit.  But the planting by the moon is old stuff and i did read up on it once when i was much younger and reading through the Farmer's Almanac, now the Farmer's Almanac, though it has many good points and is informative, does have a tendency to dish a lot of hooey.  Its entertainment after all.

Ok, that's it for now...

First real snow of the season...

We got a nice little storm last night, it started later in the day- after dark, which is roughly a bit after 4 O'clock this time of year.  Took a while for it to stick, but it got heavier around 9pm and got close to 5 inches a little before midnight when i stopped keeping track and went to sleep. Woke up to about 6-7 inches of snow, and a dusting on the driveway.

Not very picturesque with all the stuff in the way that i didn't want to go out and shuffle past to get a nicer shot.  Its the weekend and even 7am is too early to be outside on a day i don't have to scrape snow off the cars.

I expect this to not last very long, or at least the majority of it will melt in the next day or so, its after noon and its 39F in the sun right now, the roof is dripping and the house is bright inside with the sun reflecting off the snow. Its nice.

Expecting more snow possibly on Wednesday and perhaps more later in the week, but its too soon to be sure.

Cleaning.

e

Eliminating wasted space.

About 3 hours later:

 

I have a few more redundancies to eliminate but the second shelf stack allowed me to clean out all the cleaning supplies from under the sink in the kitchen, so now i don't have to worry about the little one getting into them.

This is what hubby has done:

it was an awful mess here before, i had my books in totes and cardboard boxes- the boxes were up on shelves, but with so much flooding the boxes lost their stiffness and loosened. Though very few of my books actually got wet, the slow collapse of the boxes left things in a mess.

He's also applied DryLoc to the walls to see if we can keep the dampness down when we do have those soaking rains that have been happening much more frequently than i can remember.

 

 He is under the impression that painting up to the granite foundation isn't a good idea.  I don't have a clue myself.

All those black totes contain books.  My books.  I think the green ones have assorted aquarium odds and ends...

But he's got it all organized and  most of the walls painted. He's doing more painting right now...i think.

And for today's edition of "Watching Grass Grow":

 

i need to go all the way to that back corner and retrieve the black grill cover, it blew there a few days ago when we had all that wind. I don't usually get to go out that far even win her Princessness is sleeping.  She has a sensitive proximity alarm and i can barely get past the driveway before she wakes up.  Hopefully i'll remember to sneak out and get it or it will spend all winter out there in a crumbled, muddy heap.

Rain...rain and more rain.

Oh, i am so tired of rain. It rained all last week, yesterday we had a nice sunny day- but cold.  Now we are back to rain again. If it isn't raining its cloudy, which isn't much nicer. Wednesday we had high wind, and it almost blew down the fence!  The ground out there is so rocky that when my hubby and dad were using the auger to bore out the post holes, the auger would get kicked down at an angle, making the holes bigger than they needed to be, and any rocks down there had to be removed- so we ended up with loose soil around the posts with a good deal of void space.  This is normal when using an auger and not much of a big deal... until you get so much rain in one season that the ground is so soggy it can hardly hold its own weight. So, hubby had to go out in the cold wind and refill the voids around the posts.... took a couple wheel barrows full he said.  I was busy with the baby who is now crawling at lightening speed and is pulling up onto furniture and cruising around, so i didn't have time to snap my compulsory photos or to even see what the mess looked like and how bad it was.

Good thing is even with the steady rain and high wind, there was little road flooding due to the town finally getting off their can and sending out that crew to clean out the street drains! Yay!  This is a serious accomplishment.

Its also a big help that Justin has managed to get the basement well cleared out and has had time to begin painting the basement walls with a dry-loc waterproof paint.  Its looking really nice down there actually...  Its already a storage area, but since its beginning to look neater and stay dryer, its possible that more things will be stored down there and kept in much better condition.   The toughest part, now that the water issue may be on its way to being eradicated is the dust.  This house is so dusty it is driving me batty.  I remember dusting daily as a kid and remembering that it was more of an exercise in obedience more than a necessity... but this house- its a never ending ordeal.  No, i don't dust every day- but if i did it wouldn't be overdoing it.  Even without the birds, it is dusty.  I had assumed before that it was mostly feather dust, but now it seems that was not the case.  I have a Dyson and i thought having that would help a lot since it really hauls a lot out of the carpet, but even that is not enough and i vacuum daily.  I think it has to do with the likelihood that this house is made up mostly of horsehair plaster and blown-in cellulose insulation and i suspect the lady who owned the house before us used her carpet sweeper rather than a vacuum judging by the condition of the carpet.  Not sure what can be done to eliminate that as a source without gutting and redoing everything.
Maybe i will have to dust daily.  Air filtration is expensive.

So...while i'm trying to type here i am making some turkey stock on the stove. Gets the house smelling nice and cozy and the hot pot makes the kitchen just a little warmer. I like making stock with the scrappy ends of whatever other veggies i have, usually carrots and other root veggies, celery leaves, onion ends...  I also have a crock pot of beans going. I made a gingersnap crusted ham for Thanksgiving as well as the turkey and i thought the ham bone would be nice to flavor the beans with. I used applewood smoked bacon in there as well..  i don't use salt pork much, it doesn't add any real flavor in my opinion. Why use salt pork when you can add bacon?  Its harder to find anyway.

Oh, for my mushroom research... i found a kit called TeePee.... you can grow Oyster Mushrooms in a roll of toilet paper!  It is unreal, and i think i just might try it out. Fairly inexpensive, considering they send you the supplies (except the paper) for 15 rolls- which can fruit as many as 3 times for $36. I like that it gives me material for 15 attempts.  I just need to figure out how long the spores can be stored because i don't know what i think of having all 15 rolls going at once. I guess if they produce famously, i could dehydrate the stuff.

I wish i could grow wood ear mushrooms, the closest Chinese Food restaurant makes their Hot and Sour soup with those in it and edible lily buds... it is very good. I need to find what type of lily buds they are and if they buy them in a tin, dried or fresh. I love Hot and Sour Soup.

Farmer's Almanac is dismally off so far...calling for less-than-usual precipitation and a snow storm around Thanksgiving.  If you want to play the game, you could substitute "wind storm" for "snow storm" and say they were right on the money.  We only had one slush storm so far and wet flurries before the last day of October. So, i don't know how reliable they will be this coming spring for planting planning.

Mushroom Farming

Another activity that caught my attention...    Homegrown Edible Mushrooms.  Oyster, Shiitake, Button, Portabella/Crimini....  i love all food, and mushrooms are no exception...

So i am getting some research time in.

In my Pinetree catalog there is a company called Fungi Perfecti, who i might do some ordering from if i decide to start this project.  They seem to have a decent price setting and somewhat more conservative atmosphere.  There are other places that are a little different, they sell stuff to grow any mushroom, but you have to make up your own kits and they aren't really helpful... they also seem to (though they deny it) be prepared to set you up to grow hallucinogenic types of shrooms.
I ran into the same annoying atmosphere when i was looking into growing my tropical collectors' plants and maybe some garden veggies under grow lights in the basement (i was hoping to find a way to have a greenhouse environment in the winter without an actual greenhouse since i don't have the  money or hubby's blessing to build one-poor guy) . The only places i found with much info on growing things under lights and hydroponics were pothead sites for growing weed.  So that was annoying. I was loathe to join any forums related to the seller's sites because that is simply not a facet of culture i felt a desire to be part of.

I did also notice that there are a few different methods of growing the mushrooms. Some of the shabbier (gurneys, etc.) seed catalog companies state that the boxed mushroom kits can be placed in the sink cabinet and grown there. The mushroom growing sites that appear more reputable seem to be saying that the sink area is totally not recommended.
There is also a mushroom growing lingo that i need to get a handle on before i buy anything so  i know what i am getting into. There are also the scientific concepts to grasp, remember high school biology?

There is one place i liked the setups they sell, Mushbox and though they may deny it,  they well aware of what mushroom grower they cater to. Their page header shows a cow in a field of mushrooms. Growing up rural, surrounded by cow pastures, i am well aware of where and in what, at least one type of psychedelic shrooms grow.  So, i'm not sure that this Christian woman wants to buy from them and i can imagine what their associated Forum is like.

Unfourtunately Fungi Perfecti is also light on beginners' information at their site. They do give basic descriptions of their kits, but i like more detailed info than that. I want to know what instructions i have to follow so i can plan where to carry out the project, how time consuming the hobby is, the longevity of the kit, if i can culture the spores and transfer them outdoors once the box kit is spent, i want to know if the different types of edible mushrooms can be dried in my dehydrator and stored how and for how long,  i want to know if the amount of fungi i harvest from them can compete price wise with the grocery store. I also want enough information so that i can decide if i have good luck with one kit, if it is possible to expand to multiple kits and if i can do it all on my mini, portable greenhouse. Because if so, that means i need to buy another since i plan on using the current greenhouse to hold my wintersowing project.

So i googled and fiddled with the search terms and i found this company Mushroom Adventures, they are pricier than Fungi Perfecti but they have their kit instructions on their website right here!  This is exactly what i was looking for to start. So for the next few hours or days- depending on time between other things i must do, i will be studying and familiarizing myself with the jargon and concepts with those preliminary pages.


....and i did find another article hidden among Fungi Perfecti's pages : Maximizing spent kits. This is exactly the info i was looking for to supplement the above Instruction Sheets.  So, it looks like i can use the remains of the mushroom boxes to start outdoor mushroom colonies.  There are a few areas in the yard that i may actually be able to put mushroom patches/logs/structures, its a pretty exciting concept.   The mushroom kits are not cheap and it means that the money spent for the kit in the winter/fall can be used for another purpose and i won't necessarily have to buy another product to try growing them outside. It also means that if i get a disappointing results from the boxes, they may have a second, more successful life if the material is set outside.

I may have to save up and buy another portable greenhouse...



...and this article looks quite promising....

http://www.instructables.com/id/Growing-Mushrooms/

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.

Ugggh... been busy.

I think its one of those "i know i don't have followers, so whats the rush?"  but i have to remind myself that this is also a Journal to keep me from forgetting things, not a brag piece for showing an unknown number of people what i am up to every day...  hence the Watching grass grow entries (and i have more pictures of that BTW)...  whats more boring than watching ryegrass grow?  watching it grow on a blog. LOL


Ok,  so anyway,  on with this semi-public conversation  with myself!

Today i need to remind myself of the research i have done on a garden technique called Winter Sowing.  Its a way to get stuff in the garden before it even thaws. At first i had thought it was some sort of weird "toss the seeds on the snow and let them melt in" sort of thing...  i mean it sounded totally weird and then i thought maybe this is something people in Florida do when they think they are experiencing a real winter. 
Lets face it,  'winter' in Florida does not exist. They have Fall at the most.

Anyway,  it turned out that neither was the case.

My focus this year is on Veggies,  i am trying to save some money and learn some old time skills before they are forgotten forever in my family.  Veggies>Gardening>Preserving >Canning....

According to http://wintersown.org  the technique is:

Winter Sowing is fabulous for starting veggies. If you’ve had problems with direct sowing veggie seeds such as the seeds get eaten by birds or critters, or they either desiccate or rot in the soil, or bugs eat them, or there's insufficient germination (for whatever reason) try Winter Sowing your vegetable seeds.

The website has useful lists sorted by USDA Gardening Zones and by seed type.  Hardy annuals, perennials, veggies, herbs..etc.

My focus being veggies for Zone 5, i see that such things as onions, beets, carrots, parsnips, chard, tomatoes, curcubits, plus a few others, are all options for this technique.

Tomatoes make sense and even squashes because i can remember a few times i'd find volunteer tomato seedlings pop up in the garden and almost everyone with a compost heap has experienced the Godzilla Squash  Compost Monster plant that inevitably sprouts from  wayward seed from the previous year.  This past summer's Compost Monster was a strange pattypan/carnival squash hybrid.  I should take a picture of the single fruit it produced before it got mashed in the yardwork. I took the fruit because it looked so neat,  but i didn't have any idea what to do with it, since it was a winter and summer squash mix.  It is still in the pantry, awaiting its fate.

I wish i could try it with Artichokes (not the JA type!) but the site says i have to be in a warmer zone...  but then i have that newer variety that is supposed to be quite hardy- the one i tried the cold-hardening technique on last year that didn't work and i was so annoyed over.  I might try it with the remaining seeds. What have i got to lose?

Basically, you take hardy seeds, seeds from plants that reseed themselves, and seeds that either need stratification or take forever to germinate... sow them in seed flats like you would in the spring,  and you set them outside.
This is a fabulous FAQ:
http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/wtrsow/2002050141031613.html


Ok, thats if for this entry. i have too much to do today and i have chat requests coming in from facebook and i need to cut my fingernails they are making it impossible to type!