Seedlings everywhere and that other thing

I have been incredibly busy with my plantings in the greenhouse. I have never had the ability to start plants outside so, I am excited to get as many started as I can. I tend to grow heirloom vegetables as I prefer their taste. I have almost 300 seed packets which I keep in a dorm style refrigerator in my basement. The reason for the plethora of packets is that there were many stories and some proof last year that there would be a shortage of seeds. I therefore bought seeds when I saw a great sale and I also broadened my selection. I have to admit I went overboard on them.

I sent my brother a box of probably 50-70 seed packets earlier this year. He called me and asked if I thought he had a farm in the backyard when he got them. But you know what, he told me recently that he expanded his garden with more beds. Never give a gardener more land or seeds as they will always find a way to use them. 

My seeds seem to last very long in the little refrigerator. I got the idea to store them in it when I saw a show about the seed bank that is in Norway in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It's a huge concrete vault built in the ground and they have 20 M seeds in the vault and are still collecting new seeds. The seeds are kept a 0 degree Fahrenheit. I thought, after seeing this, what if I kept my seeds in a refrigerator. I tell people I have seeds from 2006 that are still producing and am met with mad stares when I tell them that. Even my brother doubted me.
As I said, I have been quite busy with gardening and other goings on. My plants are doing quite well. I have plenty of lettuce mainly of the buttercrunch variety. It makes for a great salad when mixed with spinach and other things.

Here are my lettuce plants, along with the spinach plants I planted along with them. Time to harvest some of each for a nice salad.

Maybe I'll add some of the carrots I harvested yesterday to the salad too. These were from the initial plantings I did in November/December.

I do have additional plantings in the works as shown below. I'll have to replant the container that I just pulled the carrots from with more seeds. I do love carrots.

I am also currently growing seedlings of the early spring crops along with cucumbers. I have various seedlings of cabbage, broccoli, lettuce and spinach as shown.

Given the winter has been quite moderate for the Mid-Atlantic region, I've been able to collect about 135 gallons of water from all the rain we have received in the past month or so. I do treat it with a water treatment for pools that blows off in about a day or so after I add it to the water. I only use it when I see that the water is beginning to turn or if there are abundance of mosquitos. Otherwise, I let it alone. Here is the container as it sits now.

Now, about that other thing. I have witnessed a lot of panic regarding the virus and have, to an extent, given into it myself. It is very hard not to. In order to channel my anxiety, I am expanding my garden further in order to grow what I believe my wife and I will eat and need. I have spoken to numerous people about the need to garden now, more than ever. For the most part, my words have fallen on deaf ears as the saying goes. Most say they just don't have the time. That's all fine and good as far as I am concerned. I have tried. But for those of us who have been gardening, I think it is imperative that we begin to grow what we need, not just what we like.  This virus is impacting our supply chains negatively. I pray that what I am seeing is just a bump in the road. So, I would end this by saying, if you have the time and will, dig further and grow more. 

Well, that's all I have for this post. Stay well and grow, grow and grow! Until next time, Happy Gardening Everyone!

Garden preps and other musings

It's March and you know what that means - Spring is here - almost. I'm generally not an optimist so I do not get too excited but after today, one can hope. It was a beautiful day and I got to enjoy it immensely. After a visit to the doctor for a routine appointment, I came home and indulged myself. I decided it was time to mark the beds and get things moving.
So, after checking the measurements and verifying all was right, I roped off the front beds. It didn't take a lot of time but I wanted to be sure everything was aligned. My goal, after all, is to maximize the spaces I have. So here are the beds that I'm establishing. They run northish to southish. My yard, like most yards, does not run true north and south. 



This bed is 18" wide and 21' long. It will be the first year that I have gardened in this area so I will obviously have to amend the soil heavily this year. I have lots of compost but that will have to augmented with other materials. I don't look for this to be a big producing bed but with the right mix of amendments, it may be enough to get some production. Anything I do add will be certified organic. I generally look for the OMRI certification on anything I purchase.
The second bed shown below is 2.5' wide and 21' long. This area is a long existing plot of my garden. Naturally, it should be a productive plot but will need a treatment of compost and maybe another ingredient.


My third and fourth beds are a blend of two previous beds. They are 2.5" wide and 12' long. The third bed (on the right) is about 50% new area and 50% existing bed. The fourth bed is heavily an existing bed. In fact, I will be moving some of the dirt from it to bed 3. And again, bed 3 will need amendments and compost.



The fifth bed is about 18" wide and 21' long. It is also a new bed so I will follow the same protocols as to the other new beds. 


Having completed the outlining of the beds, I then cut the beds to fit the sizes of them and transferred the excess dirt to the beds. This was done to establish the walking paths between the various garden plots. Once I was finished with the edging of the beds, I raked each walk path. This was the final step to firm up the beds and walkways.

I think the garden is starting to come together. Shortly, I will have to work on the other two smaller plots on the other side of the main walkway and them run my hand tiller through the beds to get them ready for planting in early April. Much to do, so little time as usual.
I am always amazed by the rare things I find at stores I had no idea carried the items. For instance, I had no idea that TJ Maxx carried this



Or this



I did get this work light very cheap at Sears due to the store being closed. Sad end to an American icon. 



Well, that's all there is for now. It's time for me to get the seedlings started. I am excited to see if there is any difference in them by starting them in my greenhouse. And, as always, until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!

Time to garden?

I have been tending to my plants in the greenhouse since late November. This attempt has been very simple in plan and function. I have seeded the plants and have not supplied any artificial light or heat for them. I have been watering them as they require. There has been absolutely no fertilizer given to them. I wanted to test the idea that I would be able to grow through winter with my hobby greenhouse. So far, the results are mixed as seen below.


These are the two surviving Spinach plants as the other two did not make it.

These are two surviving Butternut lettuce plants.

And these are the two plantings of carrots. Both are doing quite fine even though the ones to the right appear not to be. Not sure the issue but if the carrots themselves are fine, then I am okay regardless.
I did a subsequent planting of Spinach, Chard and Butternut lettuce on January 1st. All seem to be healthy at this point as seen below.

The front row has all Spinach. I planted America in the left two pots and Bloomsdale Longstanding in the right two pots. In the back row, left to right, I planted Red Salad bowl, Black Seeded Simpson, Mesclun and Great Lakes Iceberg. 

In the left set of pots, I planted a complete set of Buttercrunch lettuce. In the right set of 3, I planted Giant Caesar, Little Caesar and another Buttercrunch lettuce.
The germination and growth rates of the January 1 planters were much slower than the earlier sets I planted. I believe that it was due to the fact that we had seasonably cooler weather with some nighttime lows in the mid 20's with a few in the upper teens during January. I know, shocking right? There was a winter blast that had the chill factor into the single digits and briefly below zero. Just the fact that the seeds germinated was a surprise to me. And antidotally, the plants that failed from the earlier planting did so during this time too. I will have to give some thought as to the whole growing idea in the greenhouse. I have a whole year to work that out so, for now, I will maintain the plants and see what happens.
Meanwhile, we had some beautiful warm weather this past Monday and Tuesday with highs in the low 60's. That gave me the opportunity to pull the remainder of the cement bricks from my garden. I also disassembled the winter structure I had. I can now see the form of my garden taking shape. The soil is way too wet to work at this point. We have had consistent rains so it is quite soggy right now. And given the conventional wisdom is to leave wet soil alone, I will bide my time. Below is a broad view of my garden and the wall of cement bricks I moved Monday. What I am going to do with all the bricks, I have no idea at this time.


My gardening juices are flowing as I work in and about the garden. I can't help but find something I can do. As I was sitting down watching TV Monday night, it suddenly came to me to see if the two pot lights I found in my garage would work in my greenhouse. So, at around 7 or so, I trudged out to my shed, plugged in an extension cord and wielded it into the greenhouse. I plugged the two lights in and took the following picture. I thought it was pretty impressive. 



My immediate plans are to begin thinking on what early spring crops I am going to actually grow. As most gardeners realize, when the space is limited, you have to be judicious about what you are actually going to grow. So, after having reorganized my 226 packets of seeds, I have some decisions to make.
Well, that's all the gardening I have to write about today. Hopefully your weather is turning warmer. Happy Gardening everyone!

Progress with the winter vegetables

I was quite pleased with what I saw when I entered my greenhouse.  It seems, as you shall see, that even though the temps have been average to a little below average, the plants don't seem to mind.  First, the early planter of carrots continues to thrive.  I have been watering them on an every other day schedule which seems to be the sweet spot for them.  I started them and watered them every day.  After about 2 weeks or so, they began to show signs of slowing down and some of their leaves were actually browning out.  That was the point at which I decided to back off the water and try to gauge how often they required it.  Eventually, I figured out that every two days was where I needed to be.  Here is a picture of them at this point.

I trimmed the brown leaves off of them about a week ago and I can see that they are now beginning to show more vibrant leaves.

The later planted carrots seem to be thriving also.  I really didn't do anything different other than plant the seeds in a deeper container.  But, I believe they are growing well.  I used a technique I saw on another site.  I sowed them in a circular motion starting in the middle.  I left about an inch as I circled the pot.  I estimate that I have about 30 plants after I thinned them out. I can't wait to eat some of these as they are so much tastier than store bought.

  

The lettuce plants are a mixed bag of results.  Two of the plants seem to be producing well while the other two pots are not as hardy.  Same seeds but different results which occurs more often than gardeners would like to acknowledge. 

                                                

 As far as the newly seeded pots of lettuce, spinach and swiss chard there is hope.  Of the 19 pots I started in early January, 18 of them are now showing healthy growth.  I'll take that kind of return every day.  I believe, given these results, that I should be able to definitely grow my seedlings of early crops within the greenhouse.  That is a major advantage given they will receive direct sunlight instead of grow lights.
That's all for today.  Please feel free to check back as I will be posting more updates regarding my new garden design and greenhouse activities.  Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!

Garden renovation update

I was able to get more work completed before the current cold weather struck. That's a good thing too as when I walked out into the backyard yesterday, the ground was hard as a rock. It had no give whatsoever. Guess old man winter has decided to settle in for a while via winter storm Jacob.
After much work, I was able to remove about 240 of the pavers that I had distributed throughout the garden. That number kind of snuck up on me as I did not realize I had that many. It's amazing how that can happen. See, I was able to procure them from two different sources over an extended period of time. Given my propensity to get carried away, it didn't really dawn on me that I had gone so overboard. And, I paid a small price for that as seen from the photo below. To say my back was none the better is an understatement.



At this point, I have unearthed the area near my shed that was covered by the pavers. This was the most time consuming and intense work I believe I will have to undertake during the renovation. Those bricks were in place for about 5 years so they were firmly entrenched in the mother earth. But, after a consistent and prolonged effort, I am glad to report, this phase is now 100% complete. After removing the pavers, I took my tiller and evened out the bed. I did notice that there were a copious amount of worms poking themselves onto the surface. That was a very encouraging sign given nothing had been planted there for many years. I purposely did not till the whole bed as there are bulbs along the white fence that I want to transplant in early Spring. I will have to till the area again once we are out of winter. Here is the finished product.



Additionally, I was able to prep the beds against the fence and in the middle of the garden. I have to say that I am impressed with the one wheel tiller as it hasn't had any trouble breaking up the surface soil. I used to use a mantis unit that would clog and needed to be cleaned repeatedly during use. It was just so frustrating. Given the soil I was prepping had ice clumps, I don't believe the Mantis would have been efficient for this scenario. Sometimes, old school just works better. And, I do think that the Mantis was kind of destructive to my soils health. There were a bunch of worms in the two beds coming to the surface and I can only imagine the Mantis would have killed many of those worms. As you can see from the photos, the beds are thoroughly dug into for the initial cut. I will have to make another pass once we warm up.


After completing these tasks, I decided to clean up one part of my beds that I had neglected to do in the fall. I had several poles, clamps and ties that I left in the beds. I pulled the poles and ties and gathered them up. I guess the grass that was growing there hid the supports as I had way more than I remembered. As shown, that area is now decluttered and ready to be worked. And, I have recovered a fair portion of the ties which I will clean with a bleach solution to kill any bacteria that may be present. 


Well, that's where I am now standing in lieu of the ground freezing up at this time. I will have a report on the status of the my greenhouse growing endeavors in the next day or so. Until then, happy gardening everyone!