It’s a chilly, damp and dreary day today. You know what that means?
Gotta do something gardening related!
Today, I potted up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.
I’d started them in a peat tray with two rows of four square cells. One row for the tomatoes, one for the Little Finger Eggplant. I planted 4 seeds per cell, which got me 11 plants, which is quite a good germination rate.
I wish I could say the same for the eggplant! Only three germinated, so I replanted. As of today, I have finally seen one tiny, barely visible seedling, germinating. Hopefully, that means we’ll see more, soon.
In other things, yesterday I finally saw the tiniest, microscopic oregano seedling, and this afternoon, there was an equally tiny spearmint. The Roma tomatoes sharing the tray, however, are doing great. I’ll have to get more soil for potting up. Quite a bit more. The Roma and Spoon tomatoes will need to be potted up, and eventually the peppers sharing the tray with the Spoon tomatoes will need potting up, too – there are finally more and more of the peppers germinating!
I’m going to start running out of shelf space for the plant trays! It will be good when things warm up enough to start moving trays into the sun room – and start keeping the yard cats out! Last year, we set up a surface using a couple of saw horses and an old closet door I found when cleaning the outhouse over the swing bench, which worked out really well. We’ll have to work out something better to support the lights, though. We’ve got a few weeks to figure things out.
We’ll also have to figure out what to use to protect the plants when it’s time to harden them off. Last year, we used the frame of my daughter’s market tent, with an unused, home made bed frame made out of plywood on it. This kept the plants high enough that none of the cats went after them. The market tent is being use now, though, and the bed frame got painted and is now in the basement, keeping litter boxes raised off the concrete floor – just in case things get wet again. I think I saw a folding table in one of the sheds – it’ll take some doing to access it to confirm, and see if it’s big enough. The problem will be how to keep the cats off, since it would be about half the height of the frame we used before.
We’ll come up with something!
It just felt good to do at least a little big garden related, today!
Today may be cooler, but we’re still staying above freezing, and the kitties are just loving it!
I only counted about 16, this morning. As things melt clear and my morning rounds are extending further out, I’m seeing the cats all over the place. The long haired tuxedo followed me all over the place, much like Pointy Baby did – just without actively trying to get me to pick him up and carry him!
I miss Pointy Baby.
The berry bushes we planted last year are almost completely uncovered. That old saw horse with the sticks is over the highbush cranberry the deer kept eating. I checked the other one and can almost, sorta, see leaf buds starting to form!
The main garden area is still mostly covered with snow. If all goes to plan, the area in front of where I’m standing will have at least a couple of trellis tunnels built.
The garlic bed isn’t quite clear, yet!
The standing water has receded more, so I was able to get to the storage warehouse (which I would really love to reclaim as a work shop again!!) and look around. With not being able to get to the dump as often in the winter, we’ve been storing our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where it could freeze. It’s getting too warm for that, now. We need to build a garbage bin outside that is cat and racoon proof to store the bags until we can make our dump runs. There are pieces of plywood and other random boards in the warehouse. With all my parents’ stuff jammed into there, none of it is accessible. Some of the stacks of boxes need to be moved around, anyhow, as they are starting to collapse and tip. That’s as good an excuse as any to move things around. Some of the plywood sheets, however, are behind a couch, and there are all sorts of boxes and bins that predate us on and in front of it. No matter. We’ll figure out how to get to them. I’d love to get rid of all the bags of clothes in there. They’re not even suitable for donating after all this time, but my mother still insists we don’t throw anything out! *sigh* She’s still all worried that someone might come in and steal her old underwear or something. 🤨
While in the shed, I noticed an old broiler pan that will work as a kibble tray. I don’t know why we’ve been finding broiler pans all over the place – no one ever used them for what they were made for – but they make great kibble trays, so I grabbed it. With a bit of readjusting of things, I was able to reclaim two of the baking sheets I got for carrying transplants around that were being used as kibble trays over the winter. There is still one more, just inside the cat house entry, but I will leave that for now. With the two trays I reclaimed, I’ll be able to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes now.
After I was done my rounds, I made a quick trip to the post office to see if a parcel had arrived. With so much snow gone, once I was back, I actually went to close the gate! I’m seeing our vandal walking by with his dog on the trail cam more often, so I wanted to have it at least closed. This makes it the first time that gate has been closed since the snow got too deep to keep clear, several months ago.
Well, now.
When my brother and I put the repaired gate back up, the two sides were even. That sliding bar holds the two sides closed, and I could put a pin through the pair of holes at the corner, which made sure the wind or whatever didn’t vibrate the bar off the end of the gate. Before winter, it was noticeably shifted, but we could still lift one side of the gate while pushing down on the bar and get the pin through. Now, it’s just too far off! We’ll have to come out with a level and see which gate post has shifted the most. I was thinking the north post was tipping away, but my daughters think the south post is tipping inwards. It could well be both. The gate posts were installed in such a way that they can be adjusted by adding washers to the bolts at the base. My brother had done that when he installed the new hinges that replaced the ones our vandal broke. I’d hoped it would be a few years longer before it had to be done again. It’s been about 3 1/2 years since these were repaired and replaced, so I guess that’s not too bad.
The main thing is, the gate is now closed! Without being able to put the pin in the sliding bar, the chain is extra necessary to make sure they don’t swing open on their own. We’ll also have to touch up the paint a bit. I think I still have a spray can of it around. I’ll have to think about what I can put around where the chain and bar is damaging the paint so quickly.
Things are going to stay colder over the next 10 days or so, with daytime highs just above freezing and overnight lows dipping several degrees below freezing. We’re also getting smatterings of rain. I’d say it’s a good thing we didn’t plant those carrots, even if we did have the plastic to cover them until they germinated. I don’t mind, though. It means things will continue to melt and be absorbed by the ground slowly. I rather like not having to wade through giant muddy puddles to get to the garage. It will give us time to work on other preparations.
I’m just thrilled to be able to get outside and get working again, even if it’s just a tiny bit at a time!
As I write this, we are currently at our expected high of 8C/46F. Things will cool down more over the next while, and we might start getting rain today and tomorrow.
We have standing water in all the usual places, like this low spot by the trail cam stand. I really want to dig a trench along that fence line to collect the water more, so it doesn’t spread out like this. All in good time.
The areas around the garage do still have standing water, but it has receded even as the snow melts, which means the ground is actually absorbing it.
After doing my rounds, I headed into town to refill our water jugs for drinking water and pick up a few fresh groceries. I filled the gas tank on my mom’s car, too. When I was last in the city, gas prices were around 160.9 cents per liter. The Esso station in town I had been going to was at 159.9 0 but the Husky station next to the grocery store was at 148.9! Ever since they reopened after getting some work done, they’ve somehow managed to keep their prices a lot lower than everywhere else.
When I got home, I was actually able to drive into the yard and back the car up to the house to unload! First time this year. Much better than trying to drag a wagon filled with heavy water bottles through mud and water.
We can’t quite get to everything yet, though. The outer yard in front of the barn is all snow, still, except for a “river” opened up by water draining from the moat near the garage. The storage warehouse has a lake in front of it, but I could access the pump shack and the old chicken coop. I was even able go get through some less water filled areas and check on the Korean pine.
It’s still too early to tell if they actually survived their first winter. With two of them, their protective cages were smushed to one side, but the saplings themselves were still protected, and I was able to straighten out the wire. One sapling was still completely covered with snow, but I could see its green needles through the snow.
With things cooling down for the next while, we decided to hold off on planting the carrots we made seed tape with. The plastic covering the bed they will go into is still on place – since it’s just held with duct tape, and the yard cats have a habit of jumping onto our garden protection, there is always some doubt! We will leave it to keep acting as a little greenhouse over that bed as we continue to prepare others over the next while. In particular, I want to get the bed along the chain link fence ready to do our first sowing of peas. The high raised bed in the main garden area no longer has snow on it, but the ground around it is still covered in snow, including the bed the garlic is planted in, so there’s nothing we can do there quite yet. We do need to start gathering the materials to make the permanent trellis tunnels and portable trellises, though, so once the ground is ready, we can get those started right away.
With the ground in the spruce grove now mostly free of snow, this would be a good time to start cutting down some of the dead trees, too, along with the ones I’ve singled out for the permanent trellis tunnel. I should probably get our electric chain saw checked over for service and maintenance first, though.
The to-do list is long! The challenge is prioritizing what needs to be done first, rather than what’s easiest or fastest to start.
Yesterday, we made some seed tape, and – best of all! – were able to do some outdoor garden prep. While the main garden area is still buried in snow, the south yard’s garden beds are almost completely clear of snow, and even thawing out a bit.
Today, I went through my bin of seeds for direct sowing, pulling out the ones that can be sown “as soon as the ground can be worked” or before last frost.
I also made sure the back ordered bean seeds I picked up in the mail yesterday went in with the other beans.
Which is when I discovered something.
I already had some.
The Red Swan beans were not the back ordered beans I was waiting for! I checked my order confirmation emails and saw that I was supposed to get these.
These are the Improved Purple Queen that had been back ordered. From the website:
Spectacular colour! Purple Queen produces high yields and has amazing flavour. While also resistant to cool conditions, Purple Queen matures early and holds its colour in cool conditions making it the perfect bean for home gardeners. Be sure to watch the bean turn from royal purple to luscious dark green as it is being cooked. Resistant to Mosaic Virus. Maturity 52 days.
The Royal Burgundy bush bean we’d grown two years ago was no longer available, so we got this one instead. I wanted a purple bean. So we now have yellow, green and red beans, with a purple on the way. Once I realized a mistake had been made, I emailed Veseys about it, and I already got an order confirmation for the right seeds! Veseys is great for responding to emails. We’ve had an error like this only once before, and they are very fast about fixing things. I’m quite happy with them, that’s for sure.
Interestingly, I just looked at their bush bean collection and found it says the Red Swan bean in the collection is a substitute for the Purple Queen, which is not available for 2023. Looks like they now have Improved Purple Queen, instead.
So that is taken area of.
Meanwhile, these are the seeds I have that can be planted before last frost.
Of these, the Mountain Morado corn can be planted 1-2 weeks before last frost. The peas can be planted in mid-April or May. Everything else can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked.
I won’t be doing the kohlrabi. Every year we’ve tried them, we’ve had nothing, and I don’t know why. I do want to grow them. Just not this year. The radishes probably won’t be planted, but if I do plant some, it will be just a few seeds for plants that will be grown for their pods. I’m still curious to try them. We are not big fans of radishes, but I want to see if we like the pods.
The rest, we shall see when and where we will be able to plant things. I still don’t know where to plant the two types of poppies or the strawberry spinach. They will be treated as perennials and allowed to self seed, so they need permanent locations, and the two types of poppies need to be well away from each other to avoid cross pollination. I’ll figure it out.
The main thing I want to plant as soon as possible are the Naval carrots. The Uzbek Golden carrots are described as a cool weather carrot, but there is nothing about planting before last frost, so I will wait on those. I still have the pelleted Napoli carrots, from two years ago. That summer, they were repeatedly eaten by groundhogs and I finally gave up on the bed, only to discover they still managed to produce. They were quite good. If I have the space, I do want to try them again. As for the Naval carrots, I decided to make seed tape with them. I’ll include that in a video I will be making tonight, along with how prepping the low raised beds went. Hopefully, I’ll have a relatively short video ready for tomorrow.
Things are supposed to cool down for the next little while, and we may actually get rain tomorrow or the day after! So I’m not in any rush to get seeds in the ground, but I do want to get as much space ready for them as I can.
Our last packet of seeds that were backordered from Veseys finally came on. Or, I should say, I finally picked them up. I’m pretty sure they arrived last week. We just weren’t able to get out while the post office was open.
Wow! I just looked them up at Veseys, and boy am I glad I ordered them so early! The price has really gone up since then! This is the description for them.
Stringless and unique. Red Swan is a great fresh or cooking bean that is stringless! Bred by crossing a pinto and bush bean, Red swan blew our trial staff away with its yields and ornamental presence. Pods emerge red and mature to rose-purple at 5-6″ long. Red swan kept producing late into the season for multiple harvests and pods hold onto their flavour well at every size. Matures in 60 days.
We have had good results with purple things – beans, lettuces, carrots – so I hope these “red” beans will also do well. Plus, it’s a dual purpose bean. I should remember to plant half of them for a dry storage bean, and the other half for picking fresh.
Meanwhile, here is how some of our seedlings are doing.
The trays in the big aquarium greenhouse are doing well. The germination rate for the Roma VF tomatoes is really high! So if the germination rate for the Spoon tomatoes, and some of those seeds were 2 years old! Still no herbs, but at least there are more peppers starting to show up. I’ve read that peppers can take up to 21 days to germinate, so I hope we will have more showing up. Especially with the cayenne. There’s still only one of those.
Ugh. My phone focused on the wrong place! Ah, well.
I am just amazed by that one zucca melon on the right! Not only by how tall it’s getting, but that its stem it so strong and holding itself upright, with no support! Last year, they never got this big, even after transplanting. They have such a huge fruit, it’s interesting to see that this is a climbing vine. I’ve had to make sure the tendrils don’t wrap around anything.
There are still just the two of them, though, and just two African Drum gourds, even though I did plant more seeds. We did bring a heater into the living room, but can only use it when someone is around to supervise, so while we’re able to get the room warmer, it may still not be enough to warm up the growing medium. The Crespo squash are looking good, though, with one still in its original pot, and the three that were thinned by dividing.
As for the rest, still no Classic eggplant, and none of the reseeded Little Finger eggplant or luffa have terminated. There are more tiny strawberries emerging, and I think it’s about time to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.
I might have to change up how the lights are over the seedlings. This area gets some good sunlight in the mornings, but the more trays are in the mini greenhouse frame, the less light there is for the lower trays. I have to find some way for the lights to reach the lower trays a bit better. They seem to be doing okay so far, though. I’ve been switching them around and rotating them every couple of days or so, but as we take more trays out of the aquarium greenhouses, I won’t have the room do to that for long. We’ll also have to find more surface area for trays; the potted up tomatoes are going to take up a fair bit of space!
I didn’t have time to post this before heading into the city. We had an excellent visit, and ended up leaving an hour or so later than we should have. It was dark by the time we left, and with all the reflections on the damp roads, it was extremely difficult to see where the lanes were. We also very quickly realized we needed to stop as soon as possible and clean our headlights! Thankfully, there is a gas station just outside the city on our route – and the prices were 5 cents cheaper than when we filled on the way out. Gas prices were really weird. In the town my mother lives in, where we usually stop for gas, the prices had gone up from 154.9 cents/liter to 160.9. Usually, the prices are cheaper in the city, but we were passing gas stations at 169.9! This one station outside the city is usually a penny or two higher than inside the city, so it was very strange to see it lower than everywhere else. My daughter was a sweetheart and cleaned all the headlights and windows while I got the gas, and my goodness, did it make a difference! It was still very cautious driving, though. Not because of road conditions – those were great. It was being on constant lookout for deer! Thankfully, we only saw one, running away from the road, but there are so many of the around this time of year, I consider that very lucky.
So what did I find that I would have posted about before leaving?
This lovely surprise!
When I turn the lights on in the morning, I would always lift the dome on this tray to check the pots while getting the condensation to drip into the tray a bit. There wasn’t a single sprout this morning. After making our second basket and putting it in the living room for safe keeping, I took the time to look at the tray that had been moved off the neat mat, to see if any more peppers had sprouts. None had, but I realized I was seeing green through the condensation of the dome on the new tray. I couldn’t believe how many tomatoes has sprouted in such a short time! I’m also surprised they sprouted earlier than the herbs. Those seeds are so tiny, they are practically surface sown, so I figured they would be visible first, for sure. Nope. Not a single herb seed has germinated yet.
With the tomatoes sprouting, though, the dome now stays off.
Now, if only more of those peppers – and any of the Classic eggplant – would start sprouting!
For a while outside, the wind picked up and I could see the snow coming down horizontally out the window! From what I’m hearing the roads are in terrible condition, and quite a few people posted online that they started to go somewhere, only to turn around immediately. Everyone is being told to stay home. A number of roads have been closed, particularly in the South. For our area, it looks like the worst of it has passed by, and things should be getting better from now on, though there is a second system on the radar that might make it as far as us later. Maybe.
A good day to be inside and doing garden stuff!
The first thing I needed to do was start some new seeds.
There were only three things that need to be started in the 6-8 week range; spearmint, oregano and the Roma tomatoes.
The oregano and spearmint seeds are so miniscule! We don’t need a lot of either, so there was more than enough for our needs. There weren’t a lot of seed in the tomato packet, so I actually counted them to work out how to use the tray. There turned out to be 67 seeds in the packet. Usually, for “pots” the size of these toilet paper rolls, I would plant two seeds per pot, but with so few seeds, only one got two seeds and the other 65 got a single seed each. Romas are a tomato I want to have a lot of, so we can do tomato paste and sauces again at the end of the year.
The herbs each gone one row in the tray. Here, the tray is on the heat mat, and it now has a dome over it, too.
This is the tray that had been on the heat mat. There are some cayenne, Dragonfly and Early Sensation peppers sprouting. And look at all those spoon tomatoes!
The strawberries and Classic eggplant got moved out entirely, and are now in the small aquarium greenhouse, still on the little bin to lift them closer to the light. The hardware cloth cover for the tank is no longer needed to keep the cats out, but it is still needed to hold the light fixture. We couple put the light back under the tank’s lid and use that, but this way, there is still plenty of air flow.
This done, I decided to do some potting up. First, I thinned by dividing the Crespo squash…
They are on the aluminum sheet in the photo. Of the two pots, one had all three seeds in it germinate, and they all have their own pot now. The second pot, I left for now. You can see a second seed did start to germinate, but it seems to have just stopped growing.
In the baking tray, you can see the Zucca melon, at the bottom right of the picture, are doing well! Those tendrils are reaching out to climb, and I’ve already had to unwrap the biggest one from the mini greenhouse frame. The drum gourds in the back are doing okay, but I think it’s just too cold for them to grow much right now.
I’d reseeded more Zuccz melon and drum gourd, but none have germinated yet. There was a drum gourd seedling that died after I’d put more seed in the empty pots, and I was considering adding more drum gourd seeds to it. Not anymore! That pot has now been “potted up” into the stronger, lighter coloured pot, and contains an experiment.
Last year, we had purchased seeds for Tulip trees and pawpaws. We had a single Tulip tree germinate, only to die soon after. Nothing else germinated. Their containers had been moved between the sun room and the shelf just outside the sun room. No surprise that cats would eventually knock them around, and that was it for any chance of germination. They were planted in a seed starting mix, which I ended up adding in to the big bowl I use to moisten the starting mix before putting it into pots to start new seeds. I ended up finding one of the pawpaw seeds that actually looked robust, so I stuck it into the available pot. Who knows? Maybe it’ll sprout!
Today, I had dumped our last bag of seed starting mix into the big bowl with what was left from before and was mixing water in with my hands when I found another pawpaw seed that looked like it was fresh out of the package we got them in. So I stuck that into the pot I’d put the first one in. The pot is damp, though, so it broke. I grabbed one of the new biodegradable pots I bought and the whole thing fit perfectly inside it. Cool! Now we have two pawpaw seeds to potentially sprout!
As I went back to mixing water into the seed starter mix, I found three more pawpaw seeds! None of them showed even the slighted bit of rot or damage!
They all went into the experiment pot.
I have no idea if they will germinate, but it would be awesome if they did!
Once the herbs and tomato seeds were planted and things were shifted around, I decided it was time to pot up the Black Beauty tomato seedlings. The germination rate for those was really high, and they were starting to get too big for the square potting cells they were in. I had a bag of potting soil ready for potting up, and went with Red Solo cups to transplant them up into.
I filled them about half way with soil, and buried the stems of the seedlings about half way when transplanting. As they get bigger, we can keep filling the cups with soil, allowing for more roots to develop along the stems. The baking tray holds 12 cups, while the bin can only hold 9, which left 5 more to go back into the tray they had been in before. The smaller Indigo Blue tomatoes don’t need potting up yet. Sadly, there are still only three Little Finger eggplants; the pots I reseeded show no signs of germination yet. Again, I think it might just be too cold by the window, even though the whole thing is over a heat vent.
Lower down, you can see the tray that has the first peppers we planted, in the red cups they were potted up into, next to the German thyme and lemon grass. The yellow plant pot below has one of the pots of German thyme transplanted into it, which we will be keeping indoors. In the blue mushroom tray is the luffa. We still have just one plant. The other 3 pots were reseeded, but still nothing.
And finally, here are the onions and shallots! It’s been a while since I showed how they were doing. I suppose we could give them hair cuts, but that may not be beneficial. Gardening in Canada did a video about it, and I trust what she says.
My daughter’s orchids got moved to the shelf beside the onions. I hope they do okay, there. They’re pretty far from the heat vent.
That is it for now! The next seeds we will need to start are the 4-6 week seeds, and I think I have only 1 or 2 things that needs to be started in that range. After that, it’s all stuff that needs 3-4 weeks before last frost date. There are a few seeds in that range that I plan to experiment with, starting some indoors and direct seeding others, to compare how they do.
Being able to work on gardening stuff while it’s snowing outside feels really good!
I few days ago, I spotted our first Spoon tomatoes, but they are so fine and spindly, I waited until today to try and get a photo.
Still no sign of peppers, but there’s about 8 or so tomatoes sprouting, and signs of more seedling elbowing their way to the surface. They are so bitty!
Speaking of bitty, we also have our first strawberries sprouting!
Growing strawberries from seed is totally new to me, so I’m pretty happy to see these. Over time, I want to have lots of strawberries, so if growing them from seeds works, that would make it much more affordable compared to buying transplants or bare roots. We’ll probably still do both. I want to use them as a living ground cover around the silver buffalo berry bushes. Those are nitrogen fixers, so it would be a good combination, and when the bushes start getting too big and start shading out the strawberries, we can just transplant them somewhere else.
I am so looking forward to having our own berries. We all love them, but they are so expensive to buy! My younger daughter was asking about growing blueberries, but they need acidic soil. Ours is very alkaline. We will need to find a spot and focus on lowering the pH so we can plant some. Once we clear more of the dead trees out of the spruce grove, we might be able to get some good spaces in there. I’ve read the spruces increase soil acidity, so I will want to do some soil tests and see how it is now.
There’s a certain downside to ordering a lot of seeds. Namely, a tendency to forget what I already have, what I’ve ordered, or even what I wanted to order, but decided not to this time.
It helps to organize the packets at least a little. For me, the main thing is to have them divided into bins for what needs to be started indoors, and what can be started outdoors. I sort them more, within the bins, but those are my two most important distinctions.
As I worked on the seeds that needed to be started indoors the earliest, went through our garden plans, and even browsed the catalogs, online and off, every now and then I’d think… “huh. I thought I ordered another type of eggplant.” Specifically, the most common eggplant we see in the grocery stores. Then I figured I must have changed my mind and decided not to, this year.
Today, I got a shipping notification from Veseys, letting me know that my last packet of seeds, a purple bean variety, that was back ordered are on their way. After this, it’s just the live items that won’t be shipped until late May, before our last frost date.
Looking back at the original order confirmation to remind myself what would be coming in May, I noticed something else on the list.
Classic Eggplant.
I did order them.
They should have been started a week ago.
Where are they?
I went through all the Veseys packets in my “start indoors” bin. Nothing.
I got about half way through my “direct sowing” bin, when I found the packet, tucked in amongst the root vegetables.
Oops!
So, I quickly got them going!
There aren’t a lot of seeds, but we don’t need a lot of plants, since this is a “lets find out how they grow and if we like them” year. I had some 10 cell square peat trays, but only used half of one. If I’d found the seed packet earlier, they would have done in with the peppers and Spoon tomatoes that I started earlier in the week, instead of having 2 rows of tomatoes. Ideally, though, they would have been planted at the same time as the Little Finger eggplant.
Here they are, in the large aquarium greenhouse. They really ought to be on the heat mat, but there’s no room, so I added a small bin to raise them closer to the warm lights, and set it up with the strawberry tray. No sign of those, yet, but when I checked under the dome over the large tray, I think I actually saw some tomatoes elbowing their way to the surface!
It’s a bit late, but these only need 75-80 days, so we should still have time. I planted two seeds per cell, and still have some seeds left. If we get only 50% germination, that’s still enough for our needs for this year. We like eggplant, but we don’t buy it often.
