My goodness! When seedlings start to germinate, some of them do it incredibly quickly!
Last night, checking on the seed starts before going to bed, I spotted a single marigold seedling that had emerged. I could also see a hollyhock elbowing its way up.
On the bottom right are the Cosmos that had already germinated. There are 11 seedlings – I think I planted only 12 seeds in there.
On the bottom left are the marigolds. I counted 7 seedlings, 6 of which there had been no sign of at all, last night.
Above the marigolds is the hollyhock roll. At first, I could see just the one seedling lifting its head (these are the seeds that the instructions said not to cover at all). When I looked closer, though, I could see three more little green elbows.
Still no tomatoes or fennel, but I’m not expecting to see any of those quite yet. Heck, I wasn’t expecting to see the flowers emerge this quickly!
Hopefully, this is a good sign for the garden this year. From the amount of snow we have on the ground right now, we should at least get a good start before the heat hits and everything dries up. I believe we are supposed to have drought conditions again this year. Which is actually the “normal” for the prairies.
Meanwhile, I watched this video from Self Sufficient Me this morning. I really find videos like this the most inspiring – the ones where things have gone all “wrong”!
Granted, an overgrown jungle like that would never happen here. We’re more likely to have everything baked and dry. Still, it comes down to the same thing: having a bad year is not being a “failure” or a “bad gardener”. It’s just a bad year. Things will never be perfect.
If we waited for perfect conditions and the “right” circumstances, we’d never accomplish anything – in the garden, or in life!
At least three lovely surprises, though two are pretty hard to see in the photo. Looking at the photo more closely, though, I wonder if there’s actually five sprouts.
These are the Dwarf Dazzler Cosmos. It hasn’t even been four full days yet, and there they are!
It should be interesting to see when the rest start showing up.
Aside from that, today has been another quiet day of domesticity. It’s been snowing on and off – just lightly, where we are – and that is expected to continue until about 2am. Tomorrow, I’m planning to “test” the truck again. I want to go into town and refill a couple of our big water jugs, and maybe pick up a few other things at the grocery store.
The grocery store that is across the street from the garage.
Yes, the truck ran perfectly well after we picked it up, but I still don’t trust Damocles, with how it would switch from working fine to breaking down for so long.
I plan to leave early enough that, if things go well, I’ll try visiting my mother afterwards, too.
Speaking of my mother…
I got a call from my brother yesterday evening. My mother had called him while he was at work.
We now know why our vandal told my brother he wanted to talk to my mother alone when they ran into each other at the TCU on the weekend.
He wants her to pay for his funeral.
He has no money, he says, so she should pay for it.
???
Not that long ago, he told her he had his own funeral all arranged, including the service at the church in town we all went to as children. He even told her that, for the gathering afterwards (the tradition out here is to rent a hall for a catered luncheon after the internment, sometimes with video displays and music), he said he wanted a bottle of vodka on every table.
Now, he wants Mom to pay for all that?
The thing is, Mom told my brother that she said yes, just to shut him up and get rid of him. We all know what his reaction would have been like, if she hadn’t. With his wife there, he wouldn’t have gotten too out of control, but it would not have been good.
Yeah. His wife was there.
Mom told my brother, nothing was signed or anything. She says he’s got plenty of money (he got a very generous buy out and was able to retire in his mid 50’s), his wife works, they’ve got land – he can pay for his own funeral. Seriously; I have to drive by his place regularly. I see the equipment and vehicles he’s got all over. He could easily sell just half of it and do quite well for himself for many years.
My mother had commented to my brother about how sick our vandal was looking. Which is interesting, because when my brother saw him just an hour earlier, he was looking pretty hale and hardy for a man that’s supposedly about to die. He’s still broad shouldered and agile, not wasting away. Which is what I see, too, when I see him going by on the trail cams. Or when he stopped at the end of the driveway in the fall and yelled at me from the road while waving his colostomy bag around, getting in and out of his vehicle, and looking quite energetic. He’s clearly putting on an act for my mother.
That his wife is part of this is an extra element of disturbing.
I’m just so disgusted with them. He still feels like he’s entitled to whatever he wants from my mother, because he “helped” here at the farm for so many years, and “helped” my late father after my mother moved out (though we now know he was verbally abusive and manipulative, on top of helping himself to whatever he wanted). Our vandal was one of the reasons my mother moved out. Yeah, he did do nice things for both of them, though he also caused plenty of problems, too, but when my late brother died, it clearly destroyed his mind. His terminal cancer diagnosis (if he actually has one; who knows, at this point) has only made him worse.
To go after my mother like that, though? With his wife!!! Disgusting.
What he doesn’t know, though, is that even if he convinced my mother to sign something, it wouldn’t matter. The doctors have already agreed that my mother’s cognitive function has dropped low enough that if she signs anything like that, it can’t be legally binding. Only my brother can sign on her behalf now. Verbal agreement doesn’t hold much either, since she’s flat out said she only agreed to shut him up; she was coerced.
I will be honest; my mother is not a nice person. These two really are very much alike in their behaviour, and it is a mutually abusive relationship. Knowing that there is an undiagnosed mental illness behind all this doesn’t make it any better. There was a time, long ago, when the person my mother could have been would emerge briefly, and she was so amazing. She is a survivor and amazingly strong. She somehow managed to keep it together for so many years and raised us as best she knew how. She deserves better than this. Especially from someone that was once so close to all of us.
Bah.
The main thing is, she made a point of letting my brother know what happens, so my siblings and I now all know why she said yes to our vandal at the time, and that she has no intention of paying for his funeral. He must still think she has millions of dollars squirreled away somewhere – and that he is entitled to it! Just like he felt entitled to this property.
What a mess.
I’m looking forward to being able to engage in more garden therapy, because I could really use it of late!
I did a lot of prep in advance. I had enough bubble warp to make the eight snail rolls that I needed, so I went with that, this time. The bubble wrap has perforations to make 12″ square sheets. I made strips 3 sheets long, then cut them in half, giving me strips that were 3′ long and 6″ wide, using clear packing tape for where I needed to join pieces together. I saved the masking tape for holding the rolls together, labelling half the strips I needed in advance.
Then I used hot water to moisten the seed starting mix. I had a bit left over from last time, plus added the new bag I got. No sifting needed! It took almost a gallon of water to get it sufficiently damp! I also set up a heat mat and a plastic tray under the shelf the seedlings are on, to hold the rolls.
Once everything was set up, it was time to make the seed snails and plant some seeds.
I had a bit of a surprise with the tomato seeds. Specifically the seed counts. I always empty the packet of what I’m working on into a bowl to make it easier to grab the seeds, one at a time – usually with the tip of a damp bamboo chopstick for small seeds. The Orange Currant packet said 25 seeds, but there were only 18. I normally would have planted about a dozen seeds and saved the rest; I chose varieties with growing seasons short enough that I could try again if germination or survival rates were low. I ended up using the entire packet.
The Blue Berries tomato had a seed count of 10, but there was only 9. I even double checked the packet to make sure nothing was stuck inside. Not a bit deal.
The other two varieties, meanwhile, had more than what the packet’s seed count said. I planted a dozen seeds each of those and have some left over if I need to try again.
I’m not complaining about the seed count. MI Gardener even did a video on Instagram, I think, talking about why they do see counts instead of weights, and that they always try to have over counts, but mistakes sometimes happen. Their seed packets are only $2 each, so I’m really not worried about it.
The strips I made for the seed rolls were all quite a bit longer than needed. This is deliberate. It gives me enough slack that I can “pot up” the tomatoes more than once, as the seedlings get bigger.
With the Florence Fennel, I made that roll bigger because I wanted to plant quite a bit more. Those can also be succession sown. We don’t normally buy bulb fennel, even though we enjoy it, because it’s one of those “treat” vegetables, rather than a staple. Hopefully, we will have lots to enjoy. I’ve tried growing them once before in the old kitchen garden and they were mostly a fail (the leaves could be used, but we never got bulbs). We didn’t realize, at the time, just how much the ornamental crab apple trees shaded everything. That’s been largely dealt with but, this year, I’ll be sure to set them where they will get more light!
With the flowers, I plan to direct sow some of the left over seeds later on, to extend the blooming season. They are going to be scattered all over the garden areas, rather than into dedicated flower beds.
I’m a little perplexed, though. I had wanted to start some of the aster seeds I saved from a packet of memorial seeds. I distinctly remember labelling a paper seed envelop (from some of the free ones we got with our seed orders) for them, as well as one for the asparagus seeds I’d collected. Now, I can’t find either. The other seeds I’d collected were larger so they went into little spice jars. I have those. They all should have been together in my seed storage bin, and I just can’t find them anymore!
I really want to plant those memorial asters again.
But I digress…
Once I got all the seed rolls done – which used up all the seed starting mix I had! – I topped them with a bit of vermiculite. Even the hollyhock, which the packet said not to cover. I just dusted a bit for the benefit of the seed starting mix surface; not enough to actually cover the seeds. After that, they all got a thorough misting.
The first was the tray they were in. All those rolls were heavy enough I had to be very careful not to break the tray when moving it.
Then there was the problem of light.
Once they were under the shelf and on the heat mat, I tried to set up one of the full spectrum lights I have. Unfortunately, the only place I can clamp the fixture onto is the edge of the table, and the lights didn’t quite reach under the shelf. I had to pull everything out and set things up closer to the edge, which I had hoped to avoid doing. It leaves me very little work space on my table.
I was just finishing up when my daughter came down to see how I was doing (she’s been taking over the outside cat feeding of late, letting me sleep in in the mornings, and get jobs like this done). I took advantage of her and got her to help me transfer the seed rolls out of the plastic tray and onto one of the metal baking sheets I had been using to hold seedlings in the Red Solo Cups. They are too wide to go under shelf were I’d originally intended the tray to be, which is why I hadn’t used one in the first place. In the second picture, you can see how it’s now set up, on a strong and sturdy metal tray over the heat mat and with the lights.
I had not intended to do so many seed snails but, for this year, they are the most practical way to do it, and they really do save a lot of space.
The next group of seeds that will need to be started are in the 4-6 weeks before last frost category. I’ll do those around the middle of April or a bit later. More than enough time to get more seed starting mix.
Hopefully, we’ll have a good germination rate – and the mouse or whatever that ate my pepper seedlings won’t like anything growing here!
The yellow celery (Golden Boy celery) had outgrown their tray. They needed potting up.
The question was, how to do that without damaging their roots?
That’s the down side of scatter sowing such tiny seeds. Especially when the germination rate was so high!
I decided the best way to do it was to set them into a seed snail roll.
As with the onions, I wanted to use potting soil rather than a soilless seed starting mix. That meant, more sifting. Which had its own challenge. Wearing a dust mask again was out of the question. I just can’t wear a mask anymore, and trying to last time was really awful. Yet not having some sort of protection was also out of the question because of how much dust sifting the dry potting soil would raise up.
My solution turned out to be pretty simple. The clear plastic garbage bag I use to protect my work surface is large enough to cover the entire bucket, and have enough slack that I could grip the handles of the colander I am using as a sifter and shake it. Yes, small amounts of dust did come out from below, but this was at floor level and it wasn’t an issue.
Before I started, I emptied the old, cracked tray I was using to collect the big pieces. This is what I got.
The depth of the soil barely reached my second knuckles. Meanwhile, just look at all those pieces that got sifted out! Totally insane. This bag was purchased last year, and I’ve heard that a lot of people were having the same issue. A few sticks is pretty normal, but nothing to this extent. It wasn’t even just one brand, either. Hopefully, the companies have gotten better at making sure their raw material is properly composted before bagging it up and sending it out!
The first picture is the “before” shot. You can see how dense they are. The tray is bottom watered, and roots are showing out the opening. Roots that would be quite entangled. How to get the seedlings out and apart, then transplanted, gently?
In the second picture, you can see what I decided to do. I had a tray (a thoroughly cleaned and repurposed meat tray that we’ve had for a few years now) that was wider and flat. I carefully moved the whole clump over into the tray, then very gently started to loosen the seed starting mix to untangle and free up the roots a bit.
Then I got some hot water and thoroughly moistened the sifted soil. The seed starting mix the seedlings was in was really quite cold. Not good! I wanted to transplant them into soil that was at least a bit on the warm side.
I had prepared a strip of packing material – this time, using a clear repair tape I happen to have, instead of painters tape, to join three sections to make one long strip. I started out by laying a thin layer of soil over about 3/4 of the strip, as I wasn’t sure just how much of it I would need to use. Then it was time to VERY carefully and gently pull apart and set out the seedlings.
I was able to get all of them in, and did add more soil to the roll to fit them all.
The remaining seed starting mix got added to the bucket of sifted soil. I added more hot water and mixed it all up before adding another layer of soil to the roll; just enough to cover the roots.
Before rolling it, I added strips of masking tape to the end, so it just needed to be lifted into place, with the tape already handy to close up the roll.
With the two layers of soil in there, the result was a pretty thick roll. I could use the plastic underneath to hold the soil in at the bottom, but there wasn’t much that could be done at the top, and soil was falling out. Once it was taped closed and the roll set upright, I found a few seedlings had fallen out with the soil. I found some gaps and carefully set them back in. I then used some of the soil that fell out to fill in the top of the roll and support some of the seedlings that seemed to need it more.
Now, it’s back in the tray under the shop light. Both trays were empty of water, so I added warm water to the trays to maintain bottom watering.
While I was doing all this, I had the heater going. It’s aimed under the shelf I have the trays on. The thermometer is kept at the far end, and the temperature was only about 13C/55F. Holding my hand under the shelf, though, I could feel it was a lot warmer just under the trays. So I set up the thermometer next to the tray with the snail roll, which is at the far end from where the heater is.
The first picture shows the “potted up” celery back in their tray. After setting up and leaving the thermometer for a while, I got a reading, which you can see in the next photo above.
It’s just barely touching 25C/77F! This is great, as cold is the big issue here. The ambient temperature really should be about 20-24C/68-75F
Since the heat is under the trays, that will warm up any water that is in them which, in turn, will warm up the soil and seed starter mixes. Not by a lot, but enough to hopefully keep the chill off the roots. Plus, it will be better for the fresh pepper and eggplant seeds I sowed to hopefully replace the ones eaten by a mouse or whatever it was.
The hygrometer reading is low, though. Ideally, it should be between 50% and 60% – even 70% for some plants. Hopefully, the bottom watering and occasional misting helps counter the ambient humidity at least a bit.
The celery seedlings now have a nice deep roll to spread their roots into, so they should be good in there for a while.
Hopefully, they will survive this! I seem to remember that I used the entire packet of seeds for this, so there’s no trying again if they don’t make it.
My first goal was to “pot up” the onions in their seed snails. For this, I wanted to use potting soil, rather than more seed starting mix. I have a bag of potting soil from last year with plenty still left in it, but I knew it was really full of sticks. Which meant I needed to sift it, first, because there was no way it could be used in the snail rolls as it was.
I got out a bucket and a colander that I use for harvesting in the summer, and started sifting in batches. The potting soil was bone dry which made it easier to sift, but also meant there was a LOT of dust. Even misting with water didn’t really help much. I did try to use a dust mask, which is difficult all on its own, since I can’t wear masks anymore. It was either breathing dirt without it, or struggling to breathe with it. Definitely a no-win situation. It didn’t actually help much, to be honest, but it was better than nothing.
I was blown away by just how many sticks I sifted out.
That pile on the side? That’s what I sifted out of what you see in the bucket. I poked my finger in to measure, and it was up to my second joint, so about 2 inches deep. Good grief! It was almost more sticks than soil!
The next step was to moisten the sifted potting soil. I used hot water for that, so it wouldn’t be a shock to the plant roots. It took a remarkable amount of water to moisten it, and I was just aiming to get it wet enough to be able to stick to itself.
This is how they looked to start with. These rolls all fit into one bin, and the seedlings are looking pretty good.
The length of them did make unrolling the snail a bit of a challenge! They were tangled together, and wanted to twist around each other as I unrolled the snail.
In the first photo above, I unrolled the first seed snail. These were bottom watered, and you can see that the soil is moist all the way through, and the roots are all the way to the bottom. Some of them seemed a bit crowded, so I did adjust a few of them to space them out a bit. In the second picture, you can see where I’ve added the potting soil on top. From there, it got rolled up and taped closed again.
It was a lot bigger, of course. Only two could fit in the bin I was using, but I did have a second, slightly smaller one, available.
Here are the “potted up” onions. In the second picture, you can see that one of the snails is a lot smaller. That’s the bunching onions. It’s a good thing those didn’t need as much soil, because I was scraping the bucket to get every last bit out for that roll. I really didn’t want to have to sift more!
These are now back in the living room. They are the only things I have space for there, this year.
In order to do this, I had to completely clear my work table. That meant taking away the trays, lights, heat mats, and everything under and around them.
With the onions done, I could then arrange the work space to be ready for the next batch of seed starts. I have the top shelf from a plastic shelf that was too tall to fit in the old basement, and it was used last year to hold trays higher up. That’s what I am using it for again now.
Hopefully, the new seeds I sowed yesterday will germinate – and won’t get eaten! I had some concerns about not having heat mats under them anymore, but before I set up the shelf, I made sure to create a wall of cardboard around the back and at one end, then moved the heater so that it was blowing under the shelf. That made a big difference, and the warmth is kept under the shelf enough to warm the trays from below. Not that the heater is on all the time, but even when the furnace is on, now that the opening between the basements is uncovered again, there is heat blowing in and the cardboard, etc. holds it around the plants surprisingly well.
The insulation leaning at one end it just there until it’s needed later; the cardboard forms a “wall” behind it, out of frame. I’ve got the flaps of the cardboard box under the back legs, so I had to put something under the front legs to level the shelf. Then I set up the insulation pieces, which protect the cutting mat from warping, and the heat mats, ready and waiting. With the seedlings so close to the shop light, the plant lights aren’t needed for now, so they’re just clamped to the table in the front. There is no place to clamp the lights to use them on top of the shelf, anyhow. Everything gets plugged into a power bar with USB ports that I have set up above my work table.
As for our next seed starts, I don’t think I’ll be using the seed trays again. They are all smaller seeds, and for the space, I think I will do more seed snails. I wouldn’t me making them as deep was what I used for the onions, though. More like a third of that height. I have lots of that packing foam available.
I need to remember, though: do not use painters tape to attach them together to make a longer strip. One of the onion rolls started to split at the tape while I was rolling it back up again. It doesn’t like moisture. I’ll have to see what alternatives we have.
That won’t be needed for another week or so.
For now, I’m just glad I don’t need to sift more of that potting soil for a while!!
I did get messages back from the garage about the truck, but nothing about coming in. I’m not sure the problem is the sensor, after finding some oil on the ground in the garage yesterday. It was a while before I went out to move it today, so that I could check the oil levels, and see if there were any new oil stains under it.
There was. Just a couple of drops.
*sigh*
Oil levels were fine. I’m going to have to take a chance, though, and at least make a trip to the nearest Walmart. We’ve used the last of our canned cat food today, and the dry kibble is starting to get low, too.
It was a nice enough day that, after checking on the truck, I stayed out to clear some of the paths that got filled with drifted snow, after two days of high winds. Happily, the plows have gone by, so the roads will be clear. Things are supposed to keep warming up over the next few days, which is going to be quite a relief.
Of course, that makes me think of gardening!
The peppers and eggplant seeds that are set to pre-germinate aren’t showing any radicals yet, nor to I expect them to, this soon. Next on the list was things like tomatoes and herbs, but after watching the above video, I will just be doing the herbs, first. I sorted seeds I’ll be starting by how many weeks before last frost the packages recommend starting them. In theory, I could start the tomatoes in April.
I just really, really want to start more seeds! 😄
I realized it’s been a while since I updated about the onions. All four snail rolls now have seedlings.
They’re tall enough now that I raised the light a bit today. Should they get big enough to need “potting up”, they can be unrolled, more seed starting mix added, then rolled back up again. I made sure to leave enough excess length of the packing foam to accommodate extra width.
Just a little green growth to sooth the gardening soul, as winter drags on!
Today, I finally got around to starting our onion seeds.
Usually, I start onions by densely sowing them in trays. Onion roots can handle quite a bit of abuse. When it’s time to transplant, I just pull them apart as I go. The problem with that, is, the roots do get pretty tangled together, and there have been times when I’ve even had to use water to wash away the growing medium in order to get individual seedlings out.
This time, I wanted to try something different.
I’ve been seeing the “seed snail” method that got me curious. Basically, seed starting mix it laid out on a strip of something – plastic, cardboard, paper towel, etc. – and rolled up. Seeds are planted at depth at the top, covered with more seed starting mix, and it’s done. When it’s time to transplant, the roll is undone and there is less root disturbance when accessing the plants. If the plants need to be “potted up”, it can be unrolled, more starting mix added, then rolled back up again.
In looking it up more, I see people using this method for pretty much everything, including things with very large seeds that grow pretty big. I’m not so sure the method lives up to the hype for larger things in particular, but something like onions? It seems perfect.
The thing that I was most curious about was, the material used to make the roll. One article I read, which was not positive towards the method, used paper towel. I can’t imagine using something that practically dissolves in water, over time! Others described using heavy paper or cardboard. I don’t really have anything like that, in the size and shape needed. I’ve also found that using paper products tends to wick moisture out of the growing medium, away from the plants, and need more watering. Even with the biodegradable pots, I’ve found the pots themselves need to be kept wet, or they start drawing moisture away from the plants.
One thing mentioned as working well was the thin foam sheets used to wrap breakables for packing.
Did I still have some?
I quick look in a storage bin in the root cellar, and I found I had plenty!
So that’s what I used.
Before I started on that, though, I prepped the last of my seed starting mix from last year. It had quite a lot of pieces of wood and such, which would be more of a problem with a seed snail. I wanted to sift it, but didn’t have a sifter. In the end, I used a metal colander with finer holes all over, and sifted it into a giant mixing bowl.
I got quite a bit of larger material out. I also had some concern that I might not have enough sifted started mix for the project.
I had four seed options. There were our own saved seed, which is a mix of red and yellow bulb onions. Then there were the seeds I got from MI Gardener. Red Long of Tropea, which are very much like the Tropeana Longa onions we’ve successfully grown before. Red Wethersfield, which we tried but did NOT successfully grow before, and Red Beard Bunching onion.
I was at first thinking to do the bunching onions later, but they are 110 days to maturity, while the other two are 100 days to maturity, so I prepped four strips. I taped shorter pieced together for the length, then folded and cut them in half lengthwise. That resulted in two strips of about 31 inches, and two of about 29 inches long, and about 6″ wide.
That sifted seed starting mix was absolutely beautiful to work with! So soft and fluffy!
Each strip got a layer of starting mix about a quarter inch thick, laid out right to the edge of one end and the bottom. The top had about an inch empty, and the other end had about 8″ empty. I had my work surface covered with a repurposed clear garbage bag, which actually made it easier to roll them up. I could lift the plastic up against the base of the snail, to keep starter mix from falling out.
I prepped masking tape ahead of time. Four were labelled. After rolling up the snails, I used a black piece of tape to hold it together near the bottom, before tucking it into a bin. After they were all rolled, I sowed the seeds and added the labelled strips of tape to hold it together near the tops.
In the first picture here, the seeds are sown, more seed starting mix was set on top and every so gently tamped down to get rid of any air gaps. In the next picture, they’ve been topped with vermiculate.
Once topped with vermiculate, they got a very thorough watering with a spray bottle, then more water was added to the bottom of the bin they’re in, so they can be watered through capillary action, too. Last of all, the bin’s lid was laid on top to act as a moisture dome.
This was all done in our basement dungeon. I don’t have any of the grow lights, the heat mat, trays, etc. ready. I won’t need them for quite some time yet. So these went upstairs to the cat free zone (aka: the living room). It’s not particularly warm there, but warm enough. Plus, the window gets full sun only for a few hours in the morning, so we have supplementary light above.
It should be interesting to see how this method works out.
In the past, when densely sowing seeds in trays, I would usually finish off the package. This time, there are seeds left in all three packets – plus there is lots of our saved seed. So there is the possibility of trying again, if this doesn’t work, as long as they get started early enough.
Anyhow. The main thing for now is, the onion seeds are started!
The Re-Farmer 