seedlings

Our 2023 garden: potting up tomatoes is DONE!

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Finally!!!

I was able to pick up more potting soil after helping my mother with errands yesterday, which means that today I got to finish potting up our tomato seedlings.

I actually was able to “pot up” the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes by topping the cups up with soil, first. Then I potted up the last 18 Roma VF tomatoes, which used up my last two plastic bins. I had to move things around, and move the onions right out, to fit everything. The taller seedlings hat to go either to the top of the mini greenhouse frame, or to the shelf, where the onions were. The rest are still short enough to fit in the mini greenhouse frame, though I’ve run out of space in there.

Next was the Spoon tomatoes.

I planted two seeds per pellet, and I made sure to do the ones that had pairs of seedlings first – though one of them had three! For each one, I removed the outer covering on the Jiffy pellets, then separated the seedlings. They’re still quite small, so the cups got filled only about half way.

I noticed the outer covering on the Jiffy Pellets is different this year. It’s more paper like. I remember it being more net-like, before. Those didn’t really break down, and I would find them in the garden while cleaning up at the end of the year. I’m guessing that has sometime to do with the change. With one pair of seedlings, a tomato had actually grown through the outer covering. As I was trying to gently remove it, I ended up breaking the tomato stem clean through! It’s a tomato, though, so I went ahead and planted the tomato top, anyhow. Changes are pretty good it’ll send out new roots and survive.

These are all 35 Spoon tomatoes (I’d mistakenly counted 36, before). I was able to fit 19 onto an oven liner tray, which will allow for bottom watering. The tray the Roma tomatoes had been in, which now had only the spearmint and oregano in it, could fit another dozen. That left only 4 that needed to be double cupped. I’ve run out of both trays and bins.

Those done, I did some more rearranging and removed off the watering can and extra cups, which allowed me to bring the onions back closer to the light. With all those, plus the bin with the Zucca melon and African Drum gourds in it, this surface is now completely full. I don’t even have my work space anymore! The light isn’t as good during the day on here but, early in the morning, it does actually get direct sunlight for a few hours.

The peppers in the large aquarium greenhouse still have new seeds germinating, so I won’t be potting those up for a while. Not that I have the space for it anymore!

I will need to monitor the overnight temperatures in the sun room over the next while. We’re supposed to warm up, but the overnight temperatures are still dipping below freezing. If the sun room can manage to stay at 6C/43F or warmer during the night, I should be able to at least move the onions over. They are about the only thing we’ve started indoors that can handle cooler temperatures. I’d love to be able to move the biggest plants out, which is mostly the gourds and Zucca melon, but they are the most cold sensitive plants we’ve got right now. Daytime temperatures in the sun room have been reaching as high as 20C/68F, which would be great as long as it didn’t drop too far. The times I’ve checked it through the bathroom window at night, I’ve seen the thermometer at around 10C/50F, which would be acceptable, I think. Plus, we’d be closing the doors overnight to keep the yard cats out of the plants, which means it would stay warmer overnight, too.

The cats are not going to be happy, losing their favourite bed on the swing bench, and private dining areas! I’ll be happy to not have skunks and racoons going in there anymore!

All in good time, though. It’s still only April, and a lot of these can’t get transplanted until the middle of June!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: herbs are sprouting!

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I planted chamomile and the second variety of thyme just a few days ago.

Two mornings later, when turning the aquarium lights, I spotted sprouting chamomile! By the afternoon, some thyme was coming up, too!

They were so tiny, though, I didn’t even try to get a picture until this morning.

They are still quite miniscule, but I can see more thyme coming up, while every single peat pellet has chamomile coming up.

I’ve never seen anything germinate this quickly! Meanwhile, I still have just a single oregano (I’m thinking of reseeding those) and just a few spearmint, that were started near the beginning of the month, and they are still barely any bigger than the chamomile sprouts are now! It seems the peat pellet trays are doing much better than using seed starter mix in toilet paper tube pots.

This afternoon, I will be heading out to help my mother with grocery shopping. Depending on the timing of things, I hope to pick up some more potting soil before coming home, so I can finish potting up the tomatoes.

I’m still just blown away by how quickly these germinated!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: potting up Indigo Blue, and progress

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: backordered seeds in, and seedlings update

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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.

https://www.veseys.com/ca/redswanbean.html

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!

Which is a good problem to have. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: so many sprouts!

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: new sproots!

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Our newest seedlings are starting to show!

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.

So many things we’d like to grow!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: starting peppers and Spoon tomatoes

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Here is our next batch of seed starts!

The rest of the peppers got done today, along with the Spoon tomatoes. That bowl has all the Spoon tomato seeds left from last year, as well as the new seeds I got this year.

The tray has 6 long rows, and I considered also planting the remaining Purple Beauty pepper seeds from last year, but there weren’t enough seeds to fill a row, so I decided against it. There were not a lot of pepper seeds for any of the other varieties, but with just one seed per pellet, I still had some left over.

With the Spoon tomatoes, I used the last two rows, planting two seeds in each, and still had some seeds left over. (A wooden chopstick is really great for picking up individual seeds and planting them!) It’s potentially a lot more of these tomatoes than I was intending to plant of this variety, but they did go over very well the last time we planted them. If the germination rate is high and we have a lot of extras, I’m sure I can find someone who would like some transplants. 😉

As for the peppers, we’re not after a lot of each type, so if the germination rate is low, as long as we have a few plants of each to try, I’m good. I want to have an idea of which ones do well here, and which ones my family enjoys eating, and that will decide what we will grow again in the future.

After this photo was taken, I put the dome over this tray, and then switched out the tray on the warming mat in the aquarium greenhouse. I had thought I might be able to leave this tray, with the dome, by the window, but when I touched the Jiffy pellets, they were cold! These are heat loving plants, so onto the warming tray then went.

This is the tray that got switched out. The Crespo squash on the right will be potted up once the true leaves are more fully developed. We still have just the two Caveman’s Club gourds in the middle; I’m considering soaking a couple more seeds to add to the one pot where nothing germinated, just to have more transplants. I don’t expect everything that gets transplanted to survive, so having more just increases our chances of having at least one plant survive.

The Black Beauty tomatoes (middle) and the Indigo Blue Chocolate (left) are doing quite well. The Little Finger Eggplant (far left) are not. Of the few seeds that germinated, only two are growing, and one… I’m not quite sure if it’s going to make it. So I reseeded the pots. Hopefully, we’ll have a few more to transplant by June.

Oh, it looks like I’ll be heading out soon. A very excited daughter just came in to let me know her glasses ordered from Zinni have arrived. She has been absolutely miserable without glasses for so many weeks. I just have to wait for the post office to reopen for the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to seeing how these are for quality.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: newest sprouts!

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I love it when seedlings suddenly burst out of the ground and grow so fast, things are different every time I check on them!

When I checked on them yesterday, I could just see one Crespo squash starting to shoulder its way through the soil. Near the end of the day, I could see two emerging and one more just visible. I also spotted one eggplant peaking through. By the time I shut down the lights for the night, the eggplant was up, with signs of more starting to emerge, plus signs of one Caveman’s club gourd.

This morning, two of the Crespo squash are fully up, with the third one almost there – and the soil in the other pot looks like something might be breaking through soon, too. There are still more tomatoes emerging, and more eggplant peeking through. Still just one Caveman’s club gourd visible, so far.

As for the older seedlings, it looks like all the ones that got potted up have survived, though one drum gourd that did not need potting up doesn’t look like it’s growing. There had been two in that pot and one died. I was hoping the second one would make it. We shall see. The other two that were thinned by division are growing, and the third pot was reseeded, so I hope there will be more to transplant once the garden is ready. The more there are to transplant, the better the chances that at least one will reach maturity!

I’m happy to see so many seedlings emerging now. Soon, these will be moved off the heat mat to make room for the next batch of seed starts.

So far, things are looking good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: potting up, and trying again

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Today, I potted up most of our seedlings, among other things.

For the larger seedlings, I thinned by dividing, so the zucca melon and a couple of drum gourds are now in their own larger pots. The pots where nothing germinated now have new seeds in them, including the luffa on the side.

The four cells of peppers are now in 7 red solo cups. The thyme and lemongrass did not get thinned, just transplanted into deeper biodegradable pots.

I also got the strawberry kit done, and that little tray is in the aquarium greenhouse with the other seed starts. Every time I look at in there, the Black Beauty seedlings are bigger, and I can spot more of them breaking through the soil. They are practically exploding in growth! I even spotted a couple of Indigo Blue tomatoes breaking through, too!

In about a week, we’ll need to start the next batch of seeds, which will include all the remaining short season peppers and the paste tomatoes. I’m quite glad we have the living room cat proofed, so we can shift things around more freely. Yesterday, my daughter was using the room and Fenrir teleported in, as she tends to do. My daughter thought it might be okay, since she was in there to supervise. She turned her head for perhaps 30 seconds, and suddenly Fenrir had a mouth full of onion greens!

Onions are toxic to cats.

My daughter was able to catch her and get the greens before she actually ate them. Thankfully, there is no apparent damage to the onion seedlings!

So much for even one cat being allowed in, with supervision!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: spring is… here?

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Yesterday was the first day of spring. Check out our spring garden!

😄😄😄

It’s going to be a while before we can start building the trellis tunnels (we will be starting closer to the high raised bed, and I hope to eventually have two or three, though maybe not this year), never mind planting anything!

BUT!!!

We do have other signs of spring.

When I shut the lights off for the night, I found two Black Beauty tomatoes had emerged! There had been no sign of them when I turned the lights on in the morning. I could just make out the “elbow” of a third one, and this morning I can see there is a second “elbow” emerging. These are in the cell just below the one with the visible sprouts.

Today, I plan to pot up some of the transplants, and try to start seeds for some losses. We are down to one luffa, two pots of zucca melon still have had no germination, along with one pot of drum gourds, so I’ll see if I can get new ones started, though I won’t bother putting them in the aquarium greenhouse. Their current location above a heat vent should be warm enough. I did remove the plastic cover on the mini greenhouse, as I think the lack of air circulation may be contributing to the losses, and even some of the bigger seedlings have started to look unhealthy.

I stopped at a grocery store to pick up some milk for my mother, and ended up picking up a seed kit. One of the things I wanted to do later on was get strawberry transplants – quite a few of them, depending on the budget – and plant them as a living ground cover around the silver buffalo berry. Last year, the transplants cost about $3 or $4 each. The kit was only $4. So I’m going to try growing strawberries from seed, which will hopefully give me more to transplant than I would be able to afford if buying transplants. And if they fail, it’s not an expensive fail. So that is something else I plan to work on today.

Oh, and I’d better call the plumber about our bathtub before I forget again! After that, I’ll know if I have to be making a trip to get a tub surround and the replacement taps I want.

We’ll see how that works out!

The Re-Farmer