starting seeds

Our 2021 garden seedling shuffle, monthly shop, and man that’s bright!

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Wow. It’s coming up on 10pm as I start this, and this is the first time I’ve had to sit down for most of the day!

Today was our monthly shop, so after doing my rounds, my younger daughter and I headed out to the city. We were going to do our usual shop when I remembered I wanted to pick up some wood pellets to try as a litter replacement, so we added a stop at Canadian Tire, first.

Canadian Tire is a dangerous place for me to be, on payday! ;-)

While we were there, I got my daughter to choose a paint colour so we can finally paint the kibble house. We’ll be able to paint the cat house, too. This is the colour she chose.

She actually chose two colours, then asked me which one I preferred, and I chose the darker one. “Citrusy”, I think it’s called. The girls have declared we don’t have enough colour around the farm, and they would like to change that.

It’s going to be colourful, all right! :-D The kibble house is going to be really bright!

One of the other things we picked up was a new axe. We’ve found a whole collection of them, mostly in the old basement, but the girls have examined every one, and they’re all in terrible shape. I suppose we could fix them, but we’d much rather have something new and higher quality. After we paid for our stuff and were heading for the van, my daughter suddenly asked, “where’s the axe?”

Yup. We’d forgotten it at the cash desk!

So off my daughter went with the receipt to get it. It was so hilarious to see her coming out again, long flowing hair, skirt swirling in the wind, and an axe over her shoulder. A woman happened to be getting out of her vehicle beside us and called out, “walk proud, and carry a big axe!” Too funny!

With our rather meager success with onion seeds, when I saw some onion sets at Canadian Tire, I did pick some up.

When we got home and I quickly checked my email, I found a shipping notification from Vesey’s. The onion sets we ordered from them have shipped, with an expected arrival of May 7. Those are a red variety, so between the two, we’ll have a couple hundred onion sets to plant, on top of the surviving seedlings. We shall see how they compare! I’d rather grow onions from seeds, if only because there are so many more choices in varieties, but I’m not too fussy about it! We use a lot of onions, so I’ll take whatever will grow.

After all the shopping was put way and we had supper, the girls and I then worked on planting the squash seeds. That required taking everything out of the big tank to make room for the new starts, so the tomatoes, luffa and the last onion seeds I started have all been moved to the sun room.

All of the onions have been moved to the new shelf we got for our transplants.

This photo was taken somewhere around 9pm. I love how bright it still is outside! It was an overcast and rainy day today, so not a lot of light, but the sun room was still quite warm.

Not warm enough for the new seedlings, though. I had to get creative.

I rigged up the light we’ve been using to keep the small tank warm, so it hangs from the support bar holding the top points of the mini greenhouse in place. It has a full spectrum bulb in it, so they’ll get both good light and warmth from above, as well has warmth from below, where the ceramic heater bulb is set up. We still need to use that at night.

The small tank now has all the remaining gourds that have not sprouted yet. Without the light fixture that was helping to keep the tank warm, I added a couple of bottles filled with hot water help maintain the temperature.

We changed the level of the base in the big tank, so the cups would be closer to the lights. One of the fixtures does give off warmth, but the other does not, so I added bottles of hot water to this tank, too.

This tank now has the one cup with the Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and one cup with a single tomato seedling in it that isn’t doing well, but we just can’t bring ourselves to get rid of. Everything else is summer and winter squash. We planted fewer of the winter squash, pumpkin and zucchini, and lots of the melons and pattypan squash.

We are really looking forward to lots of summer squash in particular! The pattypans are our favourite vegetable, and we really miss being able to pick a bunch of summer squash every morning, for that day’s meals. :-)

We now have a couple of weeks or so before we start the last of our seeds; the Montana Morado corn, cucamelons, and half of our sunflowers. The corn will be in toilet paper tubes, so they’ll be in their own bin to keep the tubes supported. By then, we should be able to use the sun room exclusively, instead of the aquarium greenhouses. The gourds might even have germinated by then! ;-)

The next few days are going to be odd ones. Our days are going to warm up again, but check out those expected lows…

Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a fairly decent 7C/45F, but then drop to -4C/25F with flurries overnight! Then, two days later, we’re supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F, only to drop to 4C/39F overnight. Then Sunday’s overnight low is back below freezing again! At least the long range forecast shows no lows below freezing after that, but… well, we do have a frost date of June 2, so there’s a good chance will dip below freezing a few times more. I just wish it wouldn’t lurch back and forth like that! Still, those daytime temperatures will give us plenty of opportunity to get garden beds prepped, and the early planting started. We have lots of work to do outside, and will need to take advantage of every good day we get!

It’s going to be fun! :-D

The Re-Farmer

New baby sprrrooots, and soil testing status

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We have gourd sprooots!!

Yesterday afternoon, I spotted these.

These are the Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and they are the first of the gourds to sprout!

This is how they looked this morning! So awesome, to see how much they grew in less than 24 hours!

I’m hoping this means we’ll start seeing some of the other gourds sprouting soon, too. :-)

I also checked on the soil sample that was left overnight to settle.

Hmm.

It looks completely unchanged!

The instructions said that soil heavy with clay could take 24 hours to settle, but… I don’t think that’s clay. I think it may actually be organic material.

With how long this is taking, I think I’ll find another jar and test the next soil sample while this one continues to sit.

But not right away.

My older daughter got a call back from the tax preparer. They can’t log into her file at Canada Revenue. Like with her sister, it’s telling them there’s something wrong with her name. We have no idea what that could be. We’re going to have to call up Canada Revenue again. I’ve found a directory, and the numbers all have wait times listed. The number we need to call has a wait time of just over 2 hours.

So we’ll be taking turns monitoring the phone while on hold.

Again.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: luffa, Crespo squash, decisions made, and we have sproooooots!!!

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My daughters and I regularly check the areas we planted things in the fall. Especially where we planted so many corms and bulbs.

For those new to this blog (welcome! I’m very happy you’re here!), last fall we planted 200 grape hyacinths in one area (day one, day two). In another, we planted about 100 snow crocuses. My daughters also planted some Iris, Bulls Eye Tulip, plus a variety pack of other tulips, in other areas. We also planted three varieties of hardneck garlic. (all links will open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place. :-) )

Today, we actually found sprouts!!!

This is a snow crocus. We found one other sprout a few feet away, too. We were so excited!!!

There’s still no sign of anything else, but it’s the crocuses that are supposed to be the earliest to emerge, so this is pretty awesome! We probably won’t see any of the others for some weeks, yet.

We also found…

… a garlic emerging through the mulch!

It wasn’t until I uploaded the photo and was resizing it that I realized there was a second one in the back, the tip just barely visible! I had been checking the garlic beds every now and then, since we took the plastic off, pulling the mulch back to see if there were any sprouts. I had done that earlier, but in a different spot and completely missed the bit of green poking through! Even when my daughter pointed it out, it took a while for me to see it.

These ones are Purple Stripe. After finding them, I checked in the Porcelain Music bed, pulling back the mulch, and I did find a sprout there, too. I put the mulch back. The overnight temperatures are still too cold to take the mulch off.

We are really, really excited to see these!! We have sprooooooots!

*doing the happy dance*

Meanwhile…

After putting some seeds to soak for 24 hours, we planted some Crespo squash seeds.

We planted only 2 seeds in each of 3 double cups. We’ll see how many germinate. They went into the small aquarium greenhouse, along with the more recently planted gourds (still no seedlings sprouting there, yet), and the light fixture that’s there to keep the tank warm.

I keep catching Saffron lying on the screen cover, directly over the light! The little bugger has discovered it’s even warmer than sitting on the light fixtures of the big tank. At least she’s tiny and light!

As you can see in this image from Baker Creek, Crespo squash can get quite large! The only information I can find about these is from the Baker Creek site, and it’s new for them, so there isn’t very much information, and there are no reviews at all. There isn’t even a “days to maturity” available. The package just says to harvest when the skin is very hard. ??

These are from Peru and Bolivia, which do have areas that are the equivalent of our Zone 3 climate, but I have no idea if these are from any of them. Probably not. :-D

Still, I couldn’t resist these amazing looking edibles!! It would be really something, if we could grow these to full maturity.

The luffa have joined the tomatoes and onions in the big aquarium greenhouse. They are big enough now that I’m not as concerned about keeping them extra warm.

I really hope these work out!

Thinking ahead, while the girls and I were walking around, we went by the other area we are considering to put our permanent garden beds and talked about it.

We have decided that this will be it. Our future permanent, accessible raised bed garden.

One of the hesitations about this spot is that it’s always been a high traffic area – that’s why it’s so flat that I’ve been able to mow it! There is a gate to the old hay yard next to the shack by the barn. On the other side of the shack is the ramp that was used to load cattle onto trucks. The gate, however, has had other wire placed across it and it can no longer be opened, and even if that old cattle ramp wasn’t rotting and falling apart, we don’t plan to have cattle. At least not so many that we’d be sending them off to auction. We still drive through parts of it, to access the garage, the barn, etc., but that still leaves a huge area that no one drives through anymore.

In our shorter term plans, we were talking about putting a temporary fence up in the old hay yard, where the remains of another fence still sits.

It’s marked in black in the above photos. This would allow us to remove part of the main fence (marked in orange) and still keep the renter’s cows from getting through.

But if we’re going to put permanent raised beds by the old hay yard, we will want to plant a wind break even sooner, and that was going to be along a permanent fence.

Which would be about where the black lines are in these photos.

If we do that, we can get rid of a lot more of the fence around the old hay yard, much of which is in terrible shape, anyhow. That, in turn, will open up more of the hay yard area to other options. Right now, with that gate blocked off, the only way we can get into the old hay yard that doesn’t involve clambering over a wire fence is either through the barn, or through the electric wire fence at the gate by the barn, then go around the back of the barn, and through the collapsed rails of an old corral.

We will have to do some work on the fence around the outer yard, though, to fill in any areas the renter’s cows can get through, if his electric fence fails again. It wasn’t an issue before, because we could close up the gates to the inner yard, but if we have a garden out there, the cows would make shorter work of it than the deer!

The advantages of this area compared to the others – mostly that it’s already nice and flat – also means that we will probably be able to build the permanent garden beds here sooner than in any of the other locations.

On top of everything else in favour of this area, it’s visible in live feed from the garage security camera. We will be able to see if there are any deer getting into the garden.

Well. Not when we’re asleep, of course, but it’s a start! :-D

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: just a little trim, and strong babies!

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Thanks to some feedback from Kensho Homestead, I decided to go ahead and trim our bulb onion seedlings this morning.

Though our temperatures dipped below freezing lat night, the sun room remained nice and warm. I didn’t even bother putting the plastic cover over the mini greenhouse to keep more of the heat from the ceramic heater bulb in.

Now that they’re trimmed, you can really see the difference between those in the Jiffy pellets, and hose in the K-cups. They’re both peat, so the growing medium is not the reason.

This tray was designed for the pellets, and to water from below. The bottom of the tray has channels for the water, with a felted mat on top, then a molded tray that holds the pellets, while also keeping the bottoms in contact with the mat below. The K-cups have drainage holes, but they don’t seem to have enough contact at the bottom for watering from below to work well, and they dry out much faster. At first, the ones in the K-cups were doing better, but now it’s the ones in the Jiffy pellets that are noticeably stronger and healthier.

I did water them after this photo was taken, making sure to get the K-cups thoroughly wet. I’m trying to think if I have something I can transfer the K-cups to that will let me water them from blow. I think it’ll be the only way to keep them well watered, without over watering the rest.

Lesson learned: don’t mix two very different starter “pots” in the same tray. I used the K-cups because I only had enough Jiffy pellets to fill half the tray. I should have just used half the tray with the Jiffy pellets, and found something else to put the K-cups in. The K-cups do work well – as long as they can be adequately watered.

Meanwhile…

The luffa are coming in strong and healthy, and doing very well!

Perhaps too well!

I used these pots, so they can be buried directly into the ground when it’s time to transplant them, with no root disruption. Which means we’re going to have to reduce each pot to just one, strongest plant. It seems like such a waste to discard strong seedlings, but if we separate them out to plant more of them, that will create the root disruption we’re trying to avoid!

Three plants should be more than enough for our needs. Especially since we don’t even know if they’ll get the time they need to reach full maturity before first frost in September.

I bet they’d do great if we could find a way to grow them in pots in the sun room! LOL Pretty sure they’d overgrow that corner rather quickly, though. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: all gourds now started

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Oh, my goodness, but our internet connection has been bad tonight! It’s taken me forever to finally be able to load the editor to start this post! It’s not done giving me grief yet, either!

Still, I wanted to get this posted before calling it a day, since I’m basically using this blog as a journal that I can reference later on, if I need to.

The last 4 varieties of gourds have been started!

The luffa are the three pots together on the right. The one sprout at the top got visibly bigger, just today! You can see a second one coming up at the bottom. The pot inside the red solo cup is the Tennessee Dancing gourd. On the left are the Ozark Nest Egg, Thai Edible and Birdhouse varieties. The light fixture inside the tank is, as before, just there for its warmth.

Next on the list to start indoors are the summer and winter squash.

Must…

resist…

starting too…

early!!!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: progress and next batch started

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While tending the seedlings last night, I finally remembered to take one of the tomato pots out, so I could actually get a picture.

These are the Spoon tomatoes (from Baker Creek). I planted three seeds in each of four cups, and so far there is one that has not shown any growth at all, while all the seeds have sprouted in the others, for a 75% germination rate – though it’s still possible something might show up in the fourth cup. The Mosaic Medley seeds (a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes from Veseys) were also planted with three seeds in each cup. Three of them all sprouted at close to the same time as the Spoon tomatoes, and all look pretty much identical in size and health. In the last cup, two finally did sprout, though they are looking much weaker than any of the others.

I would be happy with only 3 plants from each seed pack, since only half of us actually like tomatoes. We’ll see how they look when it’s time to transplant. In the future, we plan to grow varieties suitable for making tomato paste or maybe for drying, but not so much for fresh eating or even canning. A lot of gardeners in groups or channels I follow get so excited about growing massive amounts of tomatoes. I don’t see us ever going that far with tomatoes! We hardly even use them as an ingredient.

Last night, we broke out the rest of the gourd seeds.

We had seven of the Jiffy pots left, and four types of gourds. We decided we will do the Tennessee Dancing Gourd in just one cup (each cup will get three seeds). Someone on the Baker Creek website had left a review stating that their one plant had at least 250 tiny gourds on it. If they’re that prolific, I think we’re good with fewer plants! :-D

We’ll be planting two cups of three seeds of the other varieties. I had to do some searches to find the maturity information for them, as there’s nothing on the seed packets (they’re all from Baker Creek). It’s different with the Thai Bottle Gourd, as they are meant to be eaten like zucchini, while very young, though some will be left to fully mature. I’m sure the other varieties could be eaten while very young, too, but those are all intended to be dried out and used for crafting purposes.

The peat was saturated with water already, and added to the Jiffy pots at the same time as we set the seeds to soak, so the pots themselves would absorb excess water. After finding how much the cardboard egg cartons sucked the moisture out of the growing medium with our bunching onions and shallots, we don’t want any chance of that repeating, and I want to make sure these pots are in trays or containers to allow watering from below. We’ll be wanting to keep those pots damp.

So these will be planted later today. Until then, they are inside an under-bed storage container with a lid, to protect them from cats.

Meanwhile…

… when the girls went out for a walk last night, they managed to extricate this old wooden ladder from where it was sitting by the storage shed. It was a bit difficult to get to, and it’s been there for so long, I was sure it would fall apart if we tried to move it. It turns out to be surprisingly not-rotten!

It’s interesting to see how each step is supported by steel wire!

The girls are thinking it could be used as a trellis. I’d like to find some way to preserve it, if we can, so it doesn’t degrade too much. At the very least, find a way to protect where it will be coming in contact with soil. I’m sure the only reason this thing didn’t rot away is because it was sitting on top of other things, well above the ground.

I think the girls are pretty excited about gardening this year. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: first luffa, and sun room is ready

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It was very exciting last night! We spotted our very first luffa seedling!

I am not surprised that it is closest to the light we’ve got in there for its heat!

There was just one this morning, but when I turned the tray so the others would get a bit more direct warmth, just before starting this post, I found a second one, in a different pot, had broken ground!

Tomorrow, I will start planting other gourd seeds.

Today, a daughter and I headed into the city for our monthly shop (except some things we needed were out of stock, so we’re going to have to make another trip). I made sure to pick up a shelf for the sun room. It’s time to transfer the tray of bulb onions to the sun room, to make room for more seed starts in the aquarium greenhouses. The tomatoes and the new batch of bunching onions to replace the ones that failed will stay in the aquarium a bit longer.

When we got home, we quickly unloaded the van, then I headed out again to the post office, where I could also pick up more deer feed and bird seed. My new monitor arrived in the mail, and I’m using it now. What a difference! Unfortunately, there are still some pages that do the weird colour thing that is why the monitor was replaced. It’s better, but not gone. Which means the monitor was only part of the problem.

I must say, though, I’m glad to have it. It’s quite a bit bigger than my old one! Meanwhile, my husband tested my old monitor, and it worked just fine while hooked up to his computer. My younger daughter has been wanting to have a second monitor for a while, so she’ll be able to use it.

Which all means it was a while before I could set up a corner of the sun room in preparation for our seedlings.

While Ginger was in isolation in here, we used the frame of the mini-greenhouse to hold the terrarium heater bulb above the bed we set up for him, since it still got pretty chilly in the sun room overnight. I didn’t realize until I put the plastic cover back on that the cats had torn it at the back. It will still work, though.

Some seed trays will be moved here after being started under the lights of the aquarium greenhouses, but later in the season, less delicate things can be started in the sun room. This room gets long hours of sunlight, so while I will probably have to rotate trays, I shouldn’t need to add supplementary light. The lights we have are designed to fit over fish tanks. I might be able to rig them up, if necessary, but it would hardly be ideal.

As for temperatures, the thermometer in the sun room has been reaching as high as 30C/86F during the day. Granted, the thermometer is hanging at the top of a pair of windows, so it would be hotter there than head height, but it’s still quite roasty toasty in there. If for some reason we feel the overnight temperatures would be a bit too low for the seedlings, we do have the ability to warm things up at least a little bit.

So the luffas are started already, which I now know should have been started back in January (we’ll see how those turn out!), which leaves the remaining gourds to start. I know they’re supposed to be started “late April”, but gourds have such long growing seasons, and our frost dates can be so early, I’m going to take the chance and start them a bit early.

Starting the summer and winter squash should be interesting. With the gourds, we’ll be planting just a few seeds of each, but with the squash, we intend to plant most, if not all, the seeds in their packages. We have two packages of the patty pan squash, which we enjoyed so much last year, and intend to plant all the seeds! :-D

If all goes well, we’re going to have squash coming out of our ears. ;-)

By late May, if all goes well, we’ll have our garden soil in and will be able to direct sow those things that can be planted before our last frost date.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how the gardening goes this year! Right now, as we start things indoors, we’re also praying for some rain! Fire bans are already in effect (and likely were in effect before the grass fire that started near our place last week), and not a lot of farms were able to do controlled burns.

We are such a tinder box right now!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: starting luffa

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It’s cold with blowing snow outside. What better time to prepare for this year’s garden!

I had been doing some research on how to grow luffa for some time, but it was just a few days ago that I found someone who had managed to grow luffa in zone 3.

After reading this post, written by someone in Saskatchewan, I certainly wished I’d found it earlier.

MUCH earlier!

Realistically, the chances of my being able to successfully grow luffa here are very, very low. They have a 150-200 day maturity range. All the resources I’d been looking at suggested starting the seeds indoors 4-6 weeks before last frost date, but from this person’s experience, I should have started them in January! Ah, well. I’m going to try them, anyhow!

These required some advance preparations.

First, I set a few seeds to soak for 24 hours. Then tucked the bowl into a container I could seal, to protect them from cats. Like Susan, whom you can see at the bottom of the photo!

I was going to use the Jiffy pots in the red solo cups to collect drainage, but I found that three pots fit into a take-out container I’d saved. This will make watering from the bottom easier. I had some pre-soaked peat and filled the pots well in advance, so that the pots themselves would absorb some of the moisture.

I also prepared the small fish tank-greenhouse. I raised the level closer to the light, and added the light with the incandescent bulb to warm it up, since I don’t have a heat mat. The light has a full spectrum bulb in it, so it will be useful for the seedlings later, on, too, but for now, it’s the warmth that’s needed.

These are the seeds after soaking for 24 hours.

I was really surprised when I saw them, as every resources I’ve looked up showed black seeds!

I know there are different varieties, though, so if anyone knows anything about luffa aegyptiaca, please do leave a comment!!

I planted three seeds into each pot, pushing them into the peat to the required depth with a drinking straw. I am hoping to have 3 good transplants, but honestly, I’d be happy if I get just one!

Then, it was into their little greenhouse.

I think they need to be raised closer to the lights above!

The little light is staying in the tank for the warmth.

Yet another item repurposed from when we had fish; I’m keeping the aquarium thermometer in the tank, too. It’s reading about 24C/75F, which is impressive, considering the top is now just covered with a screen. The rigid insulation and aluminum foil definitely helps. We shall see how things go!

The other gourd seeds will be started after Easter, though I’m tempted to just go ahead and start them now. Which I might still do! ;-)

On a completely different note, I have come to the realization that a problem I thought was with our crappy internet connection is actually my monitor giving up the ghost. Images not loading is a common problem, but I was having them only partially load, and the parts that didn’t finish loading tended to be bright, neon green. Or entire backgrounds of web pages would have blocks of this eye-blinding green. Then text started not loading completely, though I could still read it if I highlighted it, or it would sometimes work if I reloaded the page. When I started having this happen, or letters of text randomly showing as magenta or that green instead of the default colour, even when I wasn’t online, I figured I couldn’t blame shoddy internet anymore! My husband has already ordered me a new ergonomic keyboard (it’s a good thing I can touch type, because the letters are worn off most of the keyboard) that should have arrived weeks ago. Now he’s gone and bought me a monitor already! Now those are some sweet anniversary gifts. :-D

Hopefully, this monitor will last long enough for the new one to come in! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden; cutting our losses, and planning plots

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Well, it was time to throw in the towel on some of our seed starts.

The bunching onions in the small fish tank never recovered from the cats being able to get at them, there were mold issues, and watering problems. At least with those, we still had seeds left and could start more.

The shallots (in the background, out of focus) are another loss.

This is one of the potential problems of using whatever was on hand. We started them in the cardboard egg cartons, but had no way to put a tray of any kind under them, where we could water them from below. Even though we did take them out and give them a thorough watering from below, it wasn’t enough. I regularly sprayed them with water, trying to get the cartons themselves wetter, but again, it wasn’t enough. The shallots are a complete loss, and I have no more seeds to try again. So we’ll be down from four types of onions to three. :-( Unless I find and buy sets later on.

In the future, I would not use the cardboard egg cartons to start seeds in again, unless I were able to keep them in a tray of some kind, and keep the cardboard wet all the time. In spite or watering them every evening, when I pulled them out of their makeshift greenhouses this morning, they were pretty much bone dry. So, they went into the compost heap this morning. :-(

The little tank is now empty, and the tomatoes and bunching onions have been shifted around in the big tank. We are seeing more and more seedlings pop up, though there are still a couple of cups that have no seedlings at all. We’re not after a lot of tomato plants, but I am hoping for more of the Red Baron onion seeds to germinate. At least the bulb onions seem to be doing all right. From what I’ve read, I should be trimming them a few inches, about now.

Yesterday, I picked up some Jiffy pots. I’ve been looking things up about growing luffas, which have a very long growing season to reach that sponge stage I’m after. I’ve decided I will start a few seeds of those in the next few days, and set them up in the little tank. With the screen I found in one of the sheds as a “lid”, we’ve solved the cat problem, so I can raise the level closer to the light, too. From what I’ve been reading/watching, luffa doesn’t like to be transplanted (more so than other gourd types), so using pots which can be buried should help reduce transplant stress. With the size the pots are, I should be able to still double cup them with the red solo cups, which would allow me to water them from below.

So that’s a goal for the next few days, and I will also be preparing to start the other seeds that need to be starting in April.

Meanwhile, as I do my morning rounds, I’ve been studying the different areas we intend to garden in this year.

This strip has never had a garden in it. You can see where the ground starts to get rough on the left, where the old garden started. That rough part is from the crappy plow job that was done before we moved here.

This stretch will have alternating blocks of three varieties of Peaches ‘n Cream corn and two varieties of sunflowers.

In years where we had more snow, where I’m standing to take this picture had a large puddle of water from melted snow. This year, there is only that whitish patch you can see on the left foreground. That’s ice from the small amount of water accumulated this spring. This is something to keep in mind when we are planting food trees here, as we don’t want saplings being drowned out in the spring. So part of our goal when growing here is leveling things out a bit more.

The further out we go, however, the drier it gets. By the time we reach the corner, past the low hanging spruce branches I will have to prune away, it’s very dry. Weeds and grass barely grow there. Which means that, when we have corn growing there, we are going to have to find ways to keep them well watered. This entire area is going to be a challenge to water, simply because it’s so far from the house.

This time of the morning is the only time this area is in shade. It gets full sun for most of the day, and also gets incredibly hot. To the left of where the corn and sunflowers will be planted is where we will be having beds of melons and gourds. They’ll get the heat they need (especially if we have summer like last year!). We just have to make sure they get the water they’ll need. The winter squash will also be more on this side, while the summer squash will be planted closer to the house, where they will be closer for continual harvesting over the summer.

We’re also going to have to work on keeping the deer out. There are a number of options we can try. If we make use of several of them together, it should work out.

The fence line the trees on the right are hiding is pretty much toast. New posts had been put in along the spruce grove, which I’m guessing my late brother did, but he never got to finish the job. The remaining stretch of fence has rotting fence posts, some of which are held up by nothing but the barbed wire. My late brother had a soil auger attachment for the Bobcat, and we still have the post pounder he built, but the Bobcat and its accessories are with our vandal now, and the post pounder had been sitting, exposed to the elements and covered in junk, for so many years, there’s lichen growing on the belts. So if we’re going to be putting in new fence posts, we’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way. I’ve found a couple of post hole diggers that we can try out. One of them is a very different design, and I’m curious as to how it would be used.

Meanwhile, that entire strip along the West fence line needs to be cleaned up. I might have to take the remains of the fence out entirely. The North fence line, which runs behind the lilac hedge, is in even worse shape, but at least the lilacs are there to provide some privacy and a bit of security. Once the strip along the West fence line is cleared out, it’ll be pretty open.

It would be nice to not need a fence there at all.

Since these fences mark the property lines at the roads, these are areas where we can consider putting in something very permanent for fencing. Something along the lines of a hedgerow, perhaps, or a “palisade” type of wall that would give both privacy, and keep the deer out! The corner at the far end is one of the places they regularly jump the fence (well… what’s left of the fence…). The road on the North side is very busy (as such things are in this area), and in the summer, a LOT of dust gets kicked up. On a windless day, it just hangs in the air like a fog, slowly drifting across the property, for a surprisingly long time. The lilac hedge helps keep that out of the garden area quite a bit, so that’s another thing to keep in mind as we work on the area. Dust control!

When it comes to gardening in this area, it’s all temporary. If things go well, it’ll just be for one year, and then next year, we’ll be able to start planting food trees here, while permanent garden beds get placed to the south of the house. The area we intend for permanent beds is very rough, though. It might be easiest to clear it as much as we can, then get someone in to plow and smooth it out as much as possible. We’ll be building accessible raised beds there, so it’s the leveling that’s more important to our needs. It would be good if we could get the old farm equipment moved, and the collapsing building dismantled and cleared away, but that might be just too much for this year!

We’ve got a lot of work to get done! Last year, with first the heavy rains, then the excessive heat, we didn’t get anywhere near as much done as I wanted. Hopefully, this summer will be not be as extreme.

So much of what we want to do depends on the weather!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: starting tomatoes, and onion follow up

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Yes! We managed to resist temptation, and not start the tomatoes too early. :-D

After a fair bit of research, plus an evaluation of our cat-safe spaces, I chose to start our tomatoes using the “double cup” method.

I’d already picked up a large package of the red beer cups, and those were the types recommended. The first thing to do was to make drainage holes in half the cups we’d be using.

These will later be used to start our squash and gourds, so I didn’t mind putting drainage holes in extra cups. I’ve got a bag of 250, so we’ll be putting holes in at least 125! :-D

These are the seeds from one packet of Spoon tomatoes from Baker Creek. They are so tiny!!! And we didn’t even end up using them all!

Now, we’ve considered quite a few options for starting our seeds, including peat or similar pots, Jiffy pellets, starting trays of various types, and even looking at the pots of various sizes we found while cleaning out the basements. I settled on these cups for a few reasons. They are the size I want, you can get a LOT of them for a very low price, and I expect to be able to reuse them for many years. In some of the gardening videos I’ve watched, there are people who have been reusing these cups for as long as 10 years.

If I had the budget, I would prefer to use coir pots. I like the idea of those, or peat pots, as they can be put right into the soil with the transplants to break down, resulting in far less root disruption. The problem is, for the sheer volume of these that we would need, they’re just completely out of budget. Peat pots are fairly easy to find, but coir or any other biodegradable pots are things we’d have to seek out, and are far more expensive. :-/

The double cup method has added benefits. I can water them from below, using the outer cup, and not have to have them sitting in trays. That makes them more flexible for our spaces. Particularly since we’re using fish tanks as makeshift greenhouses. Using double cups means we can fit them inside the big tank, along with the trays of bulb unions and shallots.

Another benefit to using these cups for starting tomatoes is that we won’t need to “pot up” the tomatoes.

We filled the cups only half way with peat. The loose peat we’re using takes a long time to moisten, so I made sure to set some up in a container with water to saturate overnight, first.

As a bonus, the double cups hold the labels in place very well!

Once the seedlings reach a size large enough that we would be potting them up, we can just add more of the peat around the stems. No disruption of the main root, and the “hairs” on the stems will become new roots, making them hardier for when they finally get transplanted outside.

We planted 4 seeds in each cup. We shall see how many germinate, and how many make it to the transplant stage! The goal is for a total of 8 plants, but if we have extra… well, we’ll figure it out when the time comes. With the Mosaic Medley, it is a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes, so we will hopefully have several different varieties from the seeds that were planted, but I really don’t know how we’ll be able to tell until they start fruiting, really. There are plenty of seeds left in that packet, too.

Here they are, all in a row along the front of the big tank. Once they start sprouting, if it seems they aren’t getting enough light, we can place the extra aquarium light over the tank above them.

At which point, I call your attention to the onions, behind them.

The bulb onions (Norstar) in the self-watering tray are doing all right. The K-cups are actually doing better than the ones in the Jiffy pellets, which was a surprise for me. In fact, so many seeded pellets didn’t germinate, I reseeded many of them (plus a few K-cups), and they seem to be doing better now. The K-cups dry out much faster, and don’t water from below as well as the pellets. Unfortunately, watering the taller K-cups without also over watering the pellets has been a challenge. In the future, I would not want to mix the two again.

As for the shallots in the egg trays… Hmm.

I had thought that the wet cardboard of the egg trays might help the plugs stay moister, longer, but they seem to have done the opposite. They seem to be drying them out faster, and with this set up, I don’t have the space to put trays under them, to be able to water them from below. I’ve been using a spray bottle to water them from above, but … well, they really seem to be struggling. And I can’t even plant more, because all of the shallot seeds were used up in these trays.

Then there are the bunching onions, in the small tank.

*sigh*

The cat damage didn’t just wreck a lot of plugs, but it looks like the peat was contaminated, too. On one tray, a white mold has started to grow, while on the other tray, there is what looks like a more yellowish mold. Lack of air circulation in the tank certainly wasn’t helping matters.

That will not be as much of a problem now, at least. The window screen I found in the shed to replace the lid seems to be working, even though it is bigger than the tank. The frame along one side juuuuussssttt fits in the narrow gap between the tank and the wall, which means the tank itself helps hold the screen in place. A couple of 5 pound hand weights on the back, and it seems to actually be working. Yes, we did have a cat knock it off by going on the overhang, but since the weights have been added, that seems to have solved it.

On removing the light fixture from the lid, I had a slightly different issue. There is no “back” to the light bars, and while the waterproof tubes the lights are in have a dark strip along where it would have been against the lid, there was still a lot of light in every other direction. For now, I’ve simply placed the fixture on top of the metal mesh of the screen, then placed a somewhat-cut-to-size piece of rigid insulation, wrapped in aluminum foil, on top. All that “wasted” light is now being reflected downwards. It seemed darker in the tank, possibly because of the mesh itself, so I put aluminum foil around the sides of the tank, too. The foil wrapped “backing” for the light seems to be working well, so I plan to attach the light fixture to it, rather than just have it sitting loosely on top. I had intended to mount the light to the underside of the screen, but it actually seems to be working okay, sitting on top. As long as the cats leave it alone. They don’t seem to like the overhang of the screen, though, and only a couple of the kittens have been willing to make the effort to get past it.

We have a very small, light fan that can sit right on the screen and provide air circulation in the tank. For now, we’ve been switching the little fan back and forth between the tanks, until we feel it’s time to start using the oscillating room fan that’s on a stand.

I’m pretty sure those bunching onions are a lost cause, though.

So we had two things to deal with; the too dry shallots, and the dying bunching onions.

The girls took care of the shallots for me, while I made a run to the post office. They had to get creative, because… cats.

They put the seedlings into baking pans with water in them, to water the seedlings from below. That needed time, but they found that the under-bed storage container that we’ve been using to contain our potting mess was large enough to cover and protect both trays.

They successfully foiled the cats!

There was room for three more cups in the big tank, though, and we still had seeds for the bunching onions. So when I got back from my errands, I decided to plant more of them.

The shallots were well dampened by then, so I slid them back onto the pieces of insulation we’re using tho carry them, and put them back in the tank. Then I filled three double cups with peat and put about a dozen seeds, at least, in each cup. The seeds are all about half an inch apart, so I’ll be able to easily thin them, if necessary, or separate them for transplanting, later on.

And I still have seeds for the bunching onions left over!

So that is done. Tomato seeds have been planted, shallots have been, hopefully, rescued, and new bunching onion seeds have been planted.

The next batch of seeds that we will need to start are the gourds.

But not for another month or so.

Hopefully, by then, it will be warm enough even overnight, that the onions and tomatoes can be safely transferred to the sun room, so we can use the fish tank aquariums for the next batch of seed starts.

A little more garden progress, done! :-)

The Re-Farmer