OK, It’s Seed Starting Time

22 February, 2013 Reply
There's nothing tastier than homegrown and dried paprika pepper.

There’s nothing tastier than homegrown and dried paprika pepper.

I started my early spring crops almost two weeks ago. They’re up and growing now. Today I need to concentrate on summer crops that need to be started indoors. In most areas of the US that means all your tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and the like. If I have time I’ll start some of the annuals, as well, otherwise they’ll have to wait for the next moon cycle.

Above Ground Summer Crops

Today is the last waxing day of the moon. Now I’m not a big-time moon gardener, but I decided, just yesterday, to try planting my indoor seeds according to the calendar and lo and behold, today is the last day for above ground crops for two weeks! Luckily my seeds came in yesterday, so I have a whole contingency of what I want to get in the ground this year.

I’m kinda excited to try some of the seeds I got at the seed exchange. It wasn’t really much of a seed exchange, but luckily Seeds of Change had send some free packets for people to get a few seeds from, otherwise there would have only been about 20 different seeds to choose from and most of them were beans of some sort!

Peppers Galore!

My most favorite new variety to try is Sheep-nosed Pimento pepper. It just sounds cool. I’ll let you know if it really looks like a sheep’s nose.

I got a new variety of paprika pepper to try, also. We love homegrown and dried ground paprika on our homemade crackers. Homegrown paprika peppers taste entirely different from the bland stuff offered by most stores. It has a wonderful red pepper flavor, that is different from bells and chilies. It is somewhere in-between, with a distinct tang. Just writing about it makes my mouth water.

If you’ve never grown paprika peppers, and you have room in your garden, grow a couple plants this year. Dry them at a temperature below 115˚F (I do mine at 95˚F) until they are nice and dry. Then throw them in a blender (I use my Magic Bullet, because it has a blade for dry things) and pulverize it into ground paprika. You’ll discover a flavor you may never have had before. This year I’m going to grow more paprika peppers than bells, as we always seem to run out of the ground paprika before the next batch of peppers are ready.

Tomatoes & Eggplants, Oh My!

I also have several new tomato and eggplant varieties to try. Of course being from North Carolina I just had to try the ‘Hillbilly Potato Leaf’ tomato. I also picked up a tiny yellow tomato and two of the ‘black’ tomatoes. I really loved the black tomatoes a friend of mine grew one year, so am trying a few of my own this year.

The eggplants aren’t all that exciting in variety. I’m just hoping I can get the buggers to come up this year. I have a devil of a time getting eggplant seeds to sprout. If they do sprout then they seem to just sit there as a sprout and take forever to put on their first true leaves. I’m going to do a little reading today, before I plant them, to see if someone has any secrets to get them to germinate.

Plant Today If You Can

Anyway, hopefully you’re reading this early enough in the day that you, too, can get your seeds started before the moon starts waning.

More Seed Concerns

8 February, 2013 Reply

OK, I thought I was safe from supporting Monsanto if I bought heirloom varieties of seeds. Come to find out Monsanto now owns some of those varieties. This means that they are not GMO seeds, but they are owned and more than likely produced by one of Monsanto’s subsidiaries. Scarily Monsanto now owns 40% of the home gardener seeds!

Sadly some of our most popular vegetable varieties are now owned by Monsanto.

Sadly some of our most popular vegetable varieties are now owned by Monsanto.

Some of these are big names in the industry, too. Especially some of the tomato varieties like ‘Early Girl,’ ‘Celebrity,’ and ‘Better Boy.’ These varieties are owned by Seminis, and Monsanto bought Seminis back in 2005, so they are in now owned by Monsanto.

One thing I found out is that companies that have signed the safe seed pledge can sell these varieties, because they are not GMO, so just buying from a company that specialized in heirloom seeds, and/or signed the safe seed pledge will not necessarily keep you safe from support Monsanto indirectly.

The best thing you can do is to check your choices against the list that Seminis has on their web site. If it shows that it is a variety owned by Seminis, choose something else. I will be letting the companies I do business with know that I would appreciate it if they would stop dealing with Seminis, even for heirloom varieties, as that is still supporting Monsanto. As time goes on I’ll start buying less and less from companies that continue to carry Seminis owned seeds, and eventually move exclusively to buying from companies that don’t deal with Seminis at all.

The absolute best thing all of us can do, is start learning how to effectively grow, collect, and preserve the varieties that we most love. Not only will that help to preserve them from being contaminated, but the seeds will adapt to your region more and more over time and you’ll find you get a better and better yield of higher quality produce as the years go by. Plants and seeds are amazing things. They want to survive, so they will, over time, adapt to the conditions they are growing in, so their species can survive.

I haven’t ordered my seed yet this year, as a matter of fact I’m planning on doing it this weekend. Rest assured that my list will be checked against the Seminis list before I buy one single packet. The power we have is in our pocketbook. If every home grower immediately stopped buying any seed produced by Seminis they’d go out of business (at least at the home growers level). Sure we might lose some wonderful seeds, but we might just save the planet from complete plant destruction in the process.

Time To Start Seeds

29 January, 2013 Reply
Watching seeds sprout is awe-some!

Watching seeds sprout is awe-some!

Wow, I can hardly believe that I need to start seeds inside this weekend. It always catches me off guard, and this year is especially bad, as the shelves that I usually use to hold the seed trays are being used in the kitchen, because I haven’t finished repairs to the cupboard that got damaged last fall! Yikes!

Time To Starts Seeds In Milder Climates

If you live in the mid-Atlantic states or south you need to get your early spring crops started asap. That’s all the cole crops: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower; plus head lettuce, onions, and celery. If I want any snapdragons or pansies early this spring I need to start them soon, also.

I’m really not very well prepared this year. I don’t even have an inventory of what I need. I always have enough packs, as I reuse them, but I need to check and make sure I have seed starting soil, find my grow lights, figure out how I’m going to put all these seeds in the windows and still keep my houseplants happy (or if I need to buy more lights and just grow them with lights this year). Lucky for me this first round of seeds will only be one or two flats worth of plants. At the beginning of March is when I start the rest of the summer seeds that need a head start: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and most of the other annual flowers.

What You’ll Need

If you start some of your own seeds, or want to try your hand at it this year. Now is the time to get all your gear ready. You’ll need seed starting trays; something to grow the seeds in; containers for the seeds; good lighting; and a way to water them without drowning them.

I use flats that don’t have any holes in them to do the indoor starts, that way I don’t have to worry about water damage. I have a plethora of four and six packs, so I just reuse them every year until I run out. However, there are many ways to start seeds. There are special self-watering flats, you can roll newspaper to make containers, use the soil block makers, etc. For me, since I do have so many four packs it is simplest to just use them. If you’re just starting out or don’t have a back stock you might want to consider making our own as it is more sustainable than plastic.

Over the past several years I’ve just used coir (made from coconut) to start my seeds. I’m not sure it has enough nutrition in it, though. I’m thinking I might buy one bag of seed starting soil this year, as it will have the right balance of nutrients. I will still use mostly coir, as it has great properties that keep my little ones from damping off, so don’t want to mess with it too much.

For lighting I’ve been using a couple grow lights and sunlight, but this year I may not be able to put the seed trays in the windows like I usually do. That will mean purchasing a couple more lights, probably just fluorescents to give the seedlings the amount of light they need to grow well. This is probably the most important part of seed starting, so don’t skimp here, unless you want weak, spindly, starts.

Seed Starting Is Fun And Awesome

If you’ve never started any seeds before, give it a try. It is so magical watching tiny little seeds go into the soil and giving you big plants that will feed you and your family. It is truly a miracle!

2012 What Did Well & What Didn’t

13 September, 2012 Reply

So, I’m looking at the overall success of my gardens this year, and there were some definite winners and losers.

Hot pink carnation

Carnation ‘Chabaud’ did great this year. It was worth the wait!

A Look At The Winners

Last year I started a seed packet of carnation ‘Chabaud Mix’ and ended up with 36 plants. I planted them in the garden last fall and quite a few of them made it through the first winter. These guys produced an abundance of frangrant flowers up until August when the heat finally stopped them. Now that it’s cooling down it looks like they’re getting ready for another round. Next year I’ll need to have some props for them, as they are floppy, but worth it, what a heavenly scent!

Anise hyssop is another one I started from seed last year. Planted the babies in the fall and this year was rewarded with 3’ tall plants covered in blossoms that were constantly being visited by bees, butterflies, and goldfinch! It does die down in the middle of the hot spell, but is again getting ready to do a whole round of blooming now that it’s cooler.

It looks like all the fruit trees we put in this spring are going to make it. It’s still a little touch and go for the prune plum, but it’s trying hard to put on at least a few leaves to gather some nourishment before frost puts it to sleep. So, now we have all but one fruit tree planted and will be able to start harvesting within a couple years.

All the perennials that I moved to the woodland garden are still hanging in there and most have started to sprout new leaves, so we got a good start there.

My herb garden is a smashing success. The herbs absolutely love the deep mulch we planted them in and they have doubled or tripled in size over last year.

The deck roof is the number one winner in the non-plant category. We can finally sit outside without being baked. I’m finishing up the painting this week, while the weather cooperates. Getting that done has been problematic with our frequent severe thunderstorms in August.

Onto The Losers

The biggest loser in the whole garden where the deep purple petunias I planted this spring. They never did much of anything and when the heat hit they died. I’ve not been much of a petunia lover (except the wave and million bells), but it was so beautiful I decided to try it. Hopefully I’ve learned my lessons. I just don’t care for regular petunias and they don’t seem to like the heat here.

Planting annuals in the middle of the summer. I had some annuals get eaten by the resident bunny and when I found some available for the ridiculous price of 25 cents for a 4-pack I indulged. However, they never even got off the ground and are still just little sticks with a tiny blossom on the end. They might end up looking nice by the time it frosts, but that garden definitely looks terrible right now.

Covering my summer squash with frost barrier didn’t work very well. Next year I’m going to try using window screening. There just wasn’t enough airflow, and all kinds of diseases and small pests (aphids) took over. I hardly got anything from the vines, but what I got was wonderful. Also, need a place where they can wander without covering the lawn.

My melons and winter squash were a bust, too. I got tons of small melons, all tasteless. The watermelons only got about as big as a softball and never ripened properly. The winter squash just never put on any female blossoms. So, I need to figure out what it is they want. I even tried hills this year, to no avail…

I wrote earlier about my fiasco with the tomatoes. They did produce some, but not nearly as well as they would have if they hadn’t been swallowed alive by the beans and then infected with early blight.

As the season winds down I’ll continue to write about what I’ve learned from my garden this year. Would love it if you’d share your thoughts, too!

2012 Picks of the Year

4 September, 2012 2 Comments
Wishbone Flower

I lined my whole front garden with volunteers from this cute flower. They self seed voraciously, but not invasively.

Now that September has hit and the growing season is slowing down, I like to take the time to review the past year and see what is my favorite vegetable and flower; what did well or not; what I’ll repeat and what I’ll discard.

My Vegetable Pick Of The YearTromboncino growing in a garden

This year’s vegetable of the year is the tromboncino squash. I’ve been looking for a squash that doesn’t succumb to the squash vine borers and I found one. The nice thing about it, is that I really like the fruit, too. Many times you find a vegetable that produces well in your climate, but you end up not liking it very much. Well, the tromboncino should be considered by everyone living in an area that has problems with squash vine borers. The thing I like about it, is that it has a long skinny neck that has no seeds at all in it. This portion is firmer than traditional summer squash and holds its shape and texture much better. Only the bulbous end has any seeds and even then it is still firmer and less slime creating than other squashes. I’ll surely make this a regular in my garden from now on!

I have these beauties all over my yard this year.

Celosia plumosa – These beauties are making quite a splash in my yard.

Three Way Tie In The Flower Category

In the flower category: I didn’t have much success growing flowers from seed this year. I don’t know why, but the seedlings that did sprout didn’t make it in the garden. However, I have three favs in this category, and all of them were self-seeded. The first is the celosia. I believe it’s the sparkler series, but not even sure of that. I bought a pot with three of them in it last year when I got my planter boxes ready. They did fine, but all the seedlings that came up this year have been magnificent and I must have had at least 50 of them to place around the yard.

Second is the moss rose, portulaca. The range of colors and the huge flowers were much better than the original plants I bought at the local nursery. I’ve never seen such beautiful intense colors or as ruffled flowers. I’ll certainly be letting them self-seed again.

Portulaca

Moss rose is drought tolerant and has brilliantly colored blooms to brighten your day.

Last, but not least, is the clown flowers. I had saved seeds and just scattered a few in a flat. A bunch of them came up, and then I had a pot out on the porch sprout a bunch more. So I lined my entire front garden with happy little clown flowers. I’ve got every color I’ve ever seen and some more. I’ll also be letting them seed themselves in this fall.

Take Stock For Future Planting

It’s always a good idea to take stock of your growing experience each year. This is just the winners. I’ll cover what didn’t work and things I won’t do again in another blog.

Do you have a favorite from this past year. Please share it and why. Then we can all get to know how plants do in an average garden, instead of the picture perfect ones in the catalogs.

Update On Working With Nature Spirits

9 August, 2012 Reply
Maybe Nature Spirits Look Like This

This is what I think a Nature Spirits looks like, pure golden energy.

I told you I’d keep you up to date on what was going on with my working with nature spirits in my gardens. Well I’ve had three sessions with them.

First Meetings

The first two were for fertilizing the vegetables. I have a lot of vegetables that aren’t producing much right now. I know part of it is because the weather is so hot, but I felt like I needed to give them a bit of a boost in order to get them to give us some harvest.

I spent two days fertilizing all of the major summer crops: tomatoes, summer squash, bell peppers, eggplants, winters squash and watermelons. It was interesting to see how each crop was handled differently. I didn’t make the same mix of fertilizers for any gardens. Each one was a little different and some of the gardens I can see a marked difference in either the growth of the plants or the blooming. I did find it a little tedious to keep asking the same questions over and over, but found that by the time I finished the second day I could sense the yes or no before I tested, which I found interesting.

Preparing The Next Step

Then today I worked on getting organized for the fall garden. I got out all my seeds and asked which ones to plant. I was a little surprised at some of the things they wanted me to plant and especially some that they didn’t. Then I went through, using kinesiology, to test which plants are to go in which gardens. I didn’t have time to figure out when I was supposed to plant them and how many in each garden, so will need to do that over the weekend.

I need to check and see if I need to add any amendments to the soil before I plant and I’ll be all set. I know what my fall/winter gardens have been like in the past, so I’ll see if anything is different. Also, this is not just for the health of the plants, but the health of the land, too. So I might be planting some things in certain places because it will help heal the land.

This land was used as a tobacco farm for many years, so I know that it was horribly abused. Most tobacco farms the soil is just like talcum powder. It has been worked to the point that it is just a fine powder. This wasn’t that bad, but tobacco is a very heavy feeder, so soils are usually very depleted. So, I’m also working to heal the soil and help it return to a higher vibration. I think I’ve done some of that already, as the birds and critters this year are in much more abundance than the last few, which means they like it here. That is good and bad, because it means that I get to see them more, but it also means that they eat more of my garden (especially bunnies, voles, and squirrels). Hopefully the nature spirits will help me find a way to keep them happy without them having to eat the plants I have planned for us.

Anyway, it seems pretty simple now that I’ve started into it. Over the late fall and winter I’ll  do up all the diagrams so that I have something to work with come January when I order seeds and make plans for next years gardens.

A Fresh Start

One thing I plan to do is talk to the nature spirits about doing a garden together. A new one that has never been worked on before, to see if it make a difference if I start it out with their help.

Your Experiences With Nature Spirits

Let me know what you think about this nature spirit thing. I know for some people it will fascinate; others will think it is bunk; still others will already be working with them.

Unrecognized Pollinators

2 August, 2012 Reply

Almost anyone who does any gardening has heard about the plight of the honeybee. Many of us sit with baited breath waiting to hear if they are going to make it or not and fearing that if they don’t we’ll not have anything to eat, because there won’t be any pollinators left.

Quite by accident I found information on other bees, in particular mason bees (Osmia), that do even more work for pollination than honeybees. Almost no-one knows anything about them, because, alas, they don’t produce honey, they just help produce much of all our other produce, especially early spring fruiting plants.

Orchard Mason Bee

Orchard Mason Bees are much better pollinators than honeybees.

I even watched a special where one of the bee drivers; these are folks who drive huge trucks filled with honeybee hives around the USA helping to pollinate the vast fields of fruit and nut trees; spoke on how without the honeybee we won’t have most of our fruits and nuts and many of our vegetables.

After reading about the mason bee I realized that he was dead wrong. Mason bees are much more efficient pollinators, but they don’t like to be bused around, so the bee driver can’t take them all over the USA. They can pollinate 2000 more flowers in the same amount of time than a honeybee. The common name of one species is Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria), because it is so well know for its ability to vastly increase the production in orchards. The horned mason bee (Osmia cornifrons) can pollinate 15 flowers in one minute.

As a matter of fact there are over 4000 species of bees in the US. Of the Osmia genus there are 300 species across the Northern Hemisphere and 150 indigenous to the US. That’s a lot of different bees.

Also, these bees don’t look like a honeybee. They usually have a green or blue metallic back, sometimes black, not striped. So, it pays to get to know all the insects in your garden, as you may be killing the very insects that are pollinating your crops. Some of them are smaller than honeybees, etc. They are very docile creatures, too, so they aren’t easily angered to sting you. They will only sting if they are being crushed and fear imminent death.

There are ways that you can help to cultivate a larger presence of the mason bees in your garden. They lay their eggs in tubes. It can be hollow grasses, straws, holes in wood, etc. There are very easy ways to build houses for them. I’ll collect some good sites on that and put that in my next blog, so that you can start increasing the number of pollinators in your garden.

Have you built a mason bee home? Did you see an increase in your plant production once you put it out? Any interesting stories about mason bees? Please share.

Mid-Summer Bounty

31 July, 2012 Reply
Harvest from my Garden on July 31st

After feeling very discouraged today’s harvest was way past amazing.

After last week’s disaster with my tomato plants, I was pretty discouraged with the harvest I was expecting from my garden, yet again. Seems since we’ve moved into this house I can’t do anything right to keep a garden going from spring to fall.

Today my garden decided to let me know it’s doing well and producing just fine. I walked out the door to find three melons had dropped from the vine overnight and not one critter had taken a bite out of them. I was shocked. I was going to do some work in another area, but realized I needed to harvest, yet again. There were several cucumbers, a few beans (they’ll get going again once it cools a little bit). Then I started working on the herbs. I have five kinds of basil in my garden; sweet, lemon, licorice, holy and an unknown variety; and I started harvesting each variety. The pile began to grow and grow as I went from one plant to the next. Then I realized that my sage was humongous! I harvested some of that. I cut back some of the old stems of the oregano I transplanted and there were a bunch of new shoots on the top, which I harvested. Then on to the sisho. I harvested just a few branches of that because I didn’t know if it would hold well in water. It’s doing fine.

Last, but not least I turned to my dismal looking tomato plants and found that they were so grateful to be unburied that, although they look terrible, they had plenty of goodies for me to pick.

Bounty everywhere. Here's a closer look.

Here’s a closer look at some of today’s harvest.

From feeling like I had nothing to harvest in my garden, to my kitchen overflowing with goodies. What a pick-me-up if I ever had one. For lunch today I fixed some of our tomatoes and a few of a particular kind of bean that I was doing a test on, plus some zuch (purchased), in a coconut milk/tahini sauce. As seasoning I put in some of every single herb I harvested today and it was fantastic. I topped it off with a handful of fresh yellow cherry tomatoes and it was a meal fit for a king!

From bummed to blissful in one morning’s work.

Have you ever had any surprises in your garden? Has a plant produced when you thought it wouldn’t or maybe you planted something for the first time and it was spectacular? Share your stories and your pics. I’d love to see them.

When Things Finally Start To Come Together

31 May, 2012 Reply

Whew! I didn’t think it would ever look like our yard was going to come together. I’ve been working on it for two years and it looked like I’d done almost nothing, but this year, year three, things are finally starting to come together.

Plants are maturing, looking really stunning this year; our permanent crop plants are producing heavily; we got most of the fruit trees in for our little orchard. So the yard finally doesn’t look like an orphan.

My asiatic lily blooms for the first time.

An asiatic lily, purchased after it had bloomed last summer, rewards me with many blossoms this year.

There are some notable exceptions. One of the biggest is a large autumn olive almost in front of the door. We planned to move it this spring, but only got to the maple tree before it got too hot. So, it’s earmarked for a move immediately after the temperatures begin to cool this fall.

All my seedlings are looking terrific this year. Last year, almost from the get-go, my vegetable garden looked terrible. None of the plants produced much; my summer squash only produced male blossoms; the tomatoes got early blight, so even though they produced some tomatoes, they looked terrible.

My decision to not expand, until I have what’s already in the ground under control, was a good one. Oh, I’ll tell you I’ve been tempted sometimes to start the new perennial garden I want out front, or to start new rows for the blackberries and marionberries, but I’m holding off.

So far, with the help of my husband, we’ve managed to build a new, easily removed structure around the blueberries. This is keeping the birds at bay. Of course they holler at us every time we go outside. They are not happy that they can’t munch on all the berries before we get any.

We got 10 more fruit trees planted and just this weekend started to put down weed barrier around them and the berry bushes.

I managed to get several of the vegetable beds reworked with more amendments and the plants are doing terrific because of it.

Last we’ve started work on building a roof over the back deck, so we can sit outside and not get baked. It faces mostly south and is unbearably hot even in the early morning, so a roof will help cool it down so we can enjoy breakfast outside.

The herb garden is almost finished. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll bring over the loads of compost to fill it up and then this weekend we’ll work on the deck and I’ll move the herbs to their new home. Just in time to till up where they were and put in the last of the summer seeds.

Wish I’d taken before and after pictures, but I’ve been so busy just trying to keep ahead of everything I didn’t. From this point on we can at least show you what we’ve done, maybe even how to do it yourself.

So our little Avalon is finally starting to come together.

First Spring Salad And Other Spring Musings

22 May, 2012 Reply

I probably wrote about this last year, but every year is like the first time when you harvest enough out of your garden to make most of a salad. My spring garden was very limited this year, as the gardens were in such a shambles from the fact that I didn’t have time to clean them out last fall (something I hope to NEVER repeat) and the weather doing funky things. I did manage to get a few of my favorites going and yesterday we had the very first salad with many of the fixings from our own garden.

I had two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of chard, spinach, a couple of sugar snap peas (and when I mean a couple it was exactly two, so we each got one), fennel, rosemary, lemon thyme, garden thyme, oregano, little tiny marigolds called mace which were surprisingly aromatically spice, marigold petals, and wild sorrel ripped from my yard (it is the most invasive weed, but also highly nutritious and tasty). I added some store bought carrots and tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and sunflower seeds. Then we drizzled just a little bit of oil and vinegar over it and had an amazing salad.

Over this past weekend I planted my tomato and pepper plants. I’ve got them covered with lightweight frost blanket to protect them from the sun, as I’ve had a really hard time hardening things off with the cloudy, rainy weather that descended on us just in time for the hardening off period. I’ll see if the frost blanket works as well as screening. It sure seemed to really help the earlier seedlings get going well, without being munched by bugs.

This weekend I’ll get in the basil and the few flowers I managed to sprout. This was not a good season for starting seeds, maybe next year. I also hope to move the herb garden to its permanent home this weekend. If the weather holds and I can finish painting the railing of the deck on the side where it’s going, then I’ll be able to complete that garden and get things moved. That will open up most of the back of the house for more vegetables, which I really need. I don’t have space for my big melons and squash, so they will probably go up next to the house this year. Strange place, but I got two new winter squash types that are supposed to be squash vine borer resistant and I really want to try them out. So, I’ll just have big viney things up close to the house this year…Won’t be the first time I’ve planted something in a strange place.

So, the garden is a work in progress. I’ve managed to rope my husband into helping me many mornings for at least a couple hours, so some of the projects are moving much faster and hopefully soon I’ll be ahead of the wave and spending time improving my soil and finishing up the beds I’ve already got started, making a nice inviting and nourishing home for all the plants to come in the future.

Sorry the posts have been scarce lately. I’ve been wicked busy with the yard and a new business I’m trying to get started. Both take lots of time and attention! I hope to return to being more regular now that the garden frenzy is over.

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