Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Seedlings and Stuff

Spring is for lovers...of gardening

March is finally time to get outside and see what's happening in and around my garden.  I did spend a bit of time a week or two ago pulling weeds and leveling my raised beds.  In my earlier post I spoke about my unfortunate situation with the latest frost this spring.  Patience is a virtue...and one that I have not inherited from any member of my family.  Many of my seedlings have grown quite well this year and I sprouted some snap pea seeds (patting my own back) and so it is time to transfer them to the garden.  

The snap peas were sprouted indoors, but not in any growing medium.  There is a trick to sprouting peas with out using any seed starter, all you need is a paper towel, zip top bag and water.  Take a doubled up paper towel and give it a good soaking, not dripping, but thoroughly wet.  Lay it out and put your pea seeds on the wet towel and fold it over.  Fold over the sides like a little paper purse and slide this into the plastic zip top bag.  Zip it about 2/3 of the way and mark the date.  Check them every day and add water to the towel as needed to keep it very moist.  In a few days, usually no more than 3 or 4 the seeds will poke out their initial root and they are ready for the garden.  These were much easier than the seed starting I did in my basement/garden center.  
Spinach, Shasta daisy, Red bell peppers, Basil in front; Viola, Lavender, Banana peppers, Parsley in rear 
Romaine, Chinese broccoli, Broccoli Rabe, Lupine, Lolla Rosa in front; Tomatoes in rear
All and all, seed starting was a success!  Time to transplant and so I took a trip to the Lawrence Township Ecological Facility and picked up about 1 1/2 yards of compost (black gold...great quality and best of all, FREE to Lawrence Residents...most townships in NJ will have a comparable facility) and sprinkled the fairy dirt over my raised beds to feed the newly planted and new to be planted seeds and transplants.  
Swiss chard and Lolla Rosa
After the Chard, Broccoli Rabe, Chinese Broccoli frost debacle, I was gun shy on moving anything else to the garden.  But after a bit more research, there are certainly some candidates that are ready, like Radish.  So off they went.  And by early April, I had moved a large variety of seeds and transplants into the garden.  I direct sowed a variety of seeds: Mesculn Greens, Mustard Greens, sprouted Snap Peas, Kaleidoscope Carrots, Champion Radish, Arugula, Red Russian Kale, Tuscan Kale (Thank You Shannon), Bok Choy, Razzle Dazzle Spinach, mixed varieties of Basil, Tomatoes (again, way way way too early to plant these) Romaine, Lolla Rosa, Lupine, and...I think that is it.  Wish me luck!
Corn in front, radish in rear.
I cannot wait to get this sweet corn in the ground!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

January 2013

Seeds of Exchange!

This year I decided to do a bunch of research pertaining to seed starting indoors.  After 3 failed attempts (if one would refer to the past feeble starts as attempts) this year would be different.  I began with ensuring I had the proper light sources.  I ventured into my basement and pulled together all of the shop lights I had.  There were 3 48" light fixtures and each required 2 48" t-12 40 watt fluorescent bulbs.  

The light looks just light this guy does.  After checking them all out, only 2 of the 3 worked and so I began with these.  My radio friend, Mike McGrath has plenty to say on the subject of starting seeds indoors on the Gardens Alive A-Z Archive. Especially concerning the type and amount of lighting necessary.  It turns out that most newer shop light fixtures require t-8 32 watt 48" bulbs and these light are more efficient than their elders, the t-12's.  You go to seed starting with the lighting you have and not the lighting you want...so here I went.

I began my seed starting adventure in early February.  I had saved a number of containers of all sizes from last years garden purchases and so I had my beginnings at home.  I took great care to clean each container with a bleach and water solution (1 part bleach, 9 parts water).  Soaked them for a few minutes and rinsed them thoroughly.  I purchased a bag of Jiffy Seed Starting Mix (Organic) from my local Wegmans (I LOVE THAT STORE!).  This mix's primary ingredients are spaghnum peat moss and vermiculite, with some trace additions.  These two ingredients are essential to ensuring a light and airy mixture for seedling roots to move through easily.  

And so, on February 12th I sowed Chinese Kale (hybrid broccoli/kale), Broccoli Rabe, Lupine and Delphinium (these two are perennial flowers).  These were pretty much chosen a random, because my seed collection had grown quite large over the last year and they all took a while to germinate (I have managed to collect about 25-30 seed packs).  Four days later, I ventured into just about every garden center I knew looking for some seed starting trays...needless to say, mid February may be a bit early for these places to be stocking them, I guess.  I did mange to find one place that had some items left over from last season and so I picked up 2 Jiffy Seed Starter Green House kits (each has 72 pods for seeds).

I also grabbed another bag of Country Cottage Seed Starter from that same nursery.  This mix also had sphagnum and vermiculite as the primary ingredients.  On February 16th, I sowed Mortgage Lifter Tomato (an heirloom variety), Swiss Chard, Lavendar, Sweet Basil, Romaine Lettuce, Lolla Rosa, Red Bell Pepper, and Corn (I learned later it was WAY WAY WAY too early to sow tomato and corn...WAY too early).

I was running out of light and so I purchsed a 48" 4 bulbs shop light that utilized t-8 bulbs, as I mentioned earlier...and with that I started my 3rd tray of seeds.  I sowed Corvair Spinach, Razzle Spinach, Super Sweet Cheery Tomato (hybrid cherry), Champion Radish, Parsley, Johnny Jump Up Viola, Shasta Alaska Daisy (both perennial flowers) and Banana Peppers.  

There is tons or information available on the interwebs regarding starting seeds indoors.  Organic Gardening offers a great resource for determining the necessary tools, supplies and seeds for getting a great start indoors...and timing.  Timing is everything!

With a very few exceptions, nearly everything germinated as I had hoped (Delphinium and Razzle Spinach were tougher than expected).  I transplanted nearly all by mid-March and began hardening seedlings like Chinese Kale, Broccoli Rabe, Swiss Chard, Romaine, and Corvair Spinach.  After about a week of letting these specimens get used to the outdoors a bit at a time, I planted all but the spinach.  THEN THE FROST CAME THAT VERY EVENING!  Everything had damage and about half of all planting may be lost!  I had a feeling that it was early, but I grew impatient and paid dearly for it.  

RIP Broccoli Rabe.  :-(

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

2012 Harvest

Success...and failures

The 2012 growing season was by far my most bountiful...but I did learn a great deal about what to do and what NOT to do in the garden.  I began  sowing seeds in April and I dropped a variety of plants in shortly after that.  This was a late start as direct sowing seeds season is concerned.  In very general terms, the timing of sowing seeds and planting is based on the "frost date" for any given region.  There are a bunch of websites that will give you your average spring and fall frost dates and it is this information that you should use to determine what you plant/sow and when you do it.  Moongardencalendar.com has a "Frost Dates Lookup" where you input your zip code and it will give you the average frost dates for spring and fall.  Almanac.com will do the same and go one step further, they will offer you recommended planting dates, for a variety of common garden plants, based on the frost date in your region.  

My raised bed was looking pretty good by early May with a variety of plants and sown seeds doing their thing.
Starting from the top left and going down rows, there was pac choi (directly sown), Chinese broccoli (directly sown), "Bright Lights" Swiss chard (mix of yellow, white, red chard, transplants of milk jug seedlings).
2nd row, mustard greens (directly sown), parsley and sweet and opal basil (direct sown).
3rd row, mixed salad greens (sown way too thick) corvair spinach (direct sown) and a single rosemary plant.
4th row, tomato plant (gift from a friend), a few pea plants (also gift from Shannon, woman of the earth) and a few more tomato plants and a few corn plants (gift from my sons kindergarten class), with some basil (direct sown) in a row at the bottom in front of the tomato plants.

You may notice some yellow flowers at the top and bottom of the garden bed, they are marigolds.  The fragrance of marigolds will keep away a number of non-beneficial insects without scaring away the most beneficial guys that help pollinate and keep your garden in order.  Yes there are good insects and bugs that aerate your soil, pollinate your flowering plants, eat the EVIL insects and just plain chill out with no harm done.  Bugs can be GOOD!

By June, my raised bed was doing pretty well.  Nearly everything I planted was about doubled in size, I was harvesting lots of salad greens...
as a matter of fact they were going so well, I decided that I should build two new, smaller beds and really take advantage of this newly acquired knowledge.  The new raised garden beds were 4' x 4' x 6" (about the size Mel suggests using at Square Foot Gardening).  I Immediately filled them with the same mix of compost and bagged top soil used for the larger bed.  One was sown with half corn plants, eggplant plants, 1 sage plant and 1 bay leaf plant.  The other had a few tomato plants (a gift from a good friend Michael, a Teresa Caffe friend), 1 tomatillo plant (also gift from a Michael), 2 sweet pepper plants, 1 poblano pepper plant and 8 oriental cucumber plants.  

The harvest!

Long story short, the two smaller beds produced moderately well for me.  I got 10 or so tomatoes, 10 or so tomatillos (more info on these later)
, about 2 dozen cucumbers (more than I could handle for the season) a handful of poblano peppers, nearly no sweet peppers.  The other bed gave me 10 or so eggplant, 10 or so sweet corn ears (still not good quality), and plenty of sage and bay leaf.  
Tomatillo

The larger raised bed was obviously where the bounty of the harvest came from.  Plenty of pac choi (both leaves and full heads), spinach, basil, tons of chard, mustard greens, salad greens, and a fair amount of Chinese broccoli leaves.
early Pac Choi
Beautiful specimen of Pac Choi head

Salad Greens being washed (always wash your greens)
Sisk Chard leaves (I thank my cousin Kenny for that naming)
Mustard Greens
Mustard Greens and Chard everywhere but bottom right, Chinese Broccoli leaves
I was really looking forward to my tomato harvest.  I thought that this was my break out year, that I would have so many tomatoes they would be coming out of my ears.  I was going to be canning, making sauce, salsa, pico de gallo, roasted tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, tomato hats, tomato bags...well you get the picture.  With that type of expectation, the only way to go was down...and down it went.
Cherry Tomatoes up top, mixed Tomato varieties (mostly Heirlooms) and 4 Tomatillos
Don't get my wrong, this was 1 harvest in late July (I believe) and it was pretty impressive, but this was the most plentiful tomato harvest I had.  I gifted some of the larger heirlooms, snacked on plenty of the cherry tomatoes,  and the tomatillos went into a number of sautes I prepared.  I did not have another harvest of this quantity or quality subsequent to this.  Disease and heat dominated the later half of the summer and before long the dreaded black spots invaded just about every inch of my tomato garden. EARLY BLIGHT! (<---click here to see some more info on Early Blight).  If you check out some images of this, you can see what happens.  Heart breaking!   The season ended well over all.  I had a number of fall plantings survive the early part of the winter, pac choi, Chinese broccoli leaves, spinach, and cilantro.  Once the early part of 2013 hit and the heavy frost and snow visited, they were lost...except for the spinach and cilantro.  20 of each plant survived and have been transplanted into a new home this year.  Nature is awesome!

The 2013 season was fast approaching and it was time to begin thinking about my strategy for this coming season.  There was much to plan, much to contemplate and a new raised bed to build.  Until the next post!