Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Garden notebook
Today was lovely and sunny, and I spent pretty much the entire day outside.
- Filled remaining EarthBoxes and got them all in place
- Hardening off: chard, basil, thyme, oregano, marigolds, cilantro, mint
- Planted: Strawberries
A gazillion wild violets are blooming in the rock garden, including a couple of white ones.
Red tulip in the ivy is blooming
Lots of plants coming in on the rock garden
Visited by cardinals, finches, doves & sparrows while outside
- Filled remaining EarthBoxes and got them all in place
- Hardening off: chard, basil, thyme, oregano, marigolds, cilantro, mint
- Planted: Strawberries
A gazillion wild violets are blooming in the rock garden, including a couple of white ones.
Red tulip in the ivy is blooming
Lots of plants coming in on the rock garden
Visited by cardinals, finches, doves & sparrows while outside
Quick link
I took a bunch of pictures of my lovely plants this morning. Still won't be able to upload directly until perhaps the middle of next week, but I did send several to my MobileMe gallery. There are some pictures of the plants in March when they first sprouted, as well as the photos from today. BONUS: since I can't seem to find a way to organize the photo album from this iPad, you also get several pictures of my lovely Lydia, and, I believe, a couple of pictures of bento lunches I packed last year!
Now I must get outside and get working on this beautiful sunny day.
Pictures, pictures, pictures.
Now I must get outside and get working on this beautiful sunny day.
Pictures, pictures, pictures.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Garden notes
A catch-up garden notebook post, transcribing a couple of scribbled notes from paper)
For some reason, the tomato plants in the smaller (about the size of 4-packs) peat pots seem to be growing faster than those in larger peat pots.
I won't be using a sponge-like "hydroponic" seed starting tray again. Overall, the plants in there aren't doing as well as others, and outgrow the allotted space too quickly, requiring intermediate repotting.
Broccoli and lettuces seem to have wilted entirely. They didn't look happy in the spongy seed starting tray, but I'd hoped that they might perk up after transplanting to larger pots. Is this the dreaded "damping off?" Will give them a couple more days.
I got behind somehow on my seed starting schedule, and am starting cucumbers, melons & squashes several weeks later than planned. Hopefully, the fact that I primarily purchased short-season cultivars will make things work out okay. Or perhaps I will skip them this year and put in more tomatoes and peppers instead.
7 out of 10 EarthBoxes full and ready for planting. Need to finish up the rest this weekend!
I think that's it for the catching up snippets here.
For some reason, the tomato plants in the smaller (about the size of 4-packs) peat pots seem to be growing faster than those in larger peat pots.
I won't be using a sponge-like "hydroponic" seed starting tray again. Overall, the plants in there aren't doing as well as others, and outgrow the allotted space too quickly, requiring intermediate repotting.
Broccoli and lettuces seem to have wilted entirely. They didn't look happy in the spongy seed starting tray, but I'd hoped that they might perk up after transplanting to larger pots. Is this the dreaded "damping off?" Will give them a couple more days.
I got behind somehow on my seed starting schedule, and am starting cucumbers, melons & squashes several weeks later than planned. Hopefully, the fact that I primarily purchased short-season cultivars will make things work out okay. Or perhaps I will skip them this year and put in more tomatoes and peppers instead.
7 out of 10 EarthBoxes full and ready for planting. Need to finish up the rest this weekend!
I think that's it for the catching up snippets here.
Seedlings, hardening off, ramblings
Not trusting my own judgment very nearly killed 1/3 of my seedlings today.
I stopped by the garden center yesterday, ostensibly to pick up some vermiculite, but mostly so that I could wander around and stare longingly at the fruit trees. I got to chatting with the woman working there and mentioned that I'd just started hardening off a bunch of my seedlings, though "not the warm-season stuff like tomatoes & basil."
"Oh, no" she insisted, "you absolutely should be setting those out by now!"
Hmm. Not from everything I'd read. But while I was hauling other plants outside this morning, I thought, "perhaps she's right. She probably has more experience than me." It was shady outside, and I was feeling impatient to get everything planted, so out went all of the flats. What should have registered in my brain, besides the shade, was the fact that it was in the low 40s outside.
What I brought back in were some decidedly unhappy-looking and limp plants. Now that they've been back inside for several hours, most of them look like they'll make it. They won't be going back out till mid-May.
All of the seedlings moved up in the world today, though, leaving the warm basement and taking over my kitchen table. Hauling trays up and down the stairs in order to set them outside was just not cutting it.
[Let's just pretend there are some lovely pictures here of my kitchen table covered in green, growing things, shall we? As soon as I have a functional laptop again I'll actually post some non imaginary ones.]
I stopped by the garden center yesterday, ostensibly to pick up some vermiculite, but mostly so that I could wander around and stare longingly at the fruit trees. I got to chatting with the woman working there and mentioned that I'd just started hardening off a bunch of my seedlings, though "not the warm-season stuff like tomatoes & basil."
"Oh, no" she insisted, "you absolutely should be setting those out by now!"
Hmm. Not from everything I'd read. But while I was hauling other plants outside this morning, I thought, "perhaps she's right. She probably has more experience than me." It was shady outside, and I was feeling impatient to get everything planted, so out went all of the flats. What should have registered in my brain, besides the shade, was the fact that it was in the low 40s outside.
What I brought back in were some decidedly unhappy-looking and limp plants. Now that they've been back inside for several hours, most of them look like they'll make it. They won't be going back out till mid-May.
All of the seedlings moved up in the world today, though, leaving the warm basement and taking over my kitchen table. Hauling trays up and down the stairs in order to set them outside was just not cutting it.
[Let's just pretend there are some lovely pictures here of my kitchen table covered in green, growing things, shall we? As soon as I have a functional laptop again I'll actually post some non imaginary ones.]
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
"Creative" Bokashi
I was out of bokashi today, yet had a decent sized bucket of food scraps in need of going somewhere before they got gross. Of course, I could simply have gone and put them on the outside compost heap, but what fun is that?
There are a few guides to making your own bokashi starter online, but they all involve multistep processes that require at least a couple of days for the microorganisms to grow.
Bah!
So I improvised. Bokashi is there to colonize the food scraps with particular microorganisms, in order to quickly ferment the food scraps. Various strains of lactobacillus and yeasts seem to feature prominently in most mixes. Hmmmm.
I grabbed a half-used packet of yeast from the pantry & tossed it in a bowl with honey, warm water, and a bit of spoiled whole wheat flour. After I let that sit for my maximum attention span of 15 minutes or so, I threw in a couple of big spoonfuls of yogurt. There! Yeast and lactobacillus!
I topped it off with a bit of gunk from the jar containing my “let’s attempt to make red wine vinegar” experiment that’s been aging in the pantry since January. And then for good measure, I decided to dump another glob of honey into the foamy mess.
Let that age for another 15 minutes or so. That’s long enough, right? Not so good with the waiting, I am. Tossed the food scraps into the bokashi bucket, mixed more spoiled flour into the concoction, and spread the resulting glop on top of the food scraps. There!
The worst that can happen is that I’ll end up with a really stinky bucket in a few days, when the icky sort of anaerobic bacteria take over. Then I’ll just have to bury the mess and try again.
There are a few guides to making your own bokashi starter online, but they all involve multistep processes that require at least a couple of days for the microorganisms to grow.
Bah!
So I improvised. Bokashi is there to colonize the food scraps with particular microorganisms, in order to quickly ferment the food scraps. Various strains of lactobacillus and yeasts seem to feature prominently in most mixes. Hmmmm.
I grabbed a half-used packet of yeast from the pantry & tossed it in a bowl with honey, warm water, and a bit of spoiled whole wheat flour. After I let that sit for my maximum attention span of 15 minutes or so, I threw in a couple of big spoonfuls of yogurt. There! Yeast and lactobacillus!
I topped it off with a bit of gunk from the jar containing my “let’s attempt to make red wine vinegar” experiment that’s been aging in the pantry since January. And then for good measure, I decided to dump another glob of honey into the foamy mess.
Let that age for another 15 minutes or so. That’s long enough, right? Not so good with the waiting, I am. Tossed the food scraps into the bokashi bucket, mixed more spoiled flour into the concoction, and spread the resulting glop on top of the food scraps. There!
The worst that can happen is that I’ll end up with a really stinky bucket in a few days, when the icky sort of anaerobic bacteria take over. Then I’ll just have to bury the mess and try again.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Growing Things
There’s not really any good place to grow vegetables in my fairly-urban backyard.
Half the yard is taken up by The Pond, aka hole in the ground surrounded by native plants. Another quarter is an ugly brick patio. The remaining quarter holds a swing set, mulch, and big bare spots of mud carved out by our German shepherd dog, Crowley.
This year I was determined to figure out *some* way to grow some food, which is how I ended up with a giant stack of 10 storage-tub-sized plastic planters, a.k.a. Earthboxes, in my entryway.
There’s still more than a month until warm-season crops can safely get planted here in Chicagoland, though, so most of them will be sitting there for a while.
While I’m waiting, there are trellises to build and seeds to sprout.
Currently sprouting in the basement: spearmint, black-eyed susans, lavender, rosemary, chard, basil, oregano, thyme, and several kinds of tomatoes and peppers. The first four on the list were planted ~2 weeks ago and look to largely be coming in nicely. The rest were just planted this weekend, so I’m still waiting for them to sprout.
Half the yard is taken up by The Pond, aka hole in the ground surrounded by native plants. Another quarter is an ugly brick patio. The remaining quarter holds a swing set, mulch, and big bare spots of mud carved out by our German shepherd dog, Crowley.
This year I was determined to figure out *some* way to grow some food, which is how I ended up with a giant stack of 10 storage-tub-sized plastic planters, a.k.a. Earthboxes, in my entryway.
There’s still more than a month until warm-season crops can safely get planted here in Chicagoland, though, so most of them will be sitting there for a while.
While I’m waiting, there are trellises to build and seeds to sprout.
Currently sprouting in the basement: spearmint, black-eyed susans, lavender, rosemary, chard, basil, oregano, thyme, and several kinds of tomatoes and peppers. The first four on the list were planted ~2 weeks ago and look to largely be coming in nicely. The rest were just planted this weekend, so I’m still waiting for them to sprout.
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