Root view box update

The radishes have been picked and eaten; they had a flat side where they grew against the window. You can see the carrots and beets in the photo, and a very thin parsnip starting to grow.

I have had a lot of positive feedback from visitors and some requests for the plans. They will be written up in a single page with illustrations, but it will take me a little bit, given all the other garden work right now.

Springtime work starting early

I'm refreshing the area around the electrical box this year. Today, I pulled all the stones up, and am prepping the area for re-trenching the border. The grass from the lawn is invading the border and it's starting to look awful. This week, I plan to trench out that area, hit all the border with Roundup (and a lot of weeds inside the area, too. Maybe this way the local busybodies won't find fault with my weeds that seem to take over the bed too often. Wish me luck!

So, I found this the other day looking for that last Easter Egg that was not located during the hunt. Not quite what I was hoping to discover, but it sure looks promising from a few feet away.

For those of you unfamiliar, this 'egg' will burst open with Rhubarb leaves soon.

The front bed, where we planted over a hundred daffodil bulbs last fall, and two dozen iris rhizomes. You can see the iris fans growing along the wall, and daffodils in clumps throughout the photo. Other green patches are the wildflower seeds, Malteese Cross, Black-eyed Susan, Coneflower, and Daisy. This bed is looking better and better every year. Re-cutting the edge last year made a big difference. As much as I hate to add more work, I'm going to add that to my plans every few years to keep the lawn and planting bed from merging.

Leaves of three...oh wait. That's a strawberry blossom.

The bed that was planted about 7 or 8 years ago is starting to fill in. The bulbs multiply every couple years, and eventually I hope to have the bed entirely filled with daffodils. I need to find another plant that can fill in once the daffodils are done for the season, perhaps day lilies, since I could divide the Stella d'Oro lilies around the electrical box this year. I need to get something there to keep objects from rolling off the edge of the driveway and cover up the daffodil foliage once the flowers fade away. Initially, this was going to be creeping phlox, which is very nice looking, but just doesn't create the 'boundary' I'm looking for of about 12 to 18 inches tall on the edge of the drive. Another thought is to get some Ruby Stella re-bloomers to counter the yellow all over the rest of the gardens. My assignment in the next week is to get some sturdy markers to identify gaps in the bulbs so I don't dig up anything when I plant the lilies next fall.

First seeds in the ground

I'm probably pushing my luck with frost, but I can't help myself - I'm a gambler at heart. I put in two rows of lettuce, a row of parsnips, one of carrots, and four of early snow peas. Crossing my fingers that any frosts do no serious harm, but I'd only be out a few cents in seeds and 45 minutes of time, right? Next succession planting for these should be in two weeks, which is right about the 'normal' time to start the seeds.

The indoor transplants are looking pretty healthy. Tomatoes and peppers have begun to sprout, and it appears all twelve petunias are sprouted (100% germination from last year's seed!). Now, to keep everything alive for the next two months.

I've noticed this year a few seed companies are selling something suspiciously similar to my first project on this blog. Yes, folks, they're selling ladder trellises for far more than it costs to build one. You might go out and DIY to save $50 or $75 (not to mention shipping and handling!) The three I constructed in 2006 are still doing very well, with minimal warping and splitting.

The Rocks.....

By popular demand...photos of the rock pile

Seed Starting Setup...

Since I've gotten a few questions about it, here are some new photos of the seed-starting setup in the corner of my basement. Nothing spectacular here, just some industrial shelving, a scratch-and-dent formica countertop, commercial heating mat with thermostat, fluorescent light fixtures, and seed flats. Out of the photo is a powerstrip with integral timer for the lights. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I don't buy the fancy grow lights, rather, I put one 'cool' bulb and one 'warm' bulb into the fixture, and the plants seem to like it well enough. Sure, fancy grow lights have more of the spectrum, but this is just a family garden, it isn't my source of income.

In the next photo, you can see the sprouting Petunia seeds - it looks like I'm 12 for 12 if you look closely. Hopefully, they will all survive! The fiber pots off to the side are my tomato and pepper plant starts - I've started 5 paste tomatoes, 3 jelly bean, 5 beefsteak and 5 bell peppers. I should start more peppers this week if I have the time.

Make way for mid-March

Progress on the garden! It was a gorgeous early spring day today, 55°F and sunny, with a nice northeasterly wind to dry off the ground. Spent an hour in the garden, weeding out the tree nursery bed and turning over 6 feet of the planting beds by hand. The soil is damp but not wet (not quite dry enough to drive the tiller in there, but I can certainly turn over a few beds for the early spring vegetables. I hope to get more turned this week and some hard-raking in to prepare the beds for the first crops.

Those seed tapes I spent so much time on this winter? Yep, those will be going in quickly. I need to make more as I finally picked up carrot seeds.

I've started the petunia seeds - a dozen or so this year. Hopefully I'll have success again.

Tomorrow will bring new photos of my starting bench, this year's additions are a heat mat thermostat with digital temperature gauge and a small fan to help combat damping-off. Thus far, all the herb seeds are merrily germinating, with a few growing well.

Chives are well represented in the herbs this season, they will take the place of my border surrounding the vegetable garden, at least on the north side of the border. The thought is that chives are very useful and perennial. As an added bonus, they are not frequently eaten by rodents or deer, so they should survive where other plants have become some critter's lunch. The flowerbed next to the garden that never has really taken off will become a herb garden of sorts, a place for my perennial herbs in full sun and exposed to some reasonable amount of irrigation.

Root view box update - you can see the roots that I've cut the tops off for thinning. All the seedlings have true leaves now, and the radishes look nice and healthy. Even at this young age, the beets are bright red and the radishes are pink. Looking at this photo, I guess we need to water the box again - things are starting to look a bit dry in there. I'm guessing that the roots are going to have a flat side as they grow into the window, but otherwise will still be round


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Coconut Coir - again

I've had a few extra days now to investigate the coconut coir bricks - they expand much less graphically than the pellets. One brick and about 4 quarts of water fills half a six gallon pickle bucket. I let them expand overnight and used a hand cultivator to break up any remaining clumps of coir. Everything seems peachy.

As for the germination of seeds in the coir - no problems there, I have twenty-two of twenty-four garlic chives sprouted and happy. Basil sprouted fine, even one rosemary seed has germinated already (unless it was a basil seed that launched an invasion of the rosemary pots). Photos will follow, but thus far everything seems just fine with the coconut coir in place of my previous favorite peat moss.
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