The Final Countdown

Ba-ba da dum! Ba-ba DUN DUN DUN!

I think it's a combination of how eager I am to start putting stuff in the ground, and how eager everyone is to finally shed off the last remaining signs of crappy-crappy winter, but all I can think about is "Last frost, last frost, last frost!"

A few plants came in the mail yesterday- passiflora, ruby thyme and a purple rose. I can't put them in the ground yet, because we're supposed to get frost again tonight. But, I think that's the last we'll see of it! How discouraging to have a house full of plants and we had to carry the lime tree and the strawberries inside last night. The lime is so heavy he'll just spend the day in the house, since we have frost again tonight. *le sigh*

Most of the seeds I started indoors are ready to go, though I'm going to wait a while to harden the tomatoes. I don't want to repeat the last disaster! I've put the finishing touches on the planting chart, and I bought a car full of lumber to make trellises for the tomatoes. I have 17 cages, but have abandoned the idea of using them for the big, fruitful tomato plants I intend to grow. I'm going to try to put the pepper and cucumber plants in the cages instead. By the way, I started the cucumbers WAY too early. They are huge and floppy and looking sadly at me from their tray. "Please, give us room to grow! Something to climb! Somewhere for our roots!"

Not much longer now, little fellas. Not much longer.

Totoro

In one of my favorite movies of all time, "My Neighbor Totoro," the girls plant seeds in their yard and immediately begin checking the soil for seedlings. After a few days of just looking at dirt, they have a dream that the forest spirit comes to visit them and helps the seeds grow into a giant tree. In the morning, the seeds have sprouted, and they're left to wonder if it really was a dream...

Last night, we had some family time in the garden, and Juliette helped me dig up the dirt so I could plant our cauliflower (Romanesco Veronica) and some carrots. She had such a good time. ("DIGGIN!") and it was fun to all be outside in the cool evening air.

So, of course, it was way too soon to be checking for sprouts, but that didn't stop me from going outside to peek. I took some pictures of our piles of dirt, for your entertainment.

Here are the raised vegetable beds. You can see Little Lime in the corner!
The next pic is a side bed that has peas, carrots, spinach and a few potatoes. If you're thinking the pea trellis looks like it was made using ugly, cat-hair coated scraps of wood, the wrong hardware, and Disney-like innocent stick-to-it-iveness, you're right!

Finally, here's a picture of a bed that will mostly be herbs and a few flowers. We're still painting, though. It'll be green soon! (the garage, and the bed!)


I can't believe I'm saying this, but Happy Earth Day!

How to start seeds

If you want to have a considerable garden and don't want to pay a fortune for plants, you'll want to start with seeds. And if you don't want your seedlings to die (by the way, only a few of the tomato seedlings went to the happy garden in the sky. They're recovering nicely.) You'll need to give them a good start. Here's what you need:

a. Dirt. But not just any ole' dirt. Go with a seed-starting mix. There's lots of moisture-holding peat in seed-starting stuff. More on that later

b. A tub of some kind to mix the dirt with water. I used a bin that once contained spinach. Since I went through this process several times this spring, it was handy to just have a tub with a lid and not have to start from scratch each time.

c. A seedling tray or peat pots.

d. Seeds.

e. Plastic wrap.

f. A way to label the plants.

1. So, the first lesson that I learned is that you can't put dry starter soil into the pots and try to integrate the water into it. Peat needs to soak up the water, or else it just rests on top. So you'll want to pour the water into your tub and stir it with the dirt. There's enough water when you can squeeze the mix into a ball with your hand, but the ball easily breaks apart if you poke at it.

2. Pack this into the pots. Too tight, and the roots won't have room. Too loose and it'll compress after you water it. Also, don't fill it all the way to the top, or the water will run off when you water.

3. Fluff the top of the soil and put the seeds in the soil as deep as it says on the packet.

4. Gently press the soil down again.

5. Label! Don't assume that you'll remember (unless you only planted one thing) or that you'll be able to tell them apart. (new seedlings look very similar)

6. Cover the tray with plastic wrap. This increases the temp and humidity, which encourages sprouting. When the seedlings are tall enough to touch the plastic, remove it.






Some things to know:
- Keep the medium moist. The best way to water seedlings is to put water in the base of the tray or pan and let the water wick up through the dirt.
- White, spidery looking mold is pretty common in new seedling trays. I've read that it's harmless (the peas I planted came out fine, despite their moldy-start) but if you don't like it, you can use weak chamomile tea to moisten the soil. I started a tray of ground-cover plants with chamomile tea and there was no mold. Sweet.
- As soon as you see anything green, you'll want to give those little guys sunlight. Some seeds grow really tall really fast in search of adequate light. I think when that happens, you've ruined your chances of enjoying that crop (this happened to my Brussels spout and cauliflower).
- You'll want to give your budding plants SMALL doses of the outside world when it is warm enough and they're big enough. (See previous post.)

Now, you have a dilemma. Because unless you want a CROP of tarragon, you probably have 80% of your seeds left in the packet. You can:
a. coordinate with a friend before hand to only buy half of what you want to plant each and then swap.
b. save them for next year and expect them to lose 80-50% of their likelihood to sprout.
c. donate them to a local seed library, if you live in a big city that has fancy things like that.
d. wait till the weather warms up and toss them in a neighbor's yard and watch their surprise when tomatoes grow up out of nowhere.

And to further discuss seeds: if your plants come from an "open-air" germinated plant (or heirloom) you can harvest seeds from the plants you grew and not need to buy seeds next year! I have no experience with this, though. Google it or wait till my lesson in the fall. Happy planting!

The Lime Tree

For Christmas this year, Charlie bought me a lime tree. Well, actually, it kind of went like this:
~Late November~
Julianna: "Sweetie, did you know that you can buy lime trees?"
Charlie: "yeah?"
Julianna: "Yeah, and you can grow them in pots. And then you have lots of limes.
Charlie: "Oh."
Julianna: "Yeah. That would be so cool. To have a lime tree. I never remember to buy limes at the store. Yum."

~A few weeks later...~
Julianna: "Good news! You bought me my Christmas present!"

And so the lime trees arrived at our house. We got one for my mom and one for me. They were lovely and fragrant and stately. I doted on them. Mom's tree made it safely to her home for Christmas. Mine... lost leaves.

And then it lost more leaves.
So I watered it more. And it lost more leaves.
So I watered it less. And it lost more leaves.

Now, my mother isn't what you'd call a green thumb. So here's her tree, thriving away... Mine:

Awesome.


I finally got my act together and wrote to the nursery and asked if they would pretty please honor their guarantee to give me a tree that wouldn't die in a matter of months. And, lo and behold! It came via UPS *today*!

Let me tell you. It is even prettier than the first! Lush in color, lovely in shape, and speckled with blooms and the teeniest, tiniest limes! It is happily potted, covered against the cold, and sitting in a big, draining sort of pot on our patio.

I am going to own the gimlet this year.

Tomatastrophe

Remember yesterday when I said I was putting my seedlings outside for an extra boost of sunlight? I thought wrong.

After snuggling Juliette and putting her to bed, I was so comfy-drowsy that I thought I'd shut my eyes and snooze for a little while myself. I woke up two hours later, after 9. It was dark, we hadn't eaten dinner, and the little guys were still outside.

Whether it was too much sun during the day or too much cold at night, I couldn't tell you. But they were pale green-yellow, dry, floppy and very, very sad. The tray of cherry tomato seedlings are nearly all bent in half and dead. I think I'll be able to save one, maybe two.
The pic on the left is the yellow, wilty leaves; the pic on the right shows the cherry tomato seedlings. The eight right-most cells are their home, and you can see that they are nearly all dead.



This practice of bringing therapeutic signs of life into our somewhat stagnating, frustrating house is not helping today.

On the positive side, I wanted to grow a few Thai Hot Pepper plants as a thank-you to our friend Alex for his help with our yard (even though he said it was an early birthday present). The seeds came yesterday for the Thai's, a few Italian sweet peppers (which I picked mostly because I know my grandma will love them) and Bell Peppers. I'll start them today, probably. And I'm finally putting spinach, lettuce and some of the forget-me-nots in the ground today or tomorrow, providing it stops drizzling.

We'll just file this whole situation away under "experience" and move on, I guess.

So, we have made tremendous progress in the garden, and I'm just counting down the days till we can comfortably put things in the ground after fear of frost.

Before Easter, the guys filled the raised beds with good quality garden soil, cared for the lawn and other tasks. We've been weeding and pulling and cleaning and carting away heaps of yard waste and just getting everything in excellent condition. The yard is starting to look very lush and healthy and in a few days it will be safe for a good mow. We'll look like we actually care about our property!

I am totally in love with the seedlings as they push up from their little pods. How cute is it to watch brand new life? And the thing I did not know is how similar all the plants look as they first emerge from the soil. The "first leaves" (or cotleydons) all pop out of the seeds looking like little teardrops. Then, after they grow and expand and help the plant absorb sunlight, the true leaves emerge. Here's what I mean:

First, little seedlings push out of the soil and they look like this:

Tiny little green flecks just peeping out of the soil. They are tiny and short and start to absorb sunlight. As the stem grows and the leaves grow, the plant starts to absorb energy from the sunlight. The cotleydons develop and grow and soon "true" leaves pop out, like you can start to see growing on these tomato seedlings:
Now the plant is ready to get moving! I swear, some mornings I come and look at the little guys and think they grew a whole inch or more over night! On this next picture, you can see how the seedlings still have the cotleydons, but their true leaves are really big and they're getting a second set!




As the seedlings grow, I've been putting them under a fan for a few minutes in the morning and afternoon, which forces the plants to grow deeper roots. Also, when the sun is nice and bright, I've been putting the trays outside to give them a day of bright sun- more than they'd get on the window seat! Of course, it's back inside again by sunset!

I'm surely going overboard with tomatoes this year, but I can't help myself. Whenever we have homemade, canned tomatoes it just tastes SO fantastic! There's something special about knowing that you can do these sorts of things for yourself. When we can go outside and pluck food out of our garden that we grew ourselves, I will be so very excited. For the time being, we'll have to just wait and buy produce from the grocery store. But when my garden is full of juicy tomatoes, you're all invited to come over and bite right in! Bring your own bib!