Time to Plant Peas,Radishes and Broccoli Seedlings!

Time flies by when one is having fun.  It even flies by when one is not having so much fun!  I had a bad cold that lasted three weeks.  

Typical springtime weather means that today it may be 79 degrees Fahrenheit and tomorrow 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  We are definitely subject to possible freezing temperatures at night.  However, it is the perfect time to plant peas and other cool weather crops.  

I did not get any gardening done when I was sick. Finally, on April 20th, I saw that the month of April was slipping away and knew that I had to start getting peas and radishes planted!

Last fall I had cleaned out all the old plants, added compost and raked the bed smooth.  A hard crust had formed on the soil over the winter.  I used a rake to break up the crust and loosen the soil and rake it smooth again.  

In the background you can see I also set up six "Wall-O-Water" season extender tepees which I will use for tomato seedlings in a few weeks.  Right now, the Wall-O-Waters are like miniature greenhouses and are helping to warm up the soil.   

I planted a row of Sugar Sprint Snap Peas.  In the past, I have soaked the pea seeds overnight and then dusted them with legume inoculant before planting.   The legume inoculant has beneficial bacteria which encourages the legumes to form high-nitrogen nodules on their roots.  The nodules result in bigger plants and better yields.  This year, all the inoculant I found in the stores indicated that the seeds should not be soaked and that the inoculant should be sprinkled liberally in the row along with the seeds.  So that is what I did.  As an aside, sprinkling the inoculant liberally resulted in using the entire package of inoculant in that one row of peas!  

I planted a row of radishes right next to the row of peas.

I also planted some broccoli seedlings, making two rows of plants, spacing them 18" apart.

Our spring winds are cold and dry.  Seedlings can sometimes become desiccated and die.  I decided to utilize a row cover to help mitigate the temperatures and wind.  I created the row cover by stapling lightweight row cover fabric on a frame of concrete-reinforcing wire.  This is the same wire that I use to make tomato cages.  I poked  the wire ends into the ground to help hold the whole thing in place.  I felt that it was still too lightweight and could easily blow away in the wind, so I secured it all down with lengths of 2"x4" lumber and a cinder block at each end.  

Now I'm waiting for everything to sprout!

Aaaaaaaand, They're Up!!

Here they come!    Five days after sowing the seeds in individual peat cells in my miniature plastic greenhouse, tomato seedlings are beginning to sprout!

Day Five: Tomato seedlings begin to push up through the soil surface!

Day Six: Most of the tomato seeds have sprouted!

Day Seven: The pepper seedlings begin emerging from the soil!

..... and also Day Seven: the tomato seedlings are looking good!  Visions of yummy tomatos sliced on a burger, diced in a salad and eaten whole right in the garden make me smile!

Starting Tomatoes Indoors

It has been the typical on again, off again Spring weather.  One day it is warm and sunny and the next day it is freezing!  It is so tempting to get the seeds planted.  Depending on what source a local gardener consults, the last killing frost of the year in this location happens (on average), on or around May 15th.  It is the words "average" and "on or around" that allows for freezes to happen later than May 15th.  Let's face it, we are talking about predicting the weather.  Not exactly an exact science.  An old saying dictates that there is nothing more changeable than the weather.  However, I once read a newspaper article written by Margaret Lauterbach, a local Master Gardener, in which she said that peas could be planted shortly after St Patricks Day.  

It was raining on St Patricks Day so I couldn't get out and plant in muddy conditions.  I opted to start my tomato seedlings!  

This year, I chose to buy a seed starting flat.  The flat included a bottom tray to facilitate watering, tiny cells made out of  peat, and a "greenhouse" cover.  I also bought some seed starter mix from the local garden center.     

Here's the seed starting flat:  the bottom tray with the little peat cells resting inside, and the greenhouse cover.

I poured in the seed starting mix, and smoothed it into the peat cells with my hand.  

I made labels by cutting strips from an old plastic milk jug and used a waterproof pen to write the name of the variety and the date planted.

I planted three tiny seeds in each cell, and covered them lightly with the seed starting mix.

Three tomato seeds in their cell, waiting to be covered with soil.

As I planted each row, I labeled it with the label that I had made.

Then I poured water into the bottom of the tray, to a depth of about 1 inch.  The soil quickly soaked up the water, wicking it upward into the top layer of the soil.  

Then I put the greenhouse cover on top and set it on my warm seed starting mat.  

I have always used a household heating pad, the kind purchased at a drug store, to provide extra warmth for my seedlings.  It has worked fine for me in the past, but this year I splurged, and bought myself one of the electric seedling heat mats.


 Now all I have to do is wait for the seeds to germinate and come up out of the soil!

A Few Warm Days Trigger Gardening Urge

Nothing like a few warm and sunny days for triggering a gardening urge.  However, it is only the first of February.  That means it is still winter.  It will probably be another month and a half until I can even plant peas! However, now is a good time to think about the vegetables I want to plant this year.

I was shopping this week and noticed that all the home improvement stores, hardware stores and grocery stores are putting out racks of garden seeds.  I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame!  A person can spend a lot of time standing in front of those seeds, trying to decide what to grow. 

Sometimes I find it difficult to find the exact kind of tomato or green bean seed in the seed rack.  It doesn't appear as if the seed rack contains a variety I had heard about from a friend, or from a program on TV or the internet.  For this reason, I have found that I like perusing the seed catalogs, either online or in hard copy, in the comfort of my own home.  All the information that one can find on the front and back of each seed packet is written in the seed catalog.

Every seed company is different.  Some offer all organic seeds, others offer all the new hybrid seeds, or lots of heirloom varieties or varieties developed in foreign countries.  I generally explore five or six different seed catalogs or seed company websites.  The old style (paper and ink) seed catalog, which is mailed to a physical address, is still a favorite way of shopping for seeds.  It's easy to jot notes in the margins of the pages so that I can return to the page later. 

Most, if not all, seed companies also have online catalogs now.  It is very easy and convenient to order seeds online.  Their seeds are competitively priced. Many seed companies author online newsletters or blogs, and offer coupons and discount codes once you are subscribed.  

Of course, I want to grow everything!  I make a wish list of all the different varieties I want to grow.  Then, I have to look at my garden diagram and figure out exactly how many plants will fit.  Finally, I have to go through the list and winnow it down to the ones I will actually have room for!  

For my garden diagram, I have used the online garden planner available through a link on Territorial Seed Company's website.   The garden planner has video tutorials that helped me understand all the features.  I used the draw feature to show the basic dimensions of my garden beds, and then used the click and drop feature to "plant" my garden.  The garden planner is very cool, in that it told me that the garden space I have allowed for peppers has enough space for 14 Ancho pepper plants, three tomatillo plants, five tomato plants, 73 radish plants, etc., etc.  It is a useful tool.  It is also a fun way to plan a garden.  The garden planner is free for 30 days.  

The last step was to order the seeds.  I did that online.  Mission accomplished.  I am looking forward to planting!

It Is Not Too Late to Plan...

Up until now, I had been proceeding with an informal plan "in my head".   I decided that I  would like to make a basic, Beginning Yard Map of my backyard so that I could plan with a little bit of forethought.    I measured the perimeter and graphed it out.  This is what my back yard looks like without the garden beds that I created. 

It isn't totally accurate, but it is close.  Each square = 3 square ft.  

Beginning Yard Map

I also wondered about what sort of utilities might be buried under the surface of my yard.  I did not want to accidentally damage some utilities while digging.  I should have done this before I ever began to dig, but as soon as I thought of it I decided I better get it done before I got too involved in my plan!  

So I called the Dig-Line.  It is a free service.  They came out within a day or two and located buried electricity, natural gas, telephone and cable tv lines, marking them with colored spray paint.  It turns out that the only buried lines that are in the backyard are telephone and cable tv.  

I was relieved to learn that I hadn't dug close to those lines!

I  transcribed the utility line locations onto my diagram.  They are the purple and orange dashed lines.  Then I drew in the garden beds that I had created in 2014 (indicated with a blue arrow).  

Phase One - Year One Garden

I am calling this my Phase One -Year One Garden because I am just planning and putting in the beds, or planting areas.  I have lots of ideas to expand in the coming years!

Fall Harvest, November Snowstorm and a Long Winter's Nap.

 

The garden did fairly well for the length of time that I actually had spent gardening. 

                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                 

I had a few harvests of squash and tomatoes in late September and early October.  The peppers and tomatillos I had planted did not produce anything.  I think it was because I did not get them planted until it was too late in the season. 

Pictured below:  (Clockwise, from top left) Yellow Crookneck summer squash, Buttercup winter squash, Cherokee Purple tomato, Early Girl tomato.                                                                                                                                                                     

   

            

Frosty nights were predicted, and as I hadn't picked all the produce, I took precautions by covering the tomato and squash plants every night with some old quilts.  With a quilt covering, the frost nipped the plants but did not kill them.  Warm days returned, I suspended the nightly quilt covering, and I continued to harvest a few more squash and tomatoes.  

The harvest finally ended when we had a snowstorm in mid November.  Nine inches of snow fell and that killed the garden.  I was really regretting that I hadn't simply cleaned up the garden in October! 

Luckily, the weather warmed, the snow melted away, and I was able to do the garden cleanup.  I pulled out all the dead tomato and squash plants and put them in the compost pile.   Then I dug up the soil and raked it all smooth so that it would be ready for planting in the Spring.

More snow arrived on Christmas to blanket the garden, and now it is truly tucked in for the winter!

    

Caging Tomatoes Gone Wild!

All this time I had been removing grass and digging up the soil as quickly as I could.  The movers had arrived to deliver my household goods and I had more things to do.  Since I had gotten such a late start on a garden, I never really knew if my vegetable seedlings would grow very much.   I told myself that even if they did not grow this year, all the work I was doing now would be garden work that I would not have to do next year.  However, by July 30th I realized that the little tomato plants were really growing!  I realized that if I did not support these growing tomato plants, they would soon be sprawled all over the garden area with their fruits developing exposed and resting on the surface of the soil!  Tomatoes Gone Wild!

As I had done in the past, I purchased a roll of concrete reinforcing wire and using a pair of bolt cutters and some zip-ties, I constructed sturdy cages for the tomato and tomatillo plants.  

The method that I used for making the cages can be read in a previous issue of this blog.  I cannot figure out how to make this a link to click on to the past blog post but the date and title is:

Tuesday, July 17, 2012; Tomato Cages, Trellises and Dry, Dry Weather. 
The URL address is  http://thisgirlgardens.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html

I think if you highlight the above URL and then right click on it you can select the option that will take you to this page.  You might have to scroll down to the correct date.  


In this picture, taken July 30, 2014 you can see the cages surrounding the tomato and tomatillo plants.  You can also see that I have also planted one squash plant.  It looks a bit sickly.  That poor squash plant had been subjected to existing in a peat pot for over a month.  I hope it lives!