Garden Notes - March 24, 2014

I have about 150 tiny plants growing in my basement as of today, with more to come! Last Monday (March 24) I transplanted two dozen or so seedlings into cups.  Their roots had grown through the bottoms of the plugs, which told me they are able to easily draw nutrients from potting soil.  Also, the plants had developed their first "true" leaves, so it was time. Tonight I plan to transplant another 20+ seedlings.

I picked up two different potting soils to try: Fox Farm Ocean Forest (which I am currently using) and Miracle-Gro Potting Mix.  I learned last year (the hard way) that the quality of potting soil absolutely makes a difference in how well your seedlings grow.

I also picked up some Miracle-Gro Seed Starting Potting Mix, because I would like to grow certain flowers in trays rather than grow them individually in plugs.  Sweet alyssum is one example. In the meantime, I continue to sow more seeds:  milkweed, cosmos, cleome, eggplant, and basil.  I'll start my tomatoes next week!

Spring is here, but it still looks a little dreary outside.  I have been battling a terrible cold and cough, otherwise I'd be outside pruning my blueberry bushes and fruit trees.  I need to get my soil tested, too. I took a little walk around the yard the other day and everything is so soggy!  I was delighted to see some daffodil leaves poking through the ground, and also happy to see that all that thyme I grew from seed made it through the winter.  The rosemary didn't make it, though.  This is the second year in a row that I forgot to bring it indoors. 

Garden Notes - March 8, 2014

I started my seeds on March 5: bell peppers, cabbage, chives, thyme, head lettuce (Romaine and Bibb), Rudbeckia, verbena, and ageratum.  It only took 2 days for the little, tiny plants to appear - all except the verbena, chives and peppers. 

Unfortunately, I left most of my purchased "greenhouses" in my shed, and I don't feel like trudging through the snow to get to them.  All of the plastic lettuce containers that I have been collecting have been coming in as handy replacements! I fill them up with the water-saturated peat moss plugs, sow the seeds and label the containers with a sharpie. Done. I put them on the heating mats and under the lights. After the seedlings appear, I simply cut off the lids.

I learned to put the pepper seeds in the little peat moss plugs to avoid "damping off". However, the plugs where I sowed chive seeds seems to have grown webby.  I'm not sure what that's all about.

Also, the verbena seeds need a little extra attention.  They require the heat mat during the day for warm temperatures and at night I have to move them so they can have cooler temps (60 degrees fahrenheit). They could take as many as 28 days to germinate.  I don't mind:

Memorial Day Weekend - Journal Entry

These past 2 or 3 days have been cold and rainy.  Just a few minutes ago, I stepped outside to see how my plants are all doing.  What I saw was a little discouraging.

First, I went over to see my basil plants.  I noticed one of the seedlings had been eaten a couple of days ago, and then last night I discovered another plant was missing.   I suspect rabbits.  So, last night I put some clear plastic covers over the plants.  I have 4 basil plants left.  Yikes!  I plan on growing more seed, but I'm going to have to put some sort of protective cage around them.

Next, I walked over to my vegetable garden, half planted.  I had gone out last night to check the temperature of the soil and plants, because it was a very cold evening - 39 degrees.  As I was checking the temperature, I noticed that one of my eggplant seedlings had been ripped out of the ground and was just laying there.  When I went to replant it, I discovered the deep hoof impression that can only belong to a deer.  I hate deer.

So. I ran to the garage to grab a bottle of coyote urine that I bought to deter these pests.  One of my former instructors from WMMGA insists that it works, so I'm giving it a shot.  I soaked the cotton balls in the 3 vials that were provided with the urine and set them outside - one by the basil and 2 by the vegetable garden.  Because that didn't seem like enough, I dribbled more urine around the perimeter of the garden.

Today, as I inspected the garden, I can see that the plants are having a rough time.  The tomato plants actually look pretty good, but everything else looks a little battered.  Between the deer, rabbits, insects, cold, wind and rain, these little plants are having a rough beginning.

I'm just going to have to build a fence.  Eight feet high!!  It's not going to look great, but I don't care.  I'm tired of fighting these deer.  And coyote urine doesn't cut it.  After I came back in the house, I discovered that Shadow smelled disgusting!!! Apparently, he likes smell of coyote urine, and he managed to get it all over his fur.  Jamie had to sleep with him in the family room so that he wouldn't smell up the rest of the house, and then this morning gave him a bath.

On the positive side, the perennial garden looks beautiful!  There are a dozen plus alliums in bloom, and they look lovely with the small, yellow irises.  The taller, showier purple/yellow irises are also in bloom, and the purple midnight salvia looks magnificent.  Also in bloom are the pink geraniums, and the peonies, and white Japanese iris are about to bloom.  My new purple baptisia plant is also in bloom.

Photo courtesy of Treefarmsystem.org



Fertilizing Cucumber Seedlings - Don't

This year is the first year I've had much success with seedlings.  I tried last year, but my little plants were miserable because I didn't know what I was doing.

This year, I have been much more successful, but I'm still learning from my mistakes!

I decided to give my plants a little fish fertilizer because I watched another gardener do it in his video for his tomato plants.  Mine were still kind of small, the leaves seemed to be withering, so I thought maybe they needed a little food.  It helped the tomato plants a little....

Afterwards, I read that it is not necessary to give seedlings fertilizer until they are more mature.  I was giving it to all of my seedlings and it especially had a negative effect on my cucumber seedlings.  I won't do this again!  Compare the dark green leaves with the yellow-green leaves.  Half the seedlings are dark green, the other half are yellow-green.  I did decide to put some of the yellow-green plants in the garden, but I am also going to put in some seeds to start some new plants.

Potting Soils - The Results Are In

 

 

 

Well, I made an important discovery:  the type of potting soil you use is extremely important. 

 

The plants in all of these pictures were started by seed at the same time, yet some of the plants took off while others remained slow-growing.  The obvious factor?  The potting soil.

 

I used 3 different kinds and had the best results - hands down - with the first bag that I purchased.  I got it from Sixteen Acres Garden Center.  I do not have the name of it right now, but I am going to go back and get another bag of it.  It was a "slow-release fertilizer" type.  Anyway, I can see from these pictures that all the seedlings that I transplanted into 12-oz cups with this fertilizer did the best.

 

 

One final experiment:  Two weeks ago, I was about to throw out a bunch of tiny tomato seedlings that just never seemed to grow.  However, I noticed that I didn't have any Red Grape Tomato plants or Lee Fanelli Heirloom plants, so I decided to do a little experiment.  Suspecting that the reason they never grew was due to the lousy potting soil, I replanted them in the Fox Farm Ocean Forest (FFOF)potting soil.  These pictures show what a difference the potting sol made over just 2 weeks.  The first picture shows the seedlings that I was about to throw out:

 

 

These next two pictures show the seedlings after just 2 weeks:

 

 



Seedlings

Potting Soil

This is the first year that I have ever had any success with growing plants from seed, but what a learning experience it has been!

One of the challenges I always face is "damping off" , or "root rot", due to over-watering.  This year (aside from my first try at pepper plants) everything has gone really well, thanks to peat pellets. I tried 2 different kinds, peat and soil pellets and like the peat pellets better (I lost a whole flat of marigolds using the Jiffy pellets).

I noticed that the seedlings I transplanted first have done so much better than the seedlings I did in the following weeks.  I think it's because of the potting soil.  The first potting soil I used had a slow-release fertilizer incorporated in it.  Then, when I ran out, I was tempted to buy a really cheap potting soil called Jolly Gardener.  Well, this gardener isn't feeling too jolly!

The second potting soil was damp in the bag, and felt really heavy.  I think the dampness hurt the roots, because the plants have pretty much stopped growing.  I have tried a new potting soil called Fox Farm Ocean Forest (FFOF) which has been touted all over gardening forums.  Still, my seedlings seem dejected.  I think the longer the seedlings sit around in their peat pots, the more they lose energy to grow.

One of the biggest questions I have had is how and when to fertilize the plants.  Again, the first potting soil with the slow-release fertilizer seems to have worked best.

Last week, I started getting extremely concerned because I noticed some of the tomato leaves looking a bit shriveled, and I discovered some tiny bugs floating around.  Someone at the garden center told me that I probably have fungus mites, due to dampness.  Darn that Jolly Gardener! Her recommendation was to bring the plants up out of the basement to get some air and dry off.  So that's what I did.

Any way, here is a photo comparing two tomato seedlings, both sown on April 6th.  What a difference!

In all fairness, the plant on the left was sitting in a peat pellet for at least 2 weeks while I waited for it to develop true leaves.  I'm not sure why some of the plants grew so much quicker than the others.

New Method of Transplanting Seedlings

I had many new seedlings to transplant this week, but I wasn't quite sure how to deal with the peat pellets.  Should I try to take the seedlings out of the pellet, or leave them in an put the whole thing in a larger container?  I decided to go online and see what other gardeners are doing, and I discovered a really good video that demonstrates how to transplant seedlings that have been grown in peat pellets:

 

 

Also, several of the tomato seedlings that I had transplanted were leaning over:

 

 

 

One thing that this video taught me is to plant seedlings low in the cup, so as they grow and get taller, you can add more dirt.  The other important thing I learned is that it is important to keep the seedling as straight as possible - so it will grow upright and be strong.  So, I re-transplanted some tomato plants, and then I did a bunch of tomato seedlings, pepper seedlings, and eggplant seedlings.

 

 

 

I feel bad that I am resorting to plastic cups and not recycling old newspapers, but this saves me a lot of time and I like this system better.  Plus, the cups only cost 4cents apiece.





Everything's Growing!

I have been so busy these days, but I spend as much time in my garden as I can.  My two biggest regrets are that I have not had the time to prune my fruit trees, or blueberry bushes, and I still haven't done anything about protecting them.  I have been spending what little free time I have starting seeds, pruning, cleaning up the yard and amending the soil.  Here are some pictures of what's going on around here:

My thyme seedlings have developed their first set of true leaves, so I thinned them out by using tiny scissors to cut out any extras, and then I transplanted them into newspaper pots that I made:

How tiny these plants are!  I can't wait to smell these leaves this summer!  Hey!  I just noticed that the "cup" has "for His Kingdom" printed on it, upside down! The other has the words "Christian" and "philosophy" on it.  It's thyme for His Kingdom!

I planted 2 kinds of cucumbers, 2 kinds of marigolds, some zinnias and bachelor's buttons on the 17th - the cucumbers began to sprout after 1 day; everything else is sprouting today (19th):





 

I hung up a new light in my basement, since I was running out of room with my other 2 lights.  I calculated that I have about 250 little plants growing down there! So, I needed another light.  I learned in my WMMGA class that you don't have to buy special, expensive lights.  I bought a shop light for $20 and 2 T5 fluorescent bulbs.  I couldn't insert the bulbs at first, and ended up going back to Home Depot where a saleswoman showed me how. I then bought 4-foot chains to hang the lamp from the ceiling, so I can adjust it as the plants grow.  The chains that the light came with were only a few inches long:

 





Outdoors, things are popping up all over the place!  All the daffodil bulbs that Jamie planted are coming up:

 

 



Sadly, Jamie and I are going to have this tree taken down in November.  The kids grew up swinging from its branches.

Also, I see signs of peonies, bleeding hearts, chives, foxglove, forsythia and apple blossoms, plus tiny blue flowers that I don't know the name of:

And of course, the weeds are here:

 

 

Well, I guess these are "winter annuals"!  James asked, "Mom, what are all these tiny white flowers?"  I said, "Weeds". "What are weeds?"  "Plants that are growing where you don't want them to grow."  James felt sorry for the weeds.

 

A few weeks ago, the end of March, I planted lettuce, spinach and green onions in with the garlic:

 

 

 

The garlic is taking off:

 

 

 

And of course, there's Shadow.  He thinks it's his garden.  The neighbor's dog, Abby, thinks it's her garden, too.  I had to chase her out the other day, because she was rolling around in the manure I put down.  Sheesh! I have a hard enough time with the deer and the rabbits, never mind a dachshund!

 

Speaking of pests, notice how there are no fences in any of these pictures.  I had a "fence guy" come out this week to look at the yard.  Still don't know how we're going to fence it all in.