In Like a Lamb...

The last two days have been LOVELY outside. Low 60s, brilliant sunshine, brisk breeze. I'm trying to hover over the peas/spinach/lettuce that have already been planted, so I have been making myself busy in other areas of the garden. The weather has coordinated nicely with Joe taking an extra nap in the afternoons due to teething, so I'm taking it as a Universe signal that I need to play outside. Here's what I've been up to:

 

Today I planted onions (above), carrots, radishes, lettuce, and spinach in Quad 1. The carrots and radishes went in along the edges of rows of peas. We'll see how that goes. I still have LOTS of onion bulbs and carrots to plant, so we'll see where those get fit in. 

I checked in on the wintersown broccoli and lettuces in the milk jugs:

Cute, right? The broccoli is throwing out true leaves nicely, so hopefully they will be ready for transplanting in another week or two. Just like everything else, I think they were slowed down by the ice storm, and I'm hoping the weather stays mild enough for us to get a harvest from them. If not, we'll just leave them in until fall.

I am optimistic about the cauliflower seedlings that I started inside. I'm starting to harden off the biggest ones outside.

 

They looked so cheerful hanging out on the back porch, soaking in the rays. I hope the other 5 will be ready to join them by next week. Tomorrow is supposed to be another lovely day, so I tilled up Quad 2 this evening to get ready to plant potatoes.

 

 

Here is all 16lbs cut into pieces and drying on the kitchen table. I wonder how long it will take for me to get my kitchen table back...

Seedling Update

I'm really glad I decided to winter sow seeds this year, if nothing else than the fact that the indoor seedlings were protected from the freezing temps of my unheated house last week. I'm shocked by the success of the cauliflower seedlings, pictured above on the morning of the 3rd day after sowing. I guess my makeshift growing station did the trick! Here is the same seedling later that evening:

 

So chipper! I have three other plants just like this one that are plugging right along...so much so that they are actually getting a bit too big for their britches and are falling over. I am reluctant to call this legginess yet because I only pressed the seeds into the surface of the soil hoping they would receive as much light as possible, so their roots are super shallow.

 

I read somewhere that brassicas benefit from deeply transplanting, and like tomatoes, if you bury the stem, it will produce more roots. So yesterday I opened up the soda bottle greenhouses and tucked in a few spoonfuls of warm, moist soil around the little seedlings to prop them up. 

Much better. They rewarded me today by waving out nice, full true leaves to catch some rays (the first sunny day in a while--we all needed it).  I braved Monday's snow shower to peek in on the broccoli seedlings outside in their milk jugs, and despite being frozen to the table they are sitting on, I was greeted with many of these little faces:

 

This little guy wasn't even close to being one of the biggest. There are about 2-3 seedlings in each jug, and I'm hoping they will be ready for transplanting in early March. It's incredible how warm it stays inside the jugs, despite overcast, wet, freezing weather. I should remember that for the next power outage!

Starting Seeds...You Hear That, Seeds? Start!

For the last week or so, Joe has been very confused. He sees me in the kitchen, mixing stuff in stuff in the brownie bowl and breaking out the cookie sheets. He doesn't understand why we aren't eating what Mama's cooking. Technically, I'm not cooking anything. I'm starting seeds.

Drawing on the model of WinterSown.org, the general idea is to create a mini greenhouse out of recycled materials for early cool-weather crops like broccoli, etc., and to stick them outside and let them do their thing until they're big enough to transplant into the garden. The benefits to starting seeds this way is that you don't need any special equipment, you don't have to buy already-started plants in early spring, and you'll have something to feed your obsession in the dead of winter. The benefits to the actual seeds is that they germinate fairly naturally according to the local climate while still receiving some protection from pests, heavy winds, floods, etc.

I'm doing all of this from the comforts of the kitchen, using kitchen utensils for the most part.

I mix up the seed starting mix with some warm water so it's just moist, then add it to rinsed-out milk jugs that I've cut mostly in half. I've also poked a few holes in the bottom so the water can drain out.

Tasty! I planted broccoli in these and taped them back up. I've read that broccoli can germinate at lower temperatures, so I thought they'd do well outside. These bad boys are parked on an old table behind the garage.

I'm hoping that soon I'll see little greenies when I check on them, but for now this is the view from the top:

I'm also doing a hybrid method of starting cauliflower seeds. Using clear soda bottles (for more light), I'm keeping them inside in a super-sunny window until they germinate. My reading suggests that although this is a cool-weather crop, these seeds need temps of over 70 degrees to germinate, and 14-16 hours of light a day.

I wrapped the bottom of each bottle in foil to help draw in and keep the heat, though I don't know if that actually helps or not. I'm really trying to avoid setting up a formal grow light and heating pad system to keep things tropical. At night, I set them up with a lamp for a few extra hours:

Hey, it may not be a fancy tube light, but that bulb IS a compact fluorescent, so that counts for something, right? I'm not too worried about the plants getting leggy as they stretch for the light because as soon as they have true leaves, they're headed outside. The two flanking flats are petunias and yarrow seeds that I wanted to get a start on because they need a looooong growing season. Once they actually sprout, I'll need to adjust the plastic wrap cover.

I keep telling myself that if these experiments don't work, then I can always buy plants later on. If they do work, however, I reserve the right to run around screaming like a mad scientist about them being alive.

Surprise Harvest

What do you get when you plant something during the wrong season, wait six months, and forget about them completely? You get this:

Yep, that is an actual cauliflower head peeking through. This cold-weather veg is meant to be planted in late winter or early fall in these parts, but we planted 3 of them in mid-spring. They didn't die during the summer heat, but they didn't do anything else, either. In the last month, they've taken off and when I went to visit them this morning, they were ready to harvest.

Aren't they pretty? I had no clue what to expect from these lovelies, but to give you a sense of scale, here they are next to a full-sized apple:

Pretty big. I broke them apart, blanched them and filled up a 1 gallon-sized+1 quart-sized freezer bags with them. I think I'll save the gallon for Christmas dinner (nothing like bragging about serving homegrown veggies in the dead of winter, right?). This surprise harvest has really encouraged me to try more cauliflower and broccoli in the spring (ahem, EARLY spring) and again next fall.

I am also fairly amazed by my die-hard pepper plants. They just won't quit. This is only part of what was growing out there today; I left several peppers on the plants to get bigger.

These will get chopped and tossed into the freezer.

My cherry tomatoes have also made a bit of a comeback as well. I think the Indian summer we're experiencing is to blame for the extra long tomato season:

I'm growing these in a large Tomato Tree (the kind where the plants grow out the side, not the bottom) but they're going in the ground next year. The tomato plants were more leggy and tall than they were productive, and these are actually the most fruits I've seen on this plant at one time the whole season.

Live and learn, and then harvest.