It’s been eight days since I sowed all the seeds for this frame, and for the previous four days its been raining heavily, and I think all that rain was what the salad table needed since I’m just starting to see some germination activity, more so from the Spicy Greens Mix and the Bordeaux, than from the Outredgeous. I guess we’ll see what happens in a couple more days.
Now that I ended up picking up a very large bag of potting mix at Costco. I thought that I would plant up one of the cells of the salad table to get some greens growing.
So in one of the sections, I filling it up to the top with potting soil, then divided it into three smaller sections. I ended up using the follow seeds from Johnny’s in this first section:
In the back cell: Spicy Greens Mix
Center cell: Bordeaux
Front cell: Outredgeous
Now the true experiment begins!
For the last couple of weeks I was on the fence (literally) about whether to add some more space to the garden, another 8′ by 16′ to be exact. Well I finally pulled the trigger on the idea, but I ended up executing the idea a little bit differently than the last time that I added onto the garden.
Usually I would take my pick/maddox and grub all the grass off the surface, which is a very time consuming and labor intensive task. So as I was looking at the space an idea popped into my head out of the blue, burn out all the grass out with my propane flame thrower! I was only able to get about 1/2 the plot done, since a rain storm ended up rolling in on Saturday afternoon. And last I checked, propane and lighting don’t mix. But for the half that I did end up getting done before the storm, it only took me about 35 minutes to get it done and that was even with the grass still being slightly wet from the rolling rain storms.
With just a little bit more burning to go this week, I’ll finally be able to plant up all the seeds for the sweet corn and the beans/snow peas in the ground.
You can really see the radishes in the backyard and the Swiss chard in the front yard coming in nicely. Also I’m starting to get a little bit of growth action on the lettuce.
From the way that the main rhubarb plant is growing, it looks like once again I should be able to get two very robust harvests out of the plant. I’m not so much worried about getting stalks out of the other four plants, so those are basically the “in case of emergency” cuttings for friends and family that might want a rhubarb plant.
Once again the centennial is doing gang busters when it comes to vine growth, a couple more days and I’ll finally have to run the new diagonal trellis system to support the centennial off the ground.
I also cleared out an 8′ x 8′ patch of the garden and planted up two kinds of radishes (French Blush & Sparkler), three kinds of beets (Detroit Red, Moneta & Golden) and two kinds of lettuce (Bordeaux and Outredgous.)
Here are a couple of pictures of the garden that I took two nights ago. It’s kind of crazy that in just about a week, how much the rhubarb and hops plants have growth.
Today was a beautiful day, nice and sunny and a balmy 79F. Before I went to work I put out the two parsley plants that I overwintered in the house to let them stretch out and take in some of the sun. I also snapped a couple of pics around the house of the various plant activity. Below are some pics of the rhubarb, hops, green onion/garlic and sedum sprouting. Enjoy.
Well I finally placed my seed order with Johnny’s tonight, and here is what I ended up ordering for $50.35 (shipping is included in that number.) Each packet of seeds ranged from $1.00 to $2.95 each, with a couple of the salad mixes being a great deal with 5,000 to 17,000 seeds for $1.50 a packet. Continue reading
I just got my Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog in the mail last month, so I’ve spent the last couple of weeks planning out what I want to order for this years garden. This way I’m not left high and dry like last year, in which I ended up getting all my seeds from Menards and there little Burpee display.
Here is the very large list that I’ve come up with so far of flowers, vegetable and herb seeds. Since I really don’t have the room to grow everything on the list, I’ll have to cut this list down a lot. But at least its a nice jumping off point to start a discussion. Continue reading
Other then the freezing rain coming down the last couple days, I’m trying to think warm. And with spring a couple of months out, its time for me to start some of my garden pre-planning, about what I want to plant this year. One of the first things that I’ve done this week is order myself a 2010 seed catalog from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Yeah I like jumping on their web site, and surfing around for stuff, but sometimes a hard copy just makes things a little bit easier. Two items that I’m thinking of ordering from Johnny’s are some Lovage seeds and maybe some Stevia seeds.
I’ve already picked up a packet of Burpee Swiss Chard – Fordhook Giant, while I was at Menard’s getting some Miracle Gro potting soil. And I’m also kind of curious if anything will grow out of the seeds that I saved from the Aji Limo peppers that I got from my farmer neighbor. But I guess we’ll see if anything pans out of the Aji Limo this year.
If anyone has any suggestions on what I should grow this year, now is definitely the time to let me know. So just post a comment with your plant ideas, since I’m always looking for suggestions. Thanks.