Let's Get This Party Started

Okay, so it was actually herbs that got started, not a party, but I'm just as happy. About a month ago, on March 16, I got out my starter trays, Jiffy pellets, and seed envelopes and got to work.

I like having a plan.

First off, I gave my starter trays a nice bleach bath. There's no reason to not begin with everything freshly disinfected.

We don't need any dormant funk messing things up.

I love the Jiffy peat pellets. Since I found them, I've used them exclusively to get my seedlings started. All you have to do is soak them in some warm water then slip them into the starter tray. Easy-peasy.

Jiffy pellets taking a swim.

While I feel like I can identify most herbs by sight now, it's always a good idea to record what seeds are planted where. In this case, I did two cells each for the herbs as well as eight for peppers and four additional for some wild native plant seeds. Then, the covered trays were placed lovingly under the grow light to enjoy fourteen hours of artificial sunlight each day thanks to the convenient timer.

Now do your duty!

Just four days later, the first dill seedlings emerged. 

Dill!

The dill was quickly followed by basil and asters the next day. Three days after that, the thyme, rosemary, lavender, catnip, and peppers emerged. The parsley was the final green sprout to show up on March 26.

Thyme, parsley, basil, rosemary, and catnip up front on April 13.

Lavender and dill on April 13.

As my little seedlings are enjoying the steady, calm weather inside the house, I'm making plans for their lives outside. I started my patio herb garden last summer with just two pots of herbs. Over the winter and spring, I've been collecting more pots.

Such pretty examples of international commerce.

Home Goods and T.J. Maxx have proven to be the best places to get reasonably-priced, pretty pots. I've added a lovely orange pot shaped like a tulip ($19.99, made in Vietnam), one with a painted floral design ($14.99, made in Spain), one with a raised feather pattern (14.99, made in Vietnam), a simple pale blue one ($16.99, made in Spain) , and a white one with partridges and pears ($16.99, made in China) to my collection. 

I think my basil will be in this pot.

We've still got a least a month before the seedlings end out all together outside on the patio. For now, the chives are on their own out in the world. Well, they're not entirely alone. They have the daffodils for company.

The chives seem happy enough with their yellow friends.

And the occasional rabbit comes by for a visit now and then.

I wonder if this is one of last years' munchkins?

Trying Something Wild

Last fall, I looked into the getting some native wild plants for our yards. When I was out shopping for mums, I heard something about getting asters instead. Asters are native plants, perennials, and great for pollinators in the fall. I did a little research at that time trying to find where to buy asters but ended up just getting a pot of mums for my porch decor. 

Some naturalized plants at my former home.

In the new year, I decided it was time to look into native plants again. The New York State DEC has a nice guide to native plants. (check it out here) With that as a starting place, I began searching the interwebs for sources of seeds. I eventually came across the website of the Wild Seed Project in Maine. I like the organization's mission to equip "community members with the resources they need to collectively restore native plants that expand wildlife habitat, support biodiversity, and build climate resilience" and they had seeds for five of the plants I was looking for in their shop - smooth blue aster, blue lobelia, blue iris, foxglove beardtongue, and flowering raspberry. At $5 each, I was happy to make my purchase and add a small donation.

The seeds arrived quickly, which was good because a few of them need to be outside for the winter in order to germinate. I finally had time today to get the seeds planted. I'm a bit on the late side, but we'll see what we get. The seed packets came with good instructions for planting and it took me very little time to get them all set.

Seeds on the soil just waiting for the sand on top.

My biggest concern is the mob of squirrels that live in our neighborhood. These little pots with their precious seeds need to be outside, exposed to the weather. That means the dirty little tree rats will be all over them. I'm not just guessing. I know this for a fact. My husband put out a few pots of pawpaw seeds to overwinter and the squirrels have relentlessly harassed them.

Poor pawpaws. I'm not even sure if the seeds are still in there.

The instructions suggested a piece of window screen be placed over the pots to prevent molestation, but I had another idea. We have a couple humane animal traps that aren't being used at the moment. I figure if they could keep squirrels, woodchucks, and a sad little skunk we weren't even trying to trap inside once the door slammed shut, they would, likewise, keep the creatures out. So, I placed the newly-potted seeds inside the traps and then set them outside - one in the shade and one in the sun, as needed. And I even had enough space to add the pawpaw pots as well.

The big trap in the shade.

The little trap in the sun (if it ever comes out)

And now we wait. Patience will definitely be a virtue as wild plant seeds take more time to germinate than commercially-bred flower and vegetable seeds. I did set aside a few of the aster and flowering raspberry seeds. They don't need to be exposed to the winter in order to germinate so I thought I'd try them under the grow lights when I get my herbs started. I bought another pot for my herb collection today - it's beautifully orange - and I'm dreaming of spring.

Nothing is safe!

 

The 2017 Garden

I have to start by admitting that I didn’t really do as much as I should have with the garden this summer. Perhaps since this is the third year, the novelty has worn off some for me. Or perhaps I’m just more generally lazy this year. I did put in the full garden but I neglected it some and my husband ended up doing a lot of the work that I usually do. With all that being said, it was a fairly successful season, even if my enthusiasm was lacking.

My last post here was in May, so there is a lot of catching up to do. Here’s how things went this summer.

May

The perennial plants in the garden came back quite well after the winter. I was picking thyme, marjoram, and chives in April. The horseradish came back strong and the rhubarb grew well enough to put some in the freezer. The asparagus was pretty good this year as well. The strawberries came back better than ever. I plan on doing a whole post just on them.

Thyme, marjoram, and chives

I planted the cool-weather seeds – carrots, beets, chard, pak choi, turnip greens, and peas on May 13^th. They all sprouted within a week. The beets were a bit spotty, however. That could have been because I got a mix of different types of seeds to try this year or maybe because of the steady rains we had this spring and early summer. The beets we did get were very good, though.

The garden on May 13th after planting cool-weather seeds

Peas two weeks after planting

I planted the rest of the garden on May 29^th. Much of the garden space was given to old standards – green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, and peppers. We didn’t bother with corn and potatoes this year but added soy into the mix. We also tried out some different vegetables including parsnips, silver line melons, and okra. I also decided to try growing European cucumbers rather than the pickling ones I usually grew. I ended up being disappointed by that decision. The cucumbers had large seeds and didn’t produce that well. I’ll be going back to the smaller ones next year.

The garden on May 29th after everything was planted

All the plants that I transplanted into the garden at the end of May were ones that I had started earlier in the season. I started eggplant, Poblano pepper, Juliet tomato, and beefsteak tomato seeds. I transplanted the seedlings into peat pots at the end of March and then transplanted them again into larger pots in late April. I probably started them a little earlier than I need to but I was anxious to get things going in the depths of winter. The tomatoes, in particular, were a bit spindly when I finally got them into the garden but they adjusted well once in their permanent homes.

Thinned seedlings in early March

Lovely, strong tomato seedling at end of March

Tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings transplanted into peat pots

Hardening off plants on the back porch in mid-May

June

It was a fairly wet start to the season but the garden didn’t seem to mind. By June, everything was coming along. At least a little bit of everything planted was growing. There was only one buttercup squash plant and that was attacked by stem borers before it got a chance to do much but otherwise things were going well. The pak choi was harvested and the few remaining plants were going to seed. The peppers and eggplants were setting fruit and I was taking fresh snap peas with me to work for lunch. I was pleasantly surprised by the turnip greens. They were a new addition to the garden. They grew fast and despite being quite prickly when picked, made for a very nice cooked green.

The garden on June 25th

July

In July, the garden really filled out. The peas were finishing up their run but everything else was going strong. The green beans were starting to produce as were the yellow squash and zucchini. Both the beefsteak and Juliets were covered in green tomatoes just waiting for some hot, sunny days to turn them red. 

Bright lights chard

Yellow Squash

Juliet tomato

Zucchini

As a special bonus, several plants sprouted from the composter. An abundance of Roma tomatoes and a strong acorn squash vine filled in around the base of the barrel.

 

"Wild" compost vegetables

The garden on July 29th

August

Harvest season was full upon us by August. The tomatoes had turned red and we almost had more than I knew what to do with. A week of rain made a lot of them split, however, and some of the large beefsteaks started to rot on the vine but another round of drier weather helped put a stop to that. The silver line melons ripened as did the cantaloupes. Both seemed watery and not as flavorful as we would have liked. Perhaps the soil wasn’t that good for melons.

Basket of produce

Beefsteak tomatoes

Silver line melon

Okra blossom

September

That finally brings us up to now, mid-September. The soy has grown well, despite the fact that a couple of young woodchucks managed to get into the garden and eat a good portion of the leaves. My husband just picked and processed it the other day and got almost two quart-size zip-lock bags of shelled beans.

Soybeans

There are still a lot of veggies in the garden that are ready and waiting to be picked – beets, carrots, chard, and turnip greens – and more still ripening – tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, onions, parsnips, cucumbers, and green beans. There is still plenty to do in the garden and lots of produce to harvested and put away for the winter.

The garden on September 10th

Pre-Garden Experiment

Last year, I let a couple pak choi plants go to seed. In the fall, I collected the seeds for use in this year’s garden. I was a bit surprised that there were so many seeds in the dried little pods. I got probably five times more seeds than what I had gotten in the packet I originally purchased. That made me wonder if there was perhaps something special about the store-bought seeds. There must have been some reason for them to cost what they did. What if the ones I had collected didn’t grow?

Pak choi seed pods

Pak choi seeds – such lovely colors!

 So, I decided to run a little experiment to test the viability of my collected seeds. In late February, I planted a handful of seed in my starter tray. I had so many of them. It wouldn’t hurt if I “wasted” some to see if they would grow. In just two days, little seedlings were pushing their way up through the starter. Success!

Perfect little pak choi seedlings

The seeds were proven viable so, why not keep them going? Two weeks later, I transplanted a dozen of the seedlings into a couple of low, disposable tin baking trays. I used four trays for the improvised plantings. I took two trays and put a layer of river stones in the bottom. I poked holes in the bottoms of the other two and filled them with potting soil. Then, I put the trays filled with soil on top of the trays with the stones so that my two mini-gardens would have good drainage.

Seedlings in the tray gardens

Pak choi in the garden took just a little over a month to go from seed to harvest. A month after putting the experimental seedling into the trays, they were still on the small side. That was not much of a surprise. There really wasn’t much space for roots. The plants did look quite nice, though, with perfect miniature leaves. I feel, when planted in the garden, the seeds will do just fine.

Mini-toy choy

I gave the experiment another week or so then decided it was time to eat the test subjects. The twelve plants provided enough tiny pak choi leaves to add to a stir fry with fresh asparagus from the garden. While the plants never reached their full potential size, I am calling it a success and will confidently plant the saved seeds in this year’s garden.

Pak choi right after a watering