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

Going to Seed

I was finally able to get out into the garden this evening during a very brief break in the rain. It has been very wet over the last several days. We got more than an inch and a half of rain just over the weekend and it has only slowed since.

Proof that the sun actually exists

I was glad that the rains paused so I could get a little work done. The garden does not look any worse for the recent soaking. I think the raised beds have allowed for decent drainage. The spinach and arugula have needed to be dealt with for some time now. The spinach bolted fairly quickly with the early arrival of hot weather. The arugula has since gone to seed too. I didn’t realize that it would get prickly as it got older. The flowers are lovely though.

Spinach gone to seed

Lovely little arugula flowers

I pulled out all the spinach and most of the arugula. Under the larger plants there were a half-dozen or so seedlings just starting out so I left them. Over the weekend I got a packet of mixed lettuce seeds. It certainly was not an ideal time to plant with the ground being so wet but at least I didn’t have to water the seeds in. It started raining again maybe half an hour after I went inside to wash the greens. I only planted about half the packet so if the seeds end up rotting instead of growing, I’ll have another shot at it.

After pulling the spinach and arugula and planting more seeds

In other garden news, the beets and turnips are growing very well. We’ll be eating some of them soon. All four varieties of tomatoes have set fruit with the Early Girls looking particularly nice. My sugar snap peas blew over in high winds we had a couple weeks ago. I did not realize they were going to grow five or six feet tall or I would have built better support. They’ve bounced back, though, and we should be eating peas by this weekend. And the corn is already knee-high days before the Fourth of July.

Early Girl tomatoes

Bent but not broken pea plants

The corn seems to be enjoying the weather

Oh, and guess who had babies…

Munchkin in the back yard

Yeah, and her too….

Twins!

Everything is in the Ground

Last Saturday morning we woke up to a light frost. None of the new seedlings suffered any damage that I could see but I’m glad I hadn’t planted the rest of the garden. When we lived in the Adirondacks, we always waited until Memorial Day weekend or later to plant the garden. Even with the slightly longer season here, that still seems like a good rule of thumb. After a frosty start, the day warmed up and I did finally transplant my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and herbs. I also planted the rest of my seeds. It took me about three hours to get everything set to my liking. Now all my raised beds are filled.
 

Tomato and pepper plants getting used to their new environment

Yesterday evening I weeded my garden for the first time. There really weren’t many weeds to pull yet but there were enough to compete with the seedlings. Plus, I actually like weeding. There’s something about moving through the garden, pulling out wayward stalks, leaving just the desired plants and fresh, clean ground behind, that I find very satisfying. My back and legs may beg to differ but my muscles get used to it fairly quickly. I also took the opportunity to thin some of the plants. I always feel a little bad about pulling up seedlings before they’ve reached their full potential but it is necessary. 

Pull the grass, leave the chard.

Another thing I felt badly about doing was pulling the flowers off my strawberry plants. I know that keeping the plants from setting fruit helps them grow stronger roots but I really like strawberries. As with all home-grown produce, strawberries taste so much better when you grow them yourself. I may give in eventually and let a few berries grow or I may not. I just have to keep reminding myself that I’ll be grateful for this season’s sacrifice of fresh strawberries next year.

Strawberry plant in bloom

Removed flowers and tiny strawberries – just wait until next year!

It’s amazing how quickly some of the plants are growing. The turnip seedlings appeared just four days after planting the seeds. The pak choi will be ready to pick in no time (it is a miniature variety) and we should have our first batch of arugula in about a week. I’m really looking forward to eating fresh produce from our own garden but as I said to a coworker today, “don’t count your zucchini before they hatch.”

Pak Choi on May 22

Pak Choi on May 27

Unfortunately, I had to cut my adventures in gardening a little short yesterday. While wiring the lattice fence to the posts to make it sturdier, I felt something like spider webs on the back of my hand. Since I had seen a couple spiders while working, I thought nothing of it. Spiders don’t mess with my plants and as long as they are outside I let them be. When the odd, light tickling sensation did not go away after brushing off my hand, I took a closer look. There were dozens of tiny, pale gray creepy-crawlies moving over my skin. I don’t know if they were baby spiders or mites or what but my garden time was over. I put away my tools, went onto my back porch, stripped down, left my clothes outside the door, streaked past my husband and jumped in the shower. I can’t say that the bugs bothered me that much – they are a side-effect of working outside – but I was glad to be all nice and clean again. Hopefully, the tiny beasties were a one-time encounter.

Here a lovely bee to take your mind off a swarm of tiny crawling insects.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

When people ask what I’m planting in my garden, I tell them “everything.” They laugh and I laugh and it’s all great fun but it’s also sort of true. I am planting a lot of different things this year. There are two reasons for this: 1. since it is a brand-new garden, I want to see what actually grows well in this climate with this soil and 2. I have accumulated a lot of seeds over the years and I want to use them.

I am taking inspiration from the Shakers so I’m planting vegetables they would have traditionally planted – beans, beets, carrots, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, cantaloupe, onions, parsley, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, sage, spinach, squash, tomatoes and turnips. I’m also stepping out of the Shaker model a bit and planting soybeans, kohlrabi, fennel, kale, chard and pak choi.

The bulk of my garden space is devoted to annual vegetables but I also planted some perennial favorites - asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, horseradish, chives and thyme. I have always wanted a strawberry patch, especially since I haven’t been able to make my annual picking trip with my grandmother. She’s still alive and well at 90 and still picking strawberries but I’m a couple hundred miles away now. After her hip replacement some years ago, one of her physical therapy goals was to be able to get down on her knees and back up again to pick strawberries; a goal she achieved, by the way.

With the gorgeous, warm (almost hot) weather of the past few weeks, I found that all the garden stores were out of things like asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries so I had to order them online. I don’t like ordering live plants like tomatoes and peppers, though. I would rather have a good look at the plants in person. So, even though it is still too early to plant such things, I went to the greenhouse this weekend. I worried that if I waited I would not get the varieties I wanted. It was a successful trip. I got a Juliet tomato plant (my favorite), as well as, a Beefsteak, an Early Girl and a yellow pear tomato. I got peppers and eggplants, too, and some perennials for around the house. Now, we just have to keep them alive until it’s time to put them in the ground. At least with the humidity up we can use the water from the dehumidifier in the basement to keep them watered.

Plants from the greenhouse waiting to be planted.

I’m afraid I was rather short on pictures to illustrate this post but here are some photos from this weekend.

Planning and Plotting in the Digital Age

Winter has fully settled in with single digit temperatures and a respectable blanket of snow on the ground. The seed catalogs have started arriving in the mail and I’m spending my evenings flipping through their page and dreaming of spring.

I bet this cardinal is dreaming of spring too.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a planner. I love making lists and charts and diagrams. I kept all my notes from previous gardens in a small 3-ring binder. Now that we’ve got a house and don’t expect to move every couple of years, I decided to get a bound notebook for all my new gardening adventures. I also got a book with quad-sheet paper so I can graph out garden layouts.

Yay for new notebooks!

I’ve always done my planning just on paper but I recently thought to myself, this is the 21^st century. Maybe I should find a gardening app or two to help me. There are quite a few garden planning apps out there; both free and paid. I quickly ran into the problem that the 4G iPod that I’ve had for only about a year and a half is way too old to even download many of them. Of the ones that I was able to download, I only found one that I really like – the Garden Time Planner by Burpee. 

You can create different gardens and add vegetables, herbs, and flowers to them. There is information on each plant including basic planting and care instructions, a planting schedule, and, sometimes, how-to videos related to the particular plant. There is also a planner that automatically lists when seeds should be started and transplanted based on what you’ve added to your garden. It lists average frost dates for your area and links to Weather Underground for current conditions and forecasts.

Some screen shots.

All the information is very basic but I have plenty of reference material on my shelves and the internet at my fingertips if I want more details about different varieties of carrots, for example. There is also no way to create a garden layout with the app. Your gardens are simply lists of plants. I’m sure there are other apps out that that let you actually create garden layouts but either I could not download them or they were paid apps. For someone still mostly devoted to paper, I could not see paying for something electronic when I have a perfectly good quad notebook just waiting for my pencil. Overall, I think this baby-step into the modern world will serve me well as I plan for the spring.