Salads and Whales

I cannot believe it is March again....in just a matter of weeks, flowers, trees and most importantly, my garden will be moving along. I have been quite busy mostly with seed starting in my basement. Last years success with the small patch of salad greens is being expanded this year. Rather than direct sowing the seeds outdoors, I decided to give them a good head start indoors and at this point, it looks like that will pay off. I had 100% germination of over 128 seeds for 7 varieties of lettuce and Swiss Chard. Although we just had a few inches of snow last weekend, I hope to have the garden ready in the next 2-3 weeks and the lettuces transplanted

The figs scionwood is sitting in my furnace room in moist plastic bags. I am hoping that over the next 2-3 months, I can force some root and leaf growth. As I mentioned in my last post, I have over 15 different scionwood pieces from 5 different varieties of figs. If they all take, I will have to find homes for many of them....I already have a home for one....I also ordered 3 more varieties from University of California-Davis which I am still waiting for as well. Those should be here by end of march.

Trying to figure out where everything is going has not been fully worked out yet. I guess I will take it one planting cycle at a time. The first cycle (lettuce, peas, radishes and possibly beets) have been decided. I am germinating more peppers and tomatoes this week although I don't know where they are all going to go. Carrots and possibly the beets are still up in the air and due to lack of funds, I have no idea if I can afford to get the blueberries and blackberries for this year.

I have purchased the 4x6 lumber for the border of the lower bed. With other plans on financial hold like the deck, basement and various other things, I think I will have enough time to set the lower bed and finally rebuild the arbor-entry into the garden. I keep trying to tell myself a little at a time but it is going against the grain for me. This will stack up to building a new garden bed for carrots and beets, finishing the garlic bed his spring, framing the lower bed with the lumber, building 2 or 3 new trellis', finding a new place to plant the corn/squash and planting the blueberries and blackberries.

On a personal note - this drives Jen crazy because there are at least a dozen project in the house that are 90% complete that I have yet to devote my time to finishing and I am dreaming of diving into yet another garden project. I guess my past actions would support a definite lack of follow-through on my part.....or I just done care on finishing the second coat of paint, final sanding the Spackle and complete the basement demo....personally, I do care...it doesn't always show up in normal ways....

On a completely different note, Jackson and I went to Mystic Connecticut overnight and ended up at the aquarium up there. Jack could not contain himself with the sharks and stingrays but my personal favorite was the 6 Beluga Whales they have. They are incredible graceful, gentle and HUGE!! Although the picture is not that great, they are so white it is almost breathtaking

Food Harvested:
None

Things Planted:
Started Salads, Peppers and now the first of the tomatoes indoors
Seeds Saved:
None

Preserved/Cooked:
Sauteed Butternut Squash and Onions

Things to Remember:

None

Seeds and Figs and Seeds.....

All of seeds I ordered from SSE came this past week which was perfect timing. At the same time, the SSE yearbook and finally the scionwood for the 5 varieties of fig trees came. It is a bit overwhelming when you long for something garden-like in the middle of January and all of a sudden, in February, all preperation and planning hits the ground at a hundred miles an hour; seed germination, plot planning, new creations, longer to do lists, fixing things that broke last year, etc....
This year, I am going to try to bud 5 types of fig trees which is a relatively straight forward process. Damp paper towel, a zip lock bag and a warm place for about 3-4 weeks. The idea is to force root growth, with or without leaf growth. Once roots form, transplanting into a small pot for a few months and then outside by middle to late summer. I will post some picture on progress later in the month.

With March 17th being my start date for frost tolerant stuff, I needed to start seeds this week. I got all the components finally for the seed starting shelves. The last pieces were the chain to hang the lights and the shelving itself. I opted for a 6-shelf 72" x 48" x 18" chrome wire unit from Home Depot. Although I thought the 18" would be too narrow, once set up with 2 shop lights per shelf, it ended being the perfect size.

With so much emphasis on being eco-friendly in all of this, I seemed to have mis-lead myself in seeds starting. Working in the Sharing Garden with the Master Gardeners last weekend, we set cool crop seeds in plastic trays. When I asked Larry about being more earth conscious, his response surprised me, the plastic trays were over 7 years old because he re-uses them from year to year. I don't know why I never considered re-use but for seed plugs prior to transplanting into the potmaker pots, it give you great flexibility and control on planting patterns once they go in the garden. This was a problem for me last year....the throw-and-pray direct sowing method I used last year didn't do so well, things were overcrowded.

I ended buying (2) 72-cell seed starting trays for my cool crops. I am still trying to perfect things but I set the seeds on Wed. To keep them warn, I had to put them on top of my fish tank light By Thurs, I had 80% germination, Friday 90% germination and this morning, I would say 98% germination. Tomorrow AM, these seedlings go under the lights for 12-18 hours a day for about 2 weeks at which time I will transplant to potmaker pots.

Food Harvested:
None

Things Planted:
Oh Boy....7 type of lettuce being sprouted
Budding fig trees

Seeds Saved:
None

Preserved/Cooked:
Chocolate Cake

Things to Remember:
1. More narrow walkway in the garden this year
2. Remove the roses and put more garden there :)

Its Not Really About the Carrots....

I tried carrots and beets for the first time and I did not have great germination. The carrots are heirloom from France and the beets are golden. Reading on a few different news groups I was happy to read that Golden Beets generally germinate poorly....that made me happy....isn't that sad?

As for the carrots, I companion planted with white icicle radishes and I think in my want to have too much, I never thinned any of its resulting in poor carrot germination and too many radishes that had all lead growth and little root development. From what I can understand, overcrowding and not thinning creates competition for light so they put their energy into reaching for the sky and not in their roots.

As a result, I have few carrots and what I do have I needed to thin. So I decided to pull one hoping that would be enough. I know it wont but I can hope for now. To my surprise, I feel like I just birthed a 9 ton rhino....I grew an orange carrot....too small to do anything with but it looks like a carrot!!!

String Bean and Red Onion Salad

• 3 lbs String Beans
• 1 red onion halved, sliced thin
• Olive Oil to coat
• 2 Tbsn Rosemary

Blanch the string beans in salted boiling water for no more than 3 minutes. Drain, add thinly sliced onions, olive oil and rosemary. Toss well to coat. Refrigerate until dinner.

Cuke are still doing well and I finally got a lemon cuke. These are about 2x the size of a golf ball and look like a pale lemon. They are tasty though. Jen and I ate one and there are two more ready to go

After some time, I finally picked up the stuff needed for canning. I am excited and being sort of dorky about it. I bought the Ball Book of Canning and the Joy of Pickling. I am going to try my hand at pickles and blueberry preserves. We did this once before but is was a half cocked try about 7 years ago with raspberries but it didn't turn out too good. Hopefully this go around will be different.

It has been so hot here this week and with Jen still feeling the same, out came as many indoor things to do as we could manage. We have had many babysitters over the last two weeks and anything creative is welcome. Jen finally got her MRI results and they were all clear (thank goodness!!) but there still is no answer to the dizziness. Hopefully as she comes off the Prednisone, it will gradually improve.