April 5, 2011

So, to give equal time to both my gardening and animal husbandry obsessions, this post will be about plants rather than chicks.

Despite the rain, mixed with heavy rain mixed with light showers over the past week, I found time to make it out to the garden.  Mostly I was out there to plant what NEEDED to be planted out.  However, I couldn't help but admire the growth (albeit slow) of my initial salad green plantings.  I definitely can start harvesting outer leaves of these for salads.  That said, we prefer to wait until more items are ready to go into our salads, like radishes, carrots and the like.

During a break in the weather, I took some time to augment my tiny bed #3 with compost, and plant a mixture of Savoy Bloomsdale Spinach (from Laura) and my traditional Space spinach (from Territorial). Given the size of the seeds, and wetness of my compost, I didn't even bury them, but rather used the board trick I got from Laura.  No clue if this will work or not, but it is worth a try.  I mean, who has a supply of dry sifted compost on hand to sprinkle 1/8" deep over a bed, hehe?

I also did something similar to several varieties of carrots to replenish our supply.  The ones that overwintered are very hairy and need to be pealed to eat.  Speaking of which, it is about time to harvest them so they don't go to seed.  Thoughts on what to do with carrots you need to peal to eat?  Hmm?

Anyway, now to what I actually went out there to do.  In the back of bed #4, I augmented the soil with a kitty-litter-bucket of compost.

And with my hand trowel, I worked the compost into the soil a bit, chopping up tons of worms in the process.  Poor little guys. This back portion of my only bed without a trellis will be the home of my initial plantings of broccoli and cauliflower. 

This season I'm planting more cauliflower than broccoli, as my wife likes it better, but I am planting a ton of it to freeze for the off season.  My goal is to add it to mashed potatoes, saute it with bread crumbs, use it in stir frys, etc. Don't these seedlings look good?

That taken care of, it was time to turn to my flat of succession salad greens.  First to be planted were my green wave mustard green experiment.  I'm sure long-term readers recall my fascination with mustard greens, leading back to my trying one from a local CSA.  The rainbow colored wavy leaves had a nice mustard bite to them, and would be perfect to add to our salads since I don't like to use dressing for home grown salads.  Unable to find the variety I knew I liked, I have settled for this variety from Territorial.  I went with two plants to see how it grew and if I'd like it.  They germinated well, but were slow growing under lights.  I wonder if they'll take off in the ground?

Then, as the rain began to pick up, I raced to get rid of the rest of my salad green seedlings.  It was very easy to peal apart the soil blocks from their neighbors and throw them in a shallow hole, pressing the compost in around them.  For the seedlings that were growing in the wrecked soil blocks, I did my best to plant them in straight compost.  It doesn't look pretty, but I'm hoping it all grows in nicely as spring moves into high gear.

Oh, I forgot, I also filled in the row of green onions above the salad greens, and filled in radishes where I could find space.  I still remember the first year I planted radishes.  The package said 22 days, so I was expecting to eat radishes every month.  Wrong!  The first planting took 5 weeks to germinate and mature.  It wasn't until my late spring succession planting that I got anywhere near the 22 days it published.  Deceptive advertising, ROFL.

So, now my garden is coming along nicely.  I still have space in the back of Bed #1 (above) and in the front of Bed #4 when I remove the carrots.  Not sure what I'll plant in those places.  Maybe some beets and a squash plant or two, both for roasting.  My brother introduced us to them last fall and I wanted to grow a limited number of each to try my hand at adding variety to our veggie diet.  As I've said many times over on NW Edible, I wish I could cook half as good as the former chef, now stay-at-home mom and urban homesteader Erika.  /sigh

Enjoy your garden!

March 29, 2011

Well, Laura and others commented that I likely have chick-fever, so, when I looked at what she did last weekend, I immediately realized I was behind again on my planting. Seems I should have planted my peas but didn't.  So the night before my kids and I talked gardening and peas.  Their interest in peas came from one of those PBS snippets between cartoons.  The kids planted snap peas, then came back to pick and eat them.  They called them sugar packets.  All of a sudden, they wanted to plant peas.  So, we got some Cascadia Snap Peas and soaked them overnight.  They also wanted to plant corn, so we did the damp coffee filter in an open Zip Lock bag to germinate those.  I also took the time to plant several new succession broccoli and cauliflower. As you can see, I am big into repurposing containers for gardening.

The next day was sprinkling a bit, but we trooped outside anyway to plant our peas!  The kids got their own SWC scrap gardens to play with, though I told them what I would do.  First thing's first, weed and add compost (they loved counting the worms we found in the compost). Then we planted 5 peas in each bin in two rows with one in the middle.  Pretty generous spacing, but the plan is to interplant two corn stalks in each back corner. Hopefully the corn will grow fast enough to provide something for the peas to climb. If not, I picked up a bunch of bamboo from my folks place. I'm sure I could build some sort of trellis for them.  The front of the bins will probably be carrots as we're running out of veggies that they like.  Still, a good exercise in intensive planting!

After that, I decided to dig my beds out as Laura suggested, then add compost and plant my peas.  I didn't do it exactly like she did, but I used some of her techniques.   Here you can see the results of half my bed being dug up by rocking a pitchfork back and forth.

As you can see in the pic above, the kitty-litter bucket full of compost isn't sufficient to augment the entire bed, but it was more than sufficient to plant peas in the back of the bed.  I know the SFG spacing for peas is 8 per SF, but I just kinda scattered them around the back of the row between my two blue SWCs.  Now is when I really took a page from Laura's play book.  I grabbed a piece of scrap wood and pressed it onto the soil to make sure the peas came in good contact with the soil.

Finally, I sprinkled a bit of fresh compost on top of the row. Normally I'd water them in, but it was raining by then, so I let Mother Nature take over.

Lastly, I took my broccoli and salad greens out for a walk and accidentally left them out over night.  They seemed fine in the morning so I left them out all day and just brought them in Sunday night.  They're out again this morning and will be planted today!

See, I AM gardening in addition to playing with my chicks!  But don't worry, I will give both passions time in my blog.  Comments anyone? I love comments! Makes me feel loved, hehe.

Enjoy your garden!

January 21, 2011

Today my youngest was off school (3 day preschool week), and cabin fever had set in.  So despite the rain, he wanted to go outside and run.  I joined him after a bit to make sure he didn't get into trouble, and took care of some "fall" cleanup that didn't get done.  Mostly I cut back dead branches off perennial plants.  I'm still not sure if I want to keep the pineapple sage plant I planted last year.  It grew MUCH bigger than I anticipated and is out of place in my strawberry/blueberry bed.  I may move it or just remove it altogether.  Either way, I started by cutting it back to the ground.  There was no sign of the anisette plant that did so poorly from seed last year. I have more seeds so I can try again, but boy was I disappointed.

Anyway, the real reason I went out there was to look over the likely spot for my chicken coop and primary run.



The coop would go about where that toddler play set is located.  I should get rid of that thing as my 4 year old is too big for it.  I digress... The coop would go against the fence there, and the run would come back towards the camera.  On the left there is a huge rhodie and magnolia tree, with other native ground cover plants surrounding them.  The upside is that there is a dirt covered area surrounding the trees that would partially be within any run.  That would give the birds a dirt area to take dirt baths and a grass area to forage.  I don't care about that grass anyway because I can't get anything good to grow there... too much shade.



On the right side of that area is my spent pear tree and my compost bins.  As you can see, fall/winter storms wrecked my cover.  I should really tidy up, but I'm not sure if I won't use the lumber or corrugated plastic for the coop construction.  Sorry for the mess.  Oh, and I should really rake the leaves into next year's compost pile.  Did I mention I don't care about that grass area? hehe. 

Anyway, having the compost pile right next to the chicken coop has many advantages. One, when I clean the coop I can simply put the soiled bedding into the compost pile.  Droppings need to age about 6 months to not burn plants. Yes, they're that high in nitrogen.  Two, the compost pile could be a great foraging spot for the hens, the piles are teaming with bugs and worms.  Yummers!

Tonight I spent a good deal of time on chicken research.  I read more of my book, found Backyard Chickens dot com and researched free coop materials on craigslist.  Much more work needs to be done, but it's a start.  I also went through all of KitsapFG's chicken posts to see how her experience has been this year with new chickens.  From that I found some great tips, like I shouldn't have got rid of our toddler super gate.  It would have made an excellent portable tractor and teenage pen.  Yet another thing to look into on Craigslist.  I'd say ain't Craigslist wonderful, but so far I've struck out on everything I've looked for.  There's still time though.

In other news, I didn't order my seeds. I'm waiting until Monday when my brother will have his order ready.  I figured I wouldn't gain much shipping time over the weekend and I can't start my tomatoes this weekend anyway, so what's the difference. 

Actually I could start some of my tomatoes early, but I'm not sure I have space for all of them to be babied for months inside.  Just not sure.

Well, that's about it for me.  Enjoy your garden!

May 30, 2010

Wow, nearly a month has gone by.  You wouldn't have known it from the shape of the garden though.  The weather's been more like late fall than late spring.  Cool, wet and windy.  I haven't planted cukes yet but I'm fairly certain they wouldn't germinate in this weather anyway. 

Other things I haven't done include planting my tomatoes in my Self Watering Containers.  The containers still sit there ready to go, but there appears to be no hurry to get them in the ground.  They're not growing much anyway.  I have picked off a few flower buds to encourage more green growth.  Last year I didn't do that with my first flowers and the plant size suffered tremendously.  This year I've been more cautious. 

I also haven't weeded my Bed 1.  The overwintered carrots there had gone straight to seed rather than form good roots.  Shame as my kids don't have carrots for a while.  My new plantings are about 2 inches tall.  Let's see, my trellis is still in the shed.  The only thing that would need it now are my peas, which are about a foot tall now.  I think that will go up soon to give them something to grab hold of. 

Lastly, I haven't hooked up my rain barrels.  I need to build the platforms for them, nor found the right way to hook it up.  I am still considering the Gutter Adaptor here though I am not sure how well they work or how long they'll hold up.  However, considering the deluge of rain we've been getting of late, I'm in no hurry to store water.

Speaking of all the rain, look what I found on the way back from running my eldest to the bus stop... Note the paper is just for comparison, though it is really good that folks are trying to figure out how to improve the park behind our house.



Oh, and I haven't had a chance to mow with all the wet grass, but here is the composting action from my last mowing.



First I mix and dig a trench while I'm fluffing the aging compost. Then, while I'm mowing I occasionally throw down a sheet of news paper in front of the mower to mix in some shredded browns.  Tis the season of all greens and no browns.



Then I simply dump the new stuff into the trench, wetting the layers and adding heaps of the old compost for variety. It still needs to age and cook more.  Doing this creates a heaping pile of hot compost in action...



Speaking of the lack of browns, I have been adding small amounts of cat hair, lint from the dryer and the like.  I don't like to have too much of those, but they do help out and create a great diverse compost.  And while we're on the compost subject, if you've seen the Sun Chips commercial, I'm trying out to see if their chip bags are really compostable.  We got them for an outing as they're a healthier alternative to potato chips or Doritos.  When finished, I cut the bag into little pieces and put it in my home compost bin.  Give it a chance to cook a bit inside before being added to the bottom of my next compost build.



Oh yeah, I was also planning on bagging up the remaining finished compost and doing a two-bin system.  That hasn't happened.  Too busy playing with the kids and doing the job search.

Lastly, the kids have been getting in the action.  One warmish day my eldest took some discarded peat pot egg cartons and trying to grow cut flowers... Cuter than all get-out, but not going to work.



I hope you all have had better weather than I and have been more active in your gardens!

May 8, 2009

Ah, having a Friday off of work is refreshing.  I got to sleep in til 9 and go shopping with the family.  Surprisingly little got done in the garden because for the second straight day off, my time wasn't my own.  Not horrible, just a bit tiring.  My wife deserves an award, or at least a day for all she puts up with the kids.  Hehe, oh wait, that's what's going on Sunday.  Just kidding. What a lame set-up.  She'll get a big box of her favorite chocolates and a day of pampering from the guys. 

Back to today though.  Before I grabbed a shower this morning, I took the opportunity to run out and hill up the potato bins.  They haven't grown all that fast, but they were definitely 4 inches high.  That and for some reason the dirt that was covering the seed potatoes kept washing away. I hope it's not a raccoon, that deterrent should be working.  Anyway, here's what one of the bins looks like when I was done...



The other bin is a bit sparse in the greenery department.  Not sure if any more sprouts will pop up, but I'm kind of holding off putting much dirt in.   Last year one corner was 8 inches lower than the rest of the bin until I finally dug down and found a dud of a seed potato.  I suppose I could plant another seed potato in the other bin right now if wanted better coverage.  I have plenty to spare in the garage. hehe.

So, after our shopping trip, the boys and I went outside and I showed my oldest everything there was to know about mowing the lawn.  He wanted to learn.  He's still too young and not strong enough to effectively handle the self-propelled mower, but at least he's learning the basics now.  It was fun.  The back yard took much longer to mow as a result, but I still got both the front mowed before 6. 

When it was time to do the compost, wanted to take a few pics of the bin before and after, however, I also wanted to get a few shots of the volutneers.



There big one could some sort of melon, but there are tons of them down in the bottom corner.  Don't worry about the left hand corner, that's a rotten white mellon that my wife got for my eldest, but forgot to feed him.  It was growing mold so it's now composted (at the bottom, the worms will LOVE it).   Anyway, here's a close-up of the volunteer.



Sorry, it's a pain holding the phone still that close.  I guess it doesn't really matter what they are, they got composted in with the rest of the partially cooked material.  I doubt they'll be back.  They'll just be fresh greens, like I need them.  I used up all the shredded paper and still probably have too much greens in the pile.  I'll check for smell tomorrow and Sunday and add some dryer lint if necessary.

Here's the before shot.



It is definitely working as the pile's half what it was when I built it.  Boy was the full yard waste container heavy to dump into the compost bin after I aerated the pile and stored it on the edges.  I normally like to fill it only half-way if I'm dumping it myself.  This time I ended up dumping it in handfuls until it was too far down to reach in.  As for the bin that I'm working right now, it's nowhere near done.  I think on the off weeks when I don't mow I need to go out and turn the compost and maybe only add my kitchen compost. 

Ok, so the pic above tops out at the second board of the pallets.  Take a look when I was done.



Wow, it's nearly to the top board.  There's less than a foot to the lid.  I figure if this keeps up, I'll have to take up all 5x5 feet by 3 feet high.  That would be cool!  Then it would be very EGish... hehe.

I sure hope you all have a great weekend and get some gardening in.  And to all you mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day!  You've earned the day and 364 more!

March 10, 2008

Well, mother nature smiled upon my garden since I planted yesterday.  We've had more rain in the last 24 hours than the last week.  She must have known it was planting season.

Anyway, if you read my last post, you know I spaced on the spacing of my spinach (I love illiteration).  Well, today I did 10 minutes of gardening when I got off work.  It was raining but true Seattleites won't let rain bother them.  I couldn't very well move spinach seeds, but I could easlily manipulate the decaying peat pots.  So I broke them all up and left 4 in the original area and moved six to a corner section of the spinach row that I knew I hadn't planted anything yet.  See how pretty they look now that I have good spacing? If too many seeds germinate I can always thin them out or transplant them to other squares.



 

Anyhow, after pinging Toasty about my pea problems (I only soaked them for an hour instead of overnight when they would have sprouted).  She figures I did no harm but not much good either.  So I didn't help my peas along much.  Hopefully the drounding I gave them yesterday (and today), along with Mother Nature's help, they will keep up with Toasty's germination rate.  If they're more than a week later than hers, she suggests I replant.  Apparently she planted some in late April once and still got a decent crop.  Boy am I glad I have a Seattle contact as a sounding board.  As great as Judy and the rest of the folks are at Ft2Garden.com, Toasty's got experience in my town growing what I'm growing.  That's invaluable. 

Finally, I found more worms that have bitten the dust.  I'm not sure if Flatlander can advise me but I sure hope he can. He's the closest thing I know to the Worm Guy.

March 7, 2008

OMG, this week was hellish.  I was so braindead and exhausted at work, snapping at everyone, so I came home "early" after only 9 1/2 hours of work. 

I thought working in the garden would calm me down so I got changed right away and went out in the rain to rake under my coffee grounds.  I did it and found a dead worm.  GRRR, I left it there to compost. It's odd though, I think the Mel's Mix soaks up so much water that even after a fair amount of rain, the mix 4 inches down was dry as a bone today.  That concerns me because I don't know how much to water.  I guess I'll have to rely on the incredible drainage capablities of Mel's Mix and water the heck out of things.

Well, my seedlings are looking a little bad. I'll plant a few of them hoping they grow, but I'll also start my succession planting of the following veggies tomorrow:

Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce and carrots.  I think I could plant radishes, but there's just something wrong to harvest radishes in 25 days only to have to buy lettuce to make a salad with them. 

Hehe. Maybe I'll plant some Sunday when my son gets back from Mema's house.

So, now I think I'm all ready. I don't think I have to soak any seeds ahead of time.  This will be yet another learning experience.

March 5, 2008

Happy birthday to me.... hehe.  Ok, NOW I'm really 36 and as of a month ago my son's now 4.  So I jumped the gun on the intro.  He's super smart and I'm getting old.  Hehe.

So it appears that the blooms or whatever on my blueberries should stay for at least a little while.  Then I must decide whether or not to remove them to force the plant to grow stronger rather than produce fruit this year.  Since that was always my plan, I will likely do that.

Well, yesterday morning I put out my sprouting spinach plants to rest on the board between my raised beds to get natural sun and start hardening off immediately so I could plant them this weekend.  Then what happens?  We get a heavy frost last night.  Didn't get down to freezing or anything, just frost.  They're in little peat egg carton like pots planted with Mel's Mix, so hopefully the little seedlings (a centimeter or two tall) were protected enough.  The broccoli and cauliflower seedlings actually appear to be doing a bit better now.  Who knows. 

This weekend I'll plant them.  Too bad I won't have supplemented with worm castings like Judy will have.  She found them for under $4 per 10 pound bag at Wally World.  We checked ours in the Seattle area and they just gave my wife a funny look.  No dice here for worm castings. hehe.

Actually I just checked the 5-day forecast and alas, nice weather until the weekend then rain.  Maybe I'll plant in the rain.  I won't melt after all.  Besides, the 4th and 5th day of a 5 day forecast in Seattle is pure guesswork.  Here's hoping for the best.

March 2, 2008

Busy day, exhausting day, good day!

Today was the day I was going to follow the advice of a blog reader that suggested I mulch around my fruit trees.  I only did the new apple and plum tree because my father thinks the pear isn't long for this world.  So this morning, I started the day with this...



And working several hours with my favorite pick axe, a shovel, landscape fabric and three of those four bags of compost...

 

I got this...



I'm not sure if leaving a bit of landscape fabric against the trunk of the trees, but I am under the impression that it's bad to let the compost mulch touch the trunk.  If I had decent topsoil I'd put it around the base.  I may still steal some from my cleaned up rose garden (thanks to my wonderful aunt!).



I've only got four roses left, but the one in the center is by far the biggest and it's awesome that it's in centerpiece (even though I'm partial to the deep red ones in the far left of the picture over the centerpiece pink ones).  By the way, the green foliage in the front of the bed is a mature Irises that my aunt cuts paths between patches.  Every year they grow back together. Good thing they transplant well.  She's repopulated the bulbs she removed from the paths to the side of my house. They're perfect there.

I also separated the bunches of earthworms that I had put in the raised beds in clumps yesterday. Apparently they didn't spread out on their own. They didn't even leave the shredded newspaper medium they were packaged in.  So I dug them up and moved them individually all over the beds.  Hopefully they'll survive.  Some of them weren't moving all that fast.  They've got a wonderful new home. 15.5 inches of great soil material.  But then I think, they've got 2 inches of amazing material, so why do they need to move down?  I'm afraid to fertilize with my 5-10-10 veggie mix thinking it will burn the worms.  Hopefully if they don't like it they'll move down below the top 6 inches where I plan to work in the fertilizer with a claw fork prior to planting.

Speaking of planting. I ran out of time to plant seeds or seedlings today.  That's ok since I think Chris Smith actually said that planting should be Mid-March, not the beginning of March.

Other things I accomplished today included getting a new (to me) upright freezer to replace my small apartment fridge in the garage. My brother was getting rid of it so I took it.  We have enough space between two refridgerators and a chest freezer, but with all the fruits and veggies I hope to grow this year, I expect to freeze up some. Now I have a place to put them in an organized way. We put the small fridge on Craigslist, first for $30, but then for free since I just want it out of here.  I got only one call, to use it as a keg fridge, but it was too small. 

I also went on a 3.5 mile power walk after catching my breath.  I started out strong but peetered out in the end.  Finally we went to Red Robin to celebrate my pre-birthday.  Don't you hate mid-week birthdays.  Go and Grow!

March 1, 2008

Well, I didn't post on Leap Day because my wife had a thing last night so she dropped the kids off at my folks house.  After work I went there instead of home and spent the evening with the family.  By the time I got home it was close to midnight and after the week I've had and fighting this cold, I fell into bed.  So I'll have to wait another 4 years to post on Leap Day.  Ah well.

So my dad and I talked about the blackberries, the wood and the potato bins.  He thinks the blackberry pruning is a good idea (of course he does, he doesn't have to do it).  However he didn't think just putting my "dirt" on top of the weed infested ground for the potato bins was a good idea.  I used up all of my landscape fabric doing my garden area, so I've been reluctant to buy a new roll for just over 4 SF.  Then my dad suggested we use it over the concrete patio when we build a deck over it.  It will help keep anything from growing under there and also drain well.  So now I've got a reason to buy a new roll.  Looks like a trip to Costco is in order since they've got their garden pallets out now.

So here's what my garden to-do list looks like for this weekend:

-Direct sow broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, peas and spinach.

-Buy fertilizer (5-10-10) for the peas and spinach at least.

-Buy mulch for around the trees.

-Mulch the trees.

That's about it for this weekend, but I've got a ton of other errands and taxes to work on. 

Today's going to be a good day for the running around because the weather's crappy.  Yesterday I went out at lunch without a coat on.  By the time to go home, it was rainy, windy and grey. It's been icky ever since.  Tomorrow's supposed to be better weather for working outside.  We'll see.

Well, the rain has been just as predicted, showers.  Not worth working in but worth waiting out.  My day has been pretty full since I wrote that list.

I had planned on taking my eldest out to run some errands, including several for the garden, but my aunt and dad showed up.  Of course my son wanted to play in the yard with my aunt so my dad and I went on the errands. 

First we went to Costco and got gas and landscape fabric.  They had 4' x 220' for $21.  Can't pass that up and we can use it for under the deck we're building this spring in addition to the potato bins. 

Then we went to the local nursery (the $28 vermiculite one).  They're still the best thing around for gardening information and stuff.  We spoke to a knowlegable person there and he directed me away from Miracle Gro fertilizers because of the salt content that depletes the soil of nutrients to a more natural product.  So I not only got my 5-10-10 All Purpose Vegetable fertilizer, but I got the one for Azalelas and Rhodies (read bluberries) as well. 

 

While I was there I got mulch for around my apple and plum trees.  Of course, my gardener aunt was right, they recommended compost for mulch around the tree, just not touching the trunk.  So I got 4 bags or Cedar Grove compost for nearly the price of a cubic yard in bulk (if I needed that much or wanted to bag it myself). 



We also asked about worms there, but they only had composting worms like Flatlander has, and agreed that they would not be good for putting in my beds.  So from Sky Nursery we went to Joe's (formerly GI Joe's) sporting good store on a mission to set some bait free.  We got 8 dozen worms, nightcrawlers to be precise, and dumped them in my beds, two dozen each.



Then we started unloading the bags of compost.  Boy are they heavy.  So I got my trusty wheelbarrrow out to move them to where the tree is.  Unfortuantely over the last two weeks, the wheel went flat.  Odd.  So up to the gas station to fill it.  Sure I could have carried them by hand faster, but I also want to move all the left over Mel's Mix to the area between the two potato bins since that's where they're going eventually.  While we were filling the tire, the rain started so we came back, put the tire back on the wheelbarrow and my folks called it a day.  I made lunch for the family and am posting while I eat it.  

If the weather cooperates, I'll put landscape fabric under the potato bins to keep weeds from growing up into my fertile soil, mulch around the trees (putting landscaping fabric under them too rather than newspaper (since I've got it).  If the weather doesn't turn nice, I'll end up doing taxes... come on sunshine! 

The weather held to just be overcast.  Was a bit chilly after 5 as the sun was going down, but I got the landscape fabric under both bins and put the Mel's Mix I removed back on top. Let's see the weeds get through that, hehe.  It got too dark so I cleaned up and came back in to finish up today's entry.  Hope you like it.  I sure had fun making it!

February 4, 2008

While the talk of the day was all about the Super Bowl, I myself was concerned about my seedlings.  Several of them didn't look so hot after the transplanting last night and frankly, all the time and energy I spent on them this weekend lingered into the day.  Yep, I'm  a bit obssessed with my garden.  I think it's the pictures I've seen of other gardens around harvest time.  I long for that time, not just for the delictible veggies we'll eat, but the lush colors brightening a once blighted area. 

When I first got home, my kids wanted to build pillow forts in their room, which gave me a great chance to check on the transplants.  In between telling them not to jump on the bed  and telling them to play nice (the kids that is, not the plants), I saw that the transplanted seedlings were perking up.  Even an hour past dark on an overcast day they looked much better. Let's hope they thrive in damp potting soil and Mel's Mix.

Whereas my broccoli and cauliflower have never failed to sprout, my lettuce and onions continue to be no-shows.  It's been almost two weeks for both of them, and I even took some advice and moved the lettuce out to the garage (on the garden window sill).  I know I have to be patient, but I figure I must be doing something wrong since not one of the 16 onions and 8 lettuce have sprouted yet.  Note that for each of the veggies, the number of seeds I planted is what will fit in 1 SF?  Well that shows my overconfidence based on how well the broccoli and cauliflower germinated.  Not all seeds are quite as easy I guess. 

Maybe I'll check if I should try the Jiffy Peat pucks on a new set of lettuce and onions?  I'm not sure they'd take to huge peat pots.  I know Judy swears by them, but I only bought a 25 pack and if I'm going to plant 16 onions and 8 lettuce, that's nearly all my stock.  I try to stay as far away from the crowds at Wally World I can help it and that's the only place I've found them.   Did I mention I don't shop much?

On a separate note, you may have read on the Ft2Garden.com message boards about Judy's find about a worm farmer on Puget Sound's Vashon Island called the Worm Guy.  He's got millions of worms that are used to break down organic waste into compost to make the small island of Vashon self sufficient since their landfill closed.  My family used to have 4.5 acres on Vashon when I was little, but no, I don't know the guy.  I have thought about worms for my garden before.  You see, my blueberry bed is teaming with worms since I amended the existing soil with compost and peat moss back in October when I planted the bushes.  After I planted them I read that I should have used much more peat then I did, so I dug a trench and put more in. That's when I found dozens and dozens of fat worms helping me out. 

Unfortunately I seriously doubt worms in the existing topsoil under my beds can crawl through a layer of landscape fabric and 3 inches of gravel.  So that means I'll have to add them after I get my dirt.  MAYBE I'll consider "growing" my own worms.  You can tell I only saw the one video on YouTube on the Worm Guy and have no idea what it would entail, but I guess they like newspaper and we've got tons of those from my wife's paper route.  If I do farm my own worms (my family will commit me if they find out I'm even considering it), it will be after my LLLLOOOOOONNNNNNGGGG list of to-do projects this spring and summer.

Not the least of which is bringing water to my garden.  If you've seen my garden plan (see my first post or my SFG Design/Build page), you see the little H2O in the corner.  That's my hose with a wand attachment to water my garden.  Well, it WILL be, once I get water there and buy the hose and wand attachement.  Thus the project.  On the other side of our 750 SF family room directly across from the H2O symbol is where my existing backyard faucet is now.  I plan to connect a splitter to the one, then setting up an elaborate and long PVC pipe along the slab around two corners about 35 feet away to a new faucet.  That way, I can hopefully keep the one faucet on and the new one off until I need to water, then turn on the new one on and presto, water!  I don't need much pressure unless I eventually want a soaker system, but that's WAY down the line if at all. Actually, I'm thinking about leaving a full watering can out in the sun to warm up and use that to water.  I recall plants like ambient temperature water.  Either way, I'll need water over there.  That's one of my first projects after I get dirt on the 17th and 18th after my eldest's 4th B-Day party on the 16th.  

Well, that's all I've got for tonight. Thanks for coming and reading... hope you find something of interest.  I'm trying to keep it light and fun.  Register and drop a comment if you have a thought, suggestion or just want to tell me I stink.