The March to Summer Continues

Ok, so I missed a week just two weeks after I promised to write every week. This is hard for someone who naturally doesn't like to write.

I am now in the midst of setting out broccoli plants which are about ten inches high in gallon pots. These were planted from seed in January and early February. They have been in the greenhouse since. I have 18 plants in the broccoli plot of the garden. I will be finished when all 50 plants have been transplanted over the course of two weeks. I am also setting out turnips as they get three to four inches high in quart containers in the greenhouse.

My December planted broccoli plants, of which there are four set in a plot destined for July planted corn and beans, have just produced their first heads. While these aren't big, five to six inches in diameter, there are numerous side shoots already developing. Almost all of the 2006 broccoli has now been removed. It provides welcome green material for the compost. The last six plants will be removed in the coming week. They are now hidden among 4' tall favas but still provide a handful of delicious broccoli sprouts per week. The plot where they stand will house the 2007 leek crop.

I hope to start this leek from seed in the greenhouse today in flats. The other greenhouse chore this week and continuing throughout April is continued seeding and transplanting of pepper and eggplant. I also have six gallon containers in which I have seeded a summer squash and pole bean mix - three seeds of each per container. The first of these were transplanted into the garden one week ago. They look great now. I anxiously await to see how they do when winter returns this week.

Tomatoes are all about 4 inches high in gallon pots now. I won't let them leave the greenhouse till mid April at the earliest because soil temperatures are still too cold for them.

Salad greens, Joi Choy, and Collards are celebrating right now. I must give some Joi Choy away this week. Use it or lose it. It doesn't stay well in the field when ready to harvest. Cauliflower plants are huge but refusing to bear their fruit in mass. I am barely getting enough to meet our needs and haven't given any away to neighbors this year. I blame the January freeze for this. But the plants look beautiful and where there's beauty there will eventually be awesome cauliflower. I know this because the Fremont variety is very reliable. It ALWAYS comes through. My purple kohlrabi are producing wonderful grapefruit sized bulbs - the best ever. And last year's leek continue to thrive with foot long stems over an inch in diameter. I'm giving this away before it bolts next month. We use six to eight leeks a week ourselves right now. We are enjoying wonderful snowpeas. Favas are just starting to produce. I'm collecting about a dozen bean pods a week. This will increase dramatically starting this week. It's so early that even the squirrels haven't discovered the beans yet. They will soon.

My struggle this year is pepper germination. I'm only achieving about a 25 percent germination rate. I am amazed how pepper seed which survived in the worm bin (I feed pepper tops to the worms) and fell through the screen to become embedded in the worm castings which I feed as mulch to all bedding plants in the greenhouse, is germinating everywhere. Plus pepper seed which I save has germinated just fine. I now have over a dozen pepper plants in the greenhouse over two inches high in gallon pots. Almost all of them are home grown. The problem with these guys is I don't really know what they will produce because of cross polination in the field.

The master gardeners use grow lights, heating pads, and synthetic soil to reliably get their peppers to germinate. I insist on making all natural materials and sunlight work. My soil mixes are made from garden soil and screened compost. I use a greenhouse window in the garage for germination. The worm casting observation has given me a new idea. Place the seeds directly on the soil mix but cover them with screened compost only. That is, try to mimic the worm casting conditions. Note that I don't use worm castings in the bedding soil mix because of all the live pepper and tomato seeds embedded in it. Note also that tomatoes do the same thing. I get hundreds of tomato seeds coming up wherever I've spread worm castings even though I avoid feeding tomato seed clusters to the worms for this reason. Some still get through.

Recall that a few weeks ago I conducted an experiment to embed pepper seeded six packs in the leaf compost pile still cooking at 120 degrees f. Well, I did get some germination from my home grown seed. But the plants have not done well. They didn't look good when transplanted and they aren't growing in the gallon pots. I think the temperature inside the plastic cover was too high.

The attached picture shows the greenhouse from two weeks ago. The gallon pots contain broccoli. Most of the quart containers on the left are turnips, kohlrabi, fennel, and rutabagas. The kohlrabis and rutabagas are all in the field. Only turnips and fennel are left.

A note on philosophy. I continue to strive for total sustainability. Today my only outside input is purchased seed, water, and a bit of supersoil. I hope to phase out the supersoil all together. I am working on new ways to collect more rainwater but this one is tough because of our long dry summers. Seeds are difficult too because of cross polination. But water is the big one. And water is energy. I want to reduce energy usage. Note that our new solar panels cover all our electricity needs including my electric chipper which I run for 60 minutes once a week. I will write more about drip irrigation in a future post.

Well that's it for now. I'm heading to the greenhouse where I love to hang out.

danh

Activities for the past week

What a difference a week makes. Just over a week ago, I was complaining about how cold it has been. Today, I am measuring temperatures in the mid eighties. Cauliflower which has been outside for at least a month doesn't even notice the high temperatures except that it grows faster and bigger. But some of the newer plantings are drooping just a bit. They will do fine. It's me who suffers when I observe leaves drooped over. This is why I want a large plant with extensive root structures to set out. They have enough of a root complex to survive an unexpected heat wave, whereas nursery plants with extensive growth but very compressed (one tiny starter planter's worth of space) roots will often not recover.

The bad news of the week is that the pesky flock of sparrows arrived and with them the telltale sign of their damage. They bite at the edges of the leaves of just about any new planting including salad greens, brassicas, turnips, and beans. I have covered some of the new plantings with bird netting to protect them. The sparrows will even stop a wildflower by biting off all the leaves, especially new growth.

Activities for the week included:

1) planting seed potatoes directly in the garden
2) setting out brassicas especially kales, cauliflower, and kohlrabi. I wish I had some brocolli ready to plant but these guys are just now starting to really grow in the greenhouse. It had been too cold for them to grow much prior to last week. I expect to be setting these out in two weeks.
3) Moving turnips to pint sized planters in the greenhouse. They will be put outside in two weeks.
4) Transplanting the first batch of onions to the garden. These were planted in late September in flats in the greenhouse. This is about four weeks later than I usually do but had no choice because there just wasn't space for them. They follow the winter carrots. I have a bumper crop of overwinter carrots this year and have been late digging them from the garden.
5) Set out more salad greens and planted some bush bean seed among them.
6) Started a serious planting of eggplant and sweet peppers in the greenhouse. Tomatoes can still be planted in the greenhouse but as usual my February plantings of tomatoes have come up and I have many more plants than I know what to do with. Since early plantings of peppers have not done well, I continue to start two or more six packs on a weekly basis.

I look forward to the first companion planting of corn, pole beans, and carrots directly in the garden during the first weekend of April, if the temperature stays warm enough to warm up the soil to 50 degrees f or higher. Nothing will make a gardener want to give up more than observing how summer crops respond to a early heat wave with cold soil (below 50 degrees). The plants stunt, turn yellow, and are very late to recover if at all. Pests of all types from sparrows to earwigs detect this and attack. Thus I pay close attention to soil temperature when planting summer crops.

And finally, the picture at the front of the post is that of my greenhouse full of brassicas. Notice the pint and gallon pots.

danh

A very cold week

This past week, since my last post, has seen unusually cool temperatures. This makes spring garden activity somewhat frustrating. I'm having a difficult time getting tomatoes and peppers to germinate. But I also know that nature has a clock and while I can push the limits a bit, it is best to understand this clock and live within its constraints. Note that I do not use heat pads to warm the pepper/tomato six packs. This year, however, I am trying to use heat from my leaf compost pile, which is still running at 120 degrees f in the center as a natural source of heat. I've embedded three six packs of pepper and tomato starts in the top of the pile. I use a mixture of garden soil, compost, and a bit of starter mix soil as a planting mixture. I covered these with a clear plastic cover from a four six pack starter kit. A couple of peppers have germinated after 1o days.

I have learned over the years that pepper seedlings take off when the time is right. Often it is later than I like but these late guys quickly catch up to some of the early ones which struggled through cold weather in artificial conditions. I plant pepper and eggplant in the greenhouse as late as mid may. These don't get set out in the garden until late June. But by August when they naturally start their heavy production, the late guys have caught up with the early ones and often outperform them. Still, I like to push the envelope. I always try to coax a few very early producers. But nature's clock runs and vegetable plants somehow know about it.

My greenhouse is bustling with seedlings however. I hardly have walking room. These are broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kales, onions, turnips, rutabagas, fennel (which finally came up) and chard. I also have three six packs of peas. I'm setting out cauliflower, kohlrabi, and rutabagas today. I will also start a short row of purple bush beans today directly in the garden, although it is probably too early. I will mix some bunching onions with them which I know will grow even if the beans don't. I've seen some volunteer beans throughout the garden this week so it may be a sign that early beans will do just fine now.

The picture above is of my compost pile row. Note the open pile at the back end of the picture. Here is where the materials go through their two month hot cycle. The plastic bins hold compost after it has cooled. I call it curing and like to let it set at least six weeks before use. This allows larger organisms like worms to move in and encourages fungi growth. I rotate through the plastic bins. When one is emptied, compost is transfered to it from the BIOstack, next to the open pile. Then the BIOstack is filled with material from the back of the open pile which is next to the brick fence. I move the whole pile back as a turning procedure. This frees space in the front for more new material. Note the year old broccoli in the foreground among the favas. I still pick small sprouts from it. Even though they are small, there are lots of them and they taste awesome. I also believe (can't prove) that they are loaded with the valuable nutrients which broccoli is constantly being praised for. These will come out of the garden over the next couple of weeks and become valuable compost material. Four new broccoli plants have been in the garden with the cauliflower for almost a month now. They will hold us over until the main broccoli patch starts producing in May. The plants for this patch are in gallon pots which help to clutter up my greenhouse. I will try to post some pictures of the greenhouse shortly after my batteries charge up.

danh