March 19, 2009 • 10:21 am 2
Just because I’m in Santa Monica doesn’t mean that the plants and those who tend them aren’t busy. This friendly, helmeted broccoli germinated in the warm and comfy confines of a shelf in the furnace room of his keepers. A lovely shot and soon to be even more lovely growing into food. (Listen up caterpillars! That’s food for me and mine and not you. Keep your creepy, wispy tendrils away!)
Filed under: seed starts , broccoli seeds, broccoli sprouts
April 27, 2008 • 8:08 pm 2
I’ve slowly been working in seeds and transplants. I don’t want to get too sucked into this unusually warm Connecticut weather, but it just feels like stuff needs to get planted!
This weekend was a bit more seasonal. In the 60s, overcast. I just got back from a Minnesota business trip.. where it rained like it was going out of style. I missed the bright, warm sun of this weird Connecticut spring! But here I am back to reality.
Today I got arugula seeds started, miner lettuce seeds going, black radish, radish mix, carrots, pole and bush beans all started from seed in the garden. In the meantime, the mesclun mix from the Gastrocast seed special have sprouted. Kale has sprouted. The peas in the garden have sprouted and the peas in the earthbox are getting heartier.
Honestly, I’m most excited about the pole and bush beans I planted. The pole beans are a mix of kentucky wonder pole and borlotto beans from the Gastrocast seed special. Last year the three bush (provider) beans I planted were CRAZY productive. That’s what I’m looking for. I think the pole beans will be gorgeous running up the simple wooden teepee I built.
Soon I will need to thin the kale and mesclun. The mesclun transplants I put in are doing very, very well. I ate a few leaves today. Delicious!
Filed under: Peas, seed starts, vegetable garden, vegetables , arugula, beans, gastrocast seed special, Peas, radish
April 2, 2008 • 9:06 pm 2
On 3/3 I started celeriac and three varieties of tomato. The seed starting spot that I created is in our dining room and it’s basically just a plastic utility shelf. I took one grow light and removed the legs and suspended it over the starts using bungie cord. In the picture below you can see the second grow light which is just a $12 fluorescent light with a plug and an on/off switch. I replaced the normal fluorescent bulb with a more grow-friendly aquarium light. Both lights are normally lower, but I pulled them up for the picture.
The seeds on top are those that I started on 3/3. They’re leggy. Bummer. But I’ll just bury the tomatoes up their leggy stems when I transplant. Tomatoes can grow roots from any point of their stem.. helps eliminate this leggy problem.
The seeds on the second shelf are mostly greens. They seem to be doing well, but the broccoli is getting leggy. We’ll see.
Filed under: seed starts, vegetable garden , greens, seed starts, tomatoes, vegetable garden
• 11:52 am 2
Connecticut’s finicky weather… it’s hot, it’s cold. It’s snowing, there’s a volcano. It’s really all over the place. Last year I got started too late with my plantings and while I enjoyed a reasonable bounty, it just wasn’t spread out enough.
I was determined to start things earlier this year and got many of my seed starts (celeriac, some greens, some tomatoes, broccoli, basil) going between 3/3 and 3/25. And I really wanted to get peas going. It’s a gardening tradition to plant those peas before most anything. St. Patrick’s day is a good target it seems, but I got a bit too eager.
I’ve got an Earthbox container on my deck that seemed like a great place to start my peas. It’s moveable and I can push it into the sun to keep things warm. I planted two varieties on 3/12 and since then we’ve had some warm weather, but some very cold nights and days. I dug into the dirt last night and could see that only one of the seeds had started a rootlet… and the germination was probably going to stop there. There was also some rotting.
Lesson learned. I’m going to replant in the next couple of days and this time I’ll treat the seeds with some inoculant – the rhizobial bacteria that help nitrogen fixers do their thing better. (Don’t make the noob mistake I did and try and look up pea inoculate… that doesn’t work out.)
Things are warming up around here and we’ll get to that 60 degree sweet spot for the pea soil soon.
Filed under: Peas, seed starts, vegetable garden, vegetables , inoculant, Peas, seed starts, vegetable garden
April 1, 2008 • 5:13 pm 2
Great podcast here. It’s about “food, cooking, and the politics of what we eat” from the Podchef Neal Foley. He’s off the coast of Washington state and frequently does cool videos on farming.
Informative video here on starting seeds… something that I’ll be posting about shortly to show some of my anemic seedlings.
Filed under: seed starts, vegetable garden , podchef, seed starting, vegetable gardening
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