An Essential Warning and Update

I've been trying to figure out why my seedlings haven't been growing and I think I finally figured it out!  I picked up my seedling flat that's been sitting on the Christmas lights and found that they had burned some of the styrofoam they were sitting on and melted into the plastic flat bottom!  We're lucky the house didn't burn down and I'm thinking the seedlings were too hot.  Hopefully now that they are a little cooler, they will grow a bit faster.    Use caution with those Christmas lights!!
Today, we did a bunch of weeding in our raised beds and planted our remaining Kohlrabi in some of the big pots around the house.  I transplanted the nasturtiums and tomatoes which have been hardening off outside.  I also planted some chard seeds in the old asaparagus bed and lettuce seeds in one of our big pots.
The asaparagus we broke up has a few patches that are producing already!  We harvested our first delicious spear the other day!  Yum!!

Getting Outside - FINALLY!!

Last Saturday (April 19) Jacob and I got outside and hand tilled our two 8'x18' plots in a local community garden.  We finally got some seeds in the ground and have our fingers crossed for success.  We put in:


Heirloom Sugar Snap Peas (2 rows)

Chantenay Carrots (2 rows)
Lunar White Carrots (1 row)
Lutz Green Leaf Beets (2 rows)
Heirloom Gourmet Blend of Beets from Botanical Interests (2 rows)
Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach (3 rows)
Mammoth Melting Sugar Peas (2 rows)
Scarlet Nantes Carrots (2 rows)
Snow Oregon Giant Sugar Peas (3 rows)
Early White Vienna Kohlrabi (2 rows)
Rainbow Mix Carrots (2 rows)
Heirloom Arugula (2 rows)

This weekend, the goal is to get the Chard, lettuce, and any remaining cold weather seeds that we want in the ground at our house.
Last weekend, we also put the tomatoes and nasturtiums outside to harden off.  The herbs are still in the flat in the basement and are being very slow in their progress.  Hopefully their growth will pick up soon, but they currently seem stuck at the primary leaf stage and am not sure why...


A few weeks ago, we dug up the crowns of asparagus in our square foot garden bed because they haven't produced much of anything for the past 2 years.  They seemed rather cramped under the surface, so we broke them up and planted them all around the house, giving them a lot more room.  We will wait and see if any come back but we figured we had nothing to lose.  It looks like one spear has already popped up by the trash cans, so we have hope!

Progress and set backs

I managed to move the Nasturtiums and tomatoes to bigger individual containers this week and gave them a dose of fish fertilizer for a little boost.  I then put the dome back on the other babies because the Marjoram made it very clear that they weren't happy....by all promptly dying the day I removed the dome.  Ouch.  I reseeded those along with a few lost sage and lavender, but you can't make them all happy and the few baby Nasturtiums that weren't ready to make the leap to independence decided to voice their protest of being treated like infants and being put back under the dome by dying almost immediately.  Everything wants to make a statement.  Oh well....I managed to keep the tomatoes and Nasturtiums that I did move very much
 alive, which is a first for me (to have a successful transplant like that without casualties).  Woohoo!!  Here are a few pics.  Also, I was supposed to start the Kohlrabi outside on March 15...so far, no luck with that since the soil still tends to be pretty hard.  Hopefully soon I can get out to the new plots and put those seeds in the ground!

Nasturtiums....

I started the nasturtiums today.  So far, everything seems to be germinating beautifully except OF COURSE the Ground Cherries....yet again...I have never had one successful germination from those darn seeds!!  I guess it's time to start thinking about what will go in the garden in their place.  Right now, I'm facing two major issues:
1.  Kohlrabi is supposed to be started direct in the ground at about this time, but the ground is no good yet.  I guess we play the waiting game and see when I can work the soil.  I hate getting a late start!
2.  I started all my seeds in one big flat, this is the first time I've tried this.  I'm going to transplant them to seedling trays with their own spots when they get their first set of true leaves.  Unfortunately, the tomatoes have grown leaps and bounds, while the other seeds are still really tiny.  The tomatoes are pressing against the plastic dome while all the others still need that moisture.  I don't want to stunt or damage my tomato plants by leaving the dome on, but I also don't want to risk the tiny seedlings by removing that extra moisture.  I'm afraid of trying to transplant the tomato plants when they are so small....  Any ideas?

Starting the 2014 Garden!

Today I set up the seed starting station in the basement (with some new improvements like a light timer - 16 hours of light, 8 hours off - and Christmas lights under my seed flat to help heat from the bottom).  I'll test the soil temperature over the next few days to see if we are getting enough heat for our little seeds to be happy (as of March 4 at 7:30, it seems to be working quite effectively - honestly, I'm shocked!).

This year I'm taking a heavier approach to growing herbs and some decorative items in hopes of selling some of them this year (not to mention the fact that I seem quite good at growing perennial herbs as opposed to peppers and melons!).  We are also expanding the garden with a community space that will give us two 20'x10' beds which is pretty exciting!

Today I started the following:

• Green Sage (Tomato Bob): A great herb either fresh or dry that compliments soups, sausages, and stuffing.  (16 plants)
• Red Ruffled Eggplant (Baker Creek): This is decorative (but also edible as well) and produced branches with what look like little baby pumpkins.  (12 plants)
• Munstead Strain Lavender (Baker Creek): Beautiful flowers and very aromatic. (16 plants)
• Ground Cherry (Baker Creek): Tart, sweet berries that are good for eating raw or putting in jams, pies, and preserves. (10 plants)
• Black Cherry Tomatoes (Tomato Bob): A delicious cherry tomato that we grew last year and couldn't get enough of! (10 plants)
• Sweet Marjoram (Tomato Bob): An herb mainly used in Greek cooking for soups, salads, and flavored vinegars. (16 plants)
• Yolo Wonder Pepper (Tomato Bob): Sweet pepper good for stuffing. (6 plants)

First Post of 2013

Featuring our new fence.

My new garden workbench.

Wow, it's hard to believe it's June 2013 and it's sad to think that this is my first post.  I've been taking pictures of the garden and diligently working away at it, but not keeping everyone posted!!  Let's play catch-up.

The new strawberries.

We've made a few changes this year as you can see.  We added a fence all around our square foot area to keep out the newest addition to the family - a Boston Terrier named Marvin.  We added new mulch to the pathway, revamped the soil in the raised beds, and my talented husband, Jacob, created a garden workbench for me for our one year wedding anniversary - he did all the welding/building himself!  We pulled all of the strawberries out since they were not producing well last year and added new ones.

This year I was determined to maximize what I was growing in a limited space so I made out a VERY complicated plan including a minimum of 10 spreadsheets with various layouts, statistics, etc. on them, ordered lots of new heirloom seeds, prepped the beds and then.....life happened.

Here are some of my lessons learned.

1.  Simplify!  My plan was way too complicated to keep up with in real life (too many start dates, transplant dates, etc. to track).

An early shot of the peas.

2.  I didn't think practically in terms of infrastructure - having 5 rows that are each spaced 6 inches apart and consist of teeny tiny seedlings that are easily accidentally stepped on, is not too practical.  In addition, having random pea plants and other veggies that need support structures scattered throughout various rows and beds are not easy to deal with when I only have a limited number of tomato cages/stakes and makes harvesting a pain.

Our few straggly asparagus spears.

3.  The weather has been extremely odd this year - we went from extremely cold and wet where nothing would germinate and when it did, it got frost burned, to peak summer heat, so the cool weather plants that should be thriving are struggling - the peas are looking ok but some are a bit yellow already, the arugula bolted before we could eat it, along with a decent number of spinach plants, and the baby lettuces got sunburned.

The secondary garden bed featuring potatoes.

4.  Wild Animals - there is what I believe to be a squirrel who is playing a game of mental warfare with me.  Every time there are seedlings in the garden (including the highly fenced areas), some critter comes along and digs them up and leaves them to die.  I'm assuming it's a squirrel since it gets over the fence and doesn't actually eat the plants.  Any tips on how to combat this demon would be much appreciated.

Spinach babies before the heat kicked in.

The garden coming along - the greenery is mainly peas.

5.  Germination and transplant problems - I've had a lot of bugs assaulting my transplants while they are hardening off (especially potato bugs) which obviously challenges the baby plants and leads to most of them dying after they are transplanted.  I've been direct seeding lettuce, beets, spinach, beans, carrots, and leeks with very very little successful germination and again, not sure why.  I tested my soil and should be good to go but nothing happens.  The peas and potatoes are thriving (relatively speaking) along with a handful of lettuces but everything else is just having a really hard time.  We didn't get to harvest any asparagus this year either, just didn't thrive...

6.  Time....there's never enough to keep up with the weeds but I'm fighting the good fight.  I was out there before work Friday at 6am weeding the 5-10 carrots (supposed to be 200)....

Any tips/advice/recommendations with regards to any of these issues would be much appreciated.

Don't want to end on a downer note though - here are some lovely pics of the garden as it has progressed this year.  As you can see, the grapes and hops are absolutely wonderful and doing their best to give us cool shade on the arbor!  More to come!

A more recent shot of the grapes and hops.

A very early shot of the hops.

A more recent shot of the peas

Status Update

Wow, ok, wedding over so now maybe a little more focus.  We lost all our seedlings and have been heavily dependent on Oakland Nursery.  Because of this, our assortment of veggies is different than we would typically pick.  We are growing collard greens, swiss chard, malabar spinach, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelons, pumpkins, cantaloupe, and berries.  We harvested our first 2 cucumbers yesterday and our first 2 cherry tomatoes - they were all wonderful!!  We are in the midst of blackberry season which is fun.  Our grapes and hops are both growing strong and we are going to be getting grapes for the first time this year!  You can see some pics of our arbor going strong.