Seed List

I guess i was slepping last night when I posted about the seeds, so below is a list of whats new this year.

• Mary Washington Asparagus
• Green Globe Artichoke
• Yellow and Green Bush Bean
• Tall Telephone Pea
• Glaskins Perpetual Rhubarb
• Vegetable Marrow Squash
• Vegetable Spaghetti Squash
• Black Pearl Soy Beans
• Yin Yang Beans
• Early Pink & Calico Popcorn
• Chichiquelite Huckleberry
• Emerald Gem Melon
• Scaly Bark Watermelon
• Striped Stuffing Tomato
• Virgina Peanuts
• Jerusalem Artichoke
• Bull's Blood Beet
• Indigo
• Black Hollyhock
• Golden Margerite
• Wild Indigo
• Safflower
• Chinese Woad
• Flax
• Milk Weed
• Erlene's Green Cotton
• Mississippi Brown Cotton
• Bo-Tree
• Rainbow Mix Aster
• Pacific Beauty & Pink Surprise Calendula
• Halequin Marigold
• Farinacea Blue Bedder Salvia
• Music Box Sunflower
• Kong Sunflower
• Chinese Latern

Seed Starting Time

First i need to apologize for not blogging about my seeds this year. After last years disastrous results I guess it wasn't that important, but then it is since I haven't given up and have started my seeds this year and got lots of new ones back in January.

Something that I learned last year was to start not only the cool weather veggies yearly, but also start the perennial and herb seeds early. Last year some of them didn't even germinate and the rest were small when I planted them out side and didn't even survive. If there are any that don't come up then I can start them again and see if I can get them to germinate. If not then I just can't grow that stubborn plant, so it the plants lose any way.

Some new seeds that I got this year are asparagus, artichokes, rhubarb, scaly bark watermelon, melon, peanuts, some new dye herbs. I got milk weed, because I found out that you can use it to spin flax. I know what your thinking the seed fluff, nope that is to brittle and will break down of time. But it has been used for stuffing in life jackets so they will float. I'm told the fiber are hallow and that is the reason they work. The part that you use in spinning is the stem, you don't have to rett the stem after they are dry. You can bend the dry stems to realise the outer casing and expose the inner fiber, then you hackle it like flax.

I'm also going to try Jerusalem artichokes, they are not here yet since I could only get they tubers. I would suspect that the will arrive just in time for planting. We shall wait and see.

I also got a soil test kit just to make sure the soil at the farm is alive. Not so much alive because there are plenty of worms in it in the spring when I plant. I guess I just want to make sure everything is in the ranges they are supposed to be at. Since they farm was turned in to a nursery there are a lot of full grown trees and bushes. They may have taken a lot of the nutrients out of the soil. I can't do any tests though since the mountain is still covered in about six inches of snow. They are saying that its going up into the fifties this weekend I hope so then I can get some soil sample and plan out the garden this year.

I've been stalling on the planning out, until I know how many plants and what soil amendment I may have to do. Amending the is the problem so much as knowing how many plant I will have.

Garden

Since March I have been working on enlarging my garden plot from a 12’ by 18’ to 12’ by 100’. The process though not difficult has taken longer then expect to the point I had too wait to plant some of my early veggies till all the prepping was done.

In March we of course started with the layout of the garden. Since the garden is placed in a nursery row the width is 12’. There is not much we can do about that until we decide to remove some of the old nursery stock. This would give us a total width of about 30’ give or take a little.

After staking out the garden we wanted to till it under add compost and till again. The area hasn’t been worked in several years about 25 to be exact and a couple of years ago when I had a garden there some of the produce did very poorly for a number of reasons so this year the addition of compost will correct some of that. We added a total of 25 cubic yards of compost to 1200 square feet of garden. So with that amendment and some other tricks of the trade there should be no problems with the lack of nurturance.

We wanted to get all the tilling done before we put up the fence it just made it easier to till and add the compost to the garden. This was all fine and good until we got a cold snap and the rains came. Making it very difficult to do either chore, so finally we were able to get the garden tilled, composted and fenced. This was all completed on the last day of April not to bad, I did want too get the early veggies in a couple of weeks prier but that wasn’t going to happen.

After all the work to get the garden ready and protected for the new seedlings I started this year, it decided to rain, and rain, and rain and yes rain some more a full seven days of rain to be exact. If it wasn’t raining during the day it rained at night so the garden was too wet to work in.

After it did stop raining and we had a couple of days with no ran and sun, the earth dried enough to be able to work and I finally got my early veggies planted. So I was able to get the cabbage, cauliflower, celery, broccoli and cotton in the ground as of Friday. Thank God because I was getting worried I wasn’t going to get them in at all or at least too late to produce before they went to bolt.

I do have to get the early seeds in which I will probable do tomorrow. I was more worried about the plants since they were becoming leggy. While I was playing in the garden some one brought me a gift of tomato plants, all thought it is early to plant them for this area I decided to go for it. I figured they had a better chance of surviving in the ground then in a box. So I had to do some quick thinking on were to plant theses little guys in an already planned garden. I figured out a good spot and got them in I was given several plants of heritage and roma, I was also given some fun tomatoes such as black, pink, yellow, gold, purple and green. So I should have a lot of fun with them and a very colorful salad.

One last thing on this very long post when I had the garden a couple of years ago something had gotten in and was taking a bite out of every thing. Never eating the whole fruit or veggie, so I tried to figure out what it mite be. But nothing was coming to mind and I found nothing livening in the garden or even an escape route. Till one day I found the culprit it was a box turtle. So I removed the little guy and sent it on his or her way. Well while getting every thing together this year the turtle is back and I have decided to make it the official guard turtle of the garden. So there should be no more thieves in the garden with this little camera shy guy around. Well as long as you don’t take its picture anyway.

More Seeds Planted

Today was seed planting day. I got all my summer seeds sowed and in there warm little incubators so they can germinate. A total of 36 different varieties of plants in 4 flats of 72 cells per flat, that a total of 288 seeds that I sowed today that’s a lot. I do have a couple of more trays to plant yet one for the front yard of the house and one for a garden near the vegetable garden. I have to wait for the seed I planted today to germinate so I have room for the next two trays. Below I have a list of all the seeds I planted if you would like to check it out.

• Delivious Tomato
• Principe Borgehese Tomato
• Chrimson Cushion Tomato
• Amish Paste Tomato
• French Marigold
• Parsley
• Basil
• Nastrium
• Pomigranate
• Egg Plant
• Dill
• Cheese Pepper
• Paprika Pepper
• Cayanne Pepper
• Hungerian Black Pepper
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Sesame
• Thyme
• Oregano
• Amaranth
• Indigo
• Woad
• Henna
• Weld
• Dyers Broom
• Fullers Teasel
• Eucalyptus
• 2 Variaties of Zinnia
• Ipomosis Rubra
• Kiss me over the garden gate
• Snapdragon
• Cosmos

The Children are here

My little seedling children arrived, If you believe this or not on Friday the 13th. Most of them took only three days to germinate, the celery and soap wart are being suborn in when they wish to be born. While I was checking in on everyone today I did notice what looked like some celery pocking through. So we will give it a few days to see what happens.

The first set of pictures are from last Friday when they started showing there little leaves. The second set of pictures was taken today. So they will be a week old tomorrow and are doing really well.

In the nest few days I will be getting the rest of my seed in the ground so they can sprout. These seeds will be the summer veggies. Such as tomatoes, peppers, herbs, ect. As they grow and develop I will blog about them as well.

Seed Germination

Now that I have my shelves and lights up Wednesday was seed planting day. I do realize for the area that I live in I should have started my cool weather seeds earlier. That just wasn’t a reality this year so I got them in on Wednesday.

I started celery, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, soap wart and cotton. I know what your saying the list of seeds that I post back in January didn’t have cotton in it. Ya’ I know that’s because the supplier couldn’t send them to me. So I had to search for a new supplier and I found one that would send them to PA. So I have green cotton and brown cotton. Yes cotton comes in a natural green and brown, no dyeing necessary. I do know that cotton is a hot weather plant but I was reading up on it and I found out it could take up to three weeks to germinate. So I wanted to get that started now to give it a little extra time.

So after they come up I will post all about how they are doing.

Seed Starting System

What has been taking me so long to get my seeds started is I needed a self and lighting system. So Tuesdays project was just that, we went out and got the wood for the shelves and I picked up the lights on Monday and we put it all together on Tuesday.

The shelves are eight feet tall; I used 1” by 3” for the uprights. The rest of the lumber is 1” by 2” for the side brasses, shelf supports and self slates. The construction was very easy; I have the shelves over a desk so the first self had to be 40” from the floor. The rest of the shelves are 20” apart. This is for room to move the light up as the plants get bigger.

The cost of the shelves was $18.00 for the wood; I already had a box of screws from other projects so they were free. But if I had to buy some I think they would be about ten dollars for the box, depending on the type that you are going to get. The lights were $45.00 total the one light cost $10.00 the other $15.00. The $15.00 light guarantees that it will turn on in -20 degree weather. I really didn’t need that guarantee but they were all out of the $10.00 lights except for the one I bought. The bulbs were $10.00 a pack and I had to buy two packs; I did buy a pack of warm fluorescents and cool fluorescents. This will give me a full spectrum of light or as close to humanly possible, that is.

The last two things were the hooks to hang the lights from which cost $3.00 a pack of four and a timer for the lights to come on by them selves at $4.00. So for $70.00 I have an in door green house. That sure beats the hundred or hundreds of dollar ones you see in the catalogs.

Seeds 2

The rest of my seeds came today, Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. Finally some hope of spring from this very cold winter. I my self am not a winter person I like warmer weather. I would be perfectly fine with a nice 70 degree temperature all year long. I know I lose the wonderful seasons or I could just move some place that had a nice even temp. range all year long.

I do have a list of all the seeds I got for you all to look at below have fun.

Broccoli, Basil, Beets, Snapdragons, Cabbage, Parsley, Henna, Phacelia, Celery, Oregano, Woad, Zinnia, Pickles, Rosemary, Indigo, Cerinthe, Paprika Pepper, Sage, Dyers Broom, Kiss me over the garden gate, Cayenne Pepper, Thyme, French Marigold, Zucchini, Eucalyptus, Fullers Teasel, Nasturtium, Spinach, Soapwort, Hummingbird Plant, Egg Plant, Weld, French Marigold, Sun dry Tomatoes, Bachelor Button, Amish Paste Tomatoes, Sweet Pea, Tomatoes, Jacobs Cattle Bean, Tri Pack Snap Bean, Yin Yang Bean, Garbanzo Bean, Carrots, Lettuce, Cauliflower, Rice Pea, Pomegranate, Sesame

Seeds

Today was seed ordering day; I do realize that it may seem that I’m jumping the gun a little bit. But in true reality nothing can be further from the truth. You want to order your seeds as soon as possible so you are garneted you will get the seeds you are after, especially if you are some one that likes to pick up some rare seeds.

This year I was able to order a whole assortment of seeds from heirloom veggies, cooking herbs, dyes plant, fiber plants and flowers, of course because no garden is complete without some flowers.

If you are a gardener and haven’t ordered your seeds I suggest that you may consider doing so. Not only will you get the seeds your after you may also chase away the winter blues with the hope of the upcoming spring.