I Got My Seeds Started

I bought a Jiffy Greenhouse thing from either Lowe's or WalMart to start my seeds and a 2 T8 bulb fluorescent shop light type thing for lighting.

I made a small order of some seeds and used some seeds that I had bought last year and never used. I also used some seeds that I saved on my own from Farmer's Market produce.

I don't want to overdo it and be swamped with food I can't eat, but on the other hand I want to use the space and time I have to grow as much as I will use.

I started my seeds on Feb 21.It didn't take long for them to germinate, the ones that did anyway. I bought poblano peppers from Burpee and they have a very poor germination rate. I'm very disappointed!

Anyway, here's what I planted: 4 Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, 3 Gardener's Delight tomatoes, 1 orange tomato, 1 normal size red tomatoe, 1 Jimmy Nardello pepper, 1 Bull Nose pepper, 2 banana peppers, 2 poblano peppers, 2 broccoli, 2 cabbage, 2 cauliflower, 5 butterhead lettuce, 4 mesclun mix, and 20 bunching onions.

Like I said, the poblano didn't germinate so I planted some more on March 5. Then I read that they take quite a while to sprout so maybe I jumped the gun, but here it is about 3 weeks later and only 2 little sprouts showed up. The Calabrese broccoli didn't come up either, so I planted another of those. If all goes well, I will be giving some of these plants to 2 of my daughters.

I tried to use only heirloom or open pollinated varieties and will try to save the seeds from the peppers and tomatoes to share with people and to use next year.

Here is a picture of the seedlings on March 5.

I read that the seedlings have enough nutrients in their seed coat for about 7 days or so and then they would need fertilizer. I read that they should be given liquid fertilizer at a very diluted rate to start and then less dilute as time goes on. I didn't have any other fertilizer the last time I watered, so I used fish emulsion. I now have an all purpose type fertilizer to use.

Today I decided to thin out the plants. Here is the before picture. It's a veritable little jungle!

My plan was to thin out the weaker looking scraggly plants. There were only a couple in there that didn't bother me to cut off, the rest of them it was pretty hard to do. I hope I made the right choices. Here's what they look like now.

I'm not sure how long they can survive in those tiny little pots. I know I will have to transplant them into a bigger container before long. I bought some bigger ones so I'm ready.

I will also be direct seeding some spinach, carrots and peas pretty soon. And my strawberry plants will be arriving before long too.

Wish me luck!

I just realized that I never posted a picture of my raised beds. This picture was taken a few weeks ago. The beds are covered in plastic and there is snow and ice on top.

More on My Raised Beds

Today was a beautiful day in the high 50s, a little breezy, but lovely weather to be outside. And outside I was, all day. I mixed up all the ingredients to fill my raised beds.

I am following the Square Foot Gardening method this year. I have four 4x4 beds. I am filling them with equal parts vermiculite, peat moss and compost.

I just used my wheel barrel, a garden cart and 5 gallon buckets. I put a bucket full of each ingredient in the wheel barrel and used a hoe to mix it up. My wheel barrel can hold 8 cu ft, but I put about 6 in it so I could have room to mix it up.

Then on to the beds to dump it in. Then repeat about a million times.

Then I covered the beds with plastic to try to keep rain from washing out nutrients. I just stapled it all around the beds. Don't know if that is a good idea or not or if it will even work, but I did it anyway.

I bought some broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seeds and a little green house thing to start them out. Wish me luck!

my raised beds

bill and i bought the materials to make 4 raised beds. and we made them. they measure 4'x4'x1'. we used untreated pine. we also stapled wire mesh to the bottoms so nothing would dig up and get stuff. i don't really know if it's necessary or not, but it's done now.

today we are supposed to be mixing up the ingredients to fill the boxes. we have compost, vermiculite and peat moss. it's supposed to be a nice day today. we'll see how it goes. i will give an update and post a picture or 2 later if we get it done.

and as a side note: i had collected leaves from our yard and the neighbor's yard this past fall. i shredded them with the leaf shredder i bought. i ended up with 6 large leaf bags full of shredded leaves to use this spring and summer for making compost. i stored them under my deck in the back yard. i'm not sure if it was the dogs or the kids, but every bag was ripped open and the leaves spread all around under the deck. i just want to cry about that.

Making Compost ... My First Attempt

I got a late start on making compost, but better late than never. It's been about 3-4 weeks since I started collecting things for my pile.

I had grass clippings and kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, jack o'lanterns and cardboard. I knew I didn't have enough carbon releasing items in it so it wasn't going to cook very fast. I couldn't wait for the leaves to fall from the trees. I turned it and watered it, but not much action going on yet.

But the leaves have fallen and I have collected a bunch. I mowed the back yard one last time and mowed over the leaves that were there. I then used the sweeper and collected as much as I could of that and put it in the compost pile.

This box is opened on the bottom. It measures 4'x4'x1'.

I made a chicken wire compost bin just for leaves. It sits next to the compost pile. I filled it part way full with the leaves that have thus far fallen in the front yard. I'll get some more later after more have fallen.

So after wondering what I was going to do with the leaves I decided that I would store them until next spring. But I didn't want a ton of large lawn bags full of leaves laying around.

I ordered a leaf shredder and it arrived today. I shredded all the leaves and reduced them to 1 1/2 bags. I love that little leaf shredder! I even shredded some of my compost pile with the intention of doing the whole pile. But that didn't work out as planned. My compost pile was somewhat wet and while the shredder did shred everything, it also stuck around the sides and needed to be cleaned off often. So I quit doing it.

I think I will just leave the pile alone now except for turning it about once a week and watering it. I think it should be broken down enough by spring. Any large material will be caught when I strain it through a screen.

As for the bagged leaves, I have read that I can use those with rabbit pellets to create compost. Maybe I will try that in the spring.

My goal is to have enough homemade compost to use in my square foot gardening beds. We'll see. 

First Frost

I think we had our first frost of the season last night.

Wintering My Citrus Trees

I brought my 3 citrus trees inside a couple weeks ago. I had them in the garage, but I felt it was going to get too cold over night for them, so I brought them upstairs to the spare room/everything else room.

I made my frame out of pvc pipe and have hung the light fixture to it. I made my frame bigger than necessary, oops...guess I'll have to get some more plants. What's a girl to do. I just have the one light fixture for now, but there's room for another one. The light is 4 ft t5 HO with 4 bulbs, 54w and 6500k each. It is on a timer for 16 hours.

I put Orca Grow Film around it. It's kinda a sloppy job, but at least it's up. And I have the ceiling fan running 24/7. My hygrometer reads in the upper 70s-low 80s for temperature and 50-60% humidity. I don't know for sure if that thing is accurate though.

I spray the trees with fish emulsion every week and also use neem oil occasionally. I have sticky traps set up as well, I've caught some gnats.

Watering has been somewhat of a puzzlement for me. I am so afraid of over watering. I was using a wooden dowel inserted in the mix to check for moisture level. I mistakenly thought that the roots had reached closer to the bottom of the pot than they actually do. So when I found the bottom of the pot still moist, I did not water.

Well my poor lime tree nearly bought the farm. It's roots must be pretty shallow yet as it was dying of thirst, literally.

I was so afraid of over watering that I didn't recognize the signs of under watering. It was dropping leaves like crazy, which I attributed to it being brought inside.

But, I understand now what's going on with it and hopefully it will pull through. It is responding very well to being watered. I just hope it puts leaves back on in a hurry.

There is something else about this tree. I thought it was a Key Lime because the label says it's a Key Lime, but the label also says limequat in parentheses. I don't know, but I think limequat fruit is shaped more elongated, so maybe time will tell.

That got me thinking, though, that I want an actual Key Lime. I read that Key Lime will grow true to seed, so I bought some Key Limes and am going to attempt to grow a couple trees from seed. I will post about that later.

Bringing the Tropical Hibiscus in for the Winter

Today I pruned back my Mother's tropical hibiscus to prepare it for the move inside for the winter. I have found some advice online on how to get it ready. I read to prune it back about 1/3 of the way, which I did. I was suppose to make the cuts right above leaves and read that from this area at least two more will sprout and produce blooms next spring. I also read to spray it off really well with water and to wash off the pot as well. I did that. Then I was suppose to spray all surfaces of leaves and branches with fish emulsion spray and even though that smells to high heaven, I did it. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere about removing 2" of the potting mix off the top and replacing with new mix, but for the life of me I cannot find that information anywhere. So, I didn't do that. I did spray the mix with neem oil though. I will watch closely for creepy crawlies.

Now I'm not quite sure of the lighting or heat requirements. I guess I will play it by ear. Right now I have put it under the light with my citrus trees. I'll just keep an eye on it and see how it goes. I did also read that some hibiscus never quite make it through this transition. I hope this one does. I plan to repot this little beauty in the spring.

Another thing I did was to put the clippings into potting soil in hopes of them taking root. I really don't know what I'm doing here, but I thought it was worth a shot since they were going into the compost bin anyway. I probably should have cut off the blooms, but that is so difficult to do. 

I will post updates about the progress as it happens. Wish me luck!

UPDATE:
These clippings did not take root so I got rid of them. :(

UPDATE: 27 JUN 2014
I thought I might share an updated picture of this hibiscus tree. I repotted it into a bigger pot with Mel's Mix (I think). It has grown a lot and has produced a bunch of blooms. I used to only get 1 at a time, now there are several at one time. It's so beautiful. It has some Japanese beetles on it I noticed. I'm going to try to catch them before too much damage is done. The others are my 2 meyer lemons and the limequat.