At home

Even with so much going on I haven't been neglecting my home garden preparations.  My cole crops have sprouted in the safety of my windowsill greenhouse, my peppers have yet to show and I should get to my tomatoes this week.  Outside I pulled up all the strawberry plants that last  years heat killed and mulled over the raised beds.  Age is getting to them, I fear the fungus that is growing from the wood will be the end of them soon, but I will get one more season out of them at least and then I'll give the boards back to the soil and start over.  I need to pull up the frost-bitten kale, ready the back bed for coles and the front bed for peas.  I'm also making myself wait, it might snow this week, and I really don't want to have to do everything twice!

Hort 2334 Food Crops, 1-31-2013

1-31-2013

Our second class opened with a movie.  The Silence of the Bees, a Nature production (2007).  The topic was Colony Collapse Disorder. Colony Collapse Disorder is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.[1]  This wasn't the first time I had heard about CCD, the movie painted a dire picture for our current food ways if the challenge of aiding the bees was not met.  It first outlined the possible causes for CCD and then illustrated though antidotes or interviews with scientist which were plausible; parasites, virus, starvation, poison, and which were not; cell phone interference.
Although, at the time, there was no concrete conclusions most signs were pointing at a virus that was weakening the bees and their resistance to parasites, virus, starvation, and poisons. 
The second part of class we sorted a collection of donated seed for various purposes   The class will be helping out with the local food pantry, Philabundance, Urban Creators, Cheltenham high school, temple medical herb garden, and greek related plant sales. After the sort our groups got to choose plants for our plots. It took all the strength I had not to just fill my pockets and run. Such temptation. After much deliberation this is our crop list:


Carrot- Carnival Blend
Lettuce-mesclun "valentine"
Sunflower-lemon queen
Pepper- jewel-toned bells
Edamame-butter bean
Cauliflower- chef's choice blend
Leek-king richard
Beet-Detroit dark red
Cuke-west Indian gherkin
Tomato-John baer
Very colorful but not to "weird" for the food pantry
Lab today was an introduction to the tool shed and seed starting protocol.  Also, apple cake, but more on that later.  I learned that what I'd call a pitch fork could also be a cultivator.  Standing there listening her talk about pitch forks, all I could think was that one good thing about losing the farm was I didn't have to hay ever again if I didn't want to.  Being the shortest in my family meant I had to be up in the hot, dusty, hay loft.  I don't miss that one bit. After our trip to the tool shed we went back to the green house.  Eva presented us we apple cake made from the apples from the previous lab.  It was dairy free, heavy on the cinnamon and very good.  Following that we started our seeds.  Adam and I filled a whole tray with leeks, while Carlo, Tina, and our newest member Joe splitting a tray between cauliflower and lettuce. Other groups were planting their beets, I'm worried now that we should have started ours too, but I think we'll have time.  Next month we'll start the peppers and in the weeks following that we'll do the tomatoes.  
    

Something new.

Greeting,
It has been a while since I've posted.  I'm chalking it up to having other priorities this past year.  Currently, in my quest to become a better gardener, I have enrolled in Horticulture, Food Crops.  One of the requirements of this class is to keep a journal of each class, so I thought why not dust off the old blog for that purpose!

Brassicas are now outside

The weather man said I'd have a few days with out rain so I thought I'd put my cabbage and broccoli outside. Each is covered with a bottle to keep them warm in case of a cold snap. I guess it looks a little trashy but no one has complained and if they do they are welcome to donate to the cost of Victorian style glass covers. I also started peas, spinach, radishes, kale, and the turnips that came free from some purchase. The spinach is what is under the plastic lid in the picture. Hopefully it will all still be alive when i get back from my trip.

Soil testing

I used a Rapitest Soil test kit. I'm glad it was a multi-use because I tested each bed. Conclusion: I have depleted everything, alkaline soil...

Well I was planning on amending anyway and like I didn't want another excuse to go to primex or break open the gardens alive catalog.

Surpise! Yep I still post too!

So I've been away, from home and the blog, sorry about that. Thanks to Mich my garden flourished while I was gone and I came home to healthy plants. I thought I'd share my garlic picture. This is the first time I've grown garlic and I am really enamored with it.
The hard neck garlic makes a handsome tall plant when everything else is little. When it starts to get hot it makes this crazy corkscrew shoot that makes great stir fry and then you pull it and hang it and in a couple of weeks you have awesome garlic. Of course then you have the problem of wanting to use it all and not save cloves to grow it next year. Its always a struggle!
Next I have my pepperoncini. I planted two plants, this is only the first harvest. I have another 2 pints of them in my fridge waiting to be pickled. These are very mild so I'm putting one of my scary hot "wild cross" peppers in each jar so they have some heat.





The ground hog is still a problem. My garden is now completely enclosed in fence. Its tough to work around but at least I get some of my veggies.

April in my garden

Greetings,
This spring I was out earlier then past years and I planted cabbage; early jersey, bok choi, kale, radishes; French breakfast, and snow peas. The cliff flanking my yard is very beautiful its a wash of pastel flowers that I know nothing about. If you can't eat it, I don't plant it. The landlord put in perennials a while back so these are all his fault.

ARGE!!!

I hate that furry monster in our garden!! The Ground hog is making a pest of himself. He sits on the bok choi to eat the cabbage. So out in the garden is a big lumpy butt print and the decimation of greens...I'm making some hot pepper water now...lets see if he can take the heat.

Resources

Just got "Carrots love Tomatoes" and "Square foot Gardening" out of the library. I want to get the most out of my little space.

Raised Beds

We will be blogging about our raised beds shortly, but I just had to laugh. I was so worried about what the landlord would think of them. He came by and asked why we made so few (3). He is appartly as gung-ho about having a garden as I am. I hope all my talk has not gotten his hopes up to high. I mean you can have all the know how in the world and pick the plants with the best chances and still end up with only a garnish for all your work. We have so much shade and I haven't even begun to address the proplem of the ground hog...

Cheep seed starting set up

Sorry this is backward - to show results and then talk about process - but here is how I started peppers.

Supplies:

• Egg cartons
• Sprouting soil
  
• Lipped baking tray
  
• Washtub
• Seeds
• Thermometer
• 60 watt bulb and clamp fixture and/or multispectrum florescent light and fixture.
  
• Something to keep the moisture in.
  
• Oh, and water.

Technique:
Put the amount of sprouting soil you think you'll need in to a washtub or bucket or sauce pan, what ever you have really. Sprinkle this soil with water until it is damp but not wet. Scoop this soil into your egg cartons. Tap the filled cartons on a table to compact the soil very lightly and then add a little more soil and fill and tap again until the cells of the egg carton are full.
Gently push your seeds into the soil in each cell. Knowing that about 20% of my seeds won't sprout I put 2 seeds per cell. Later you'll clip the less successful sprout of each cell, or tease them apart when you move them to little pots.
Place the filled egg cartons on the lipped baking tray. Your free alternatives to the baking tray are polystyrene meat trays, cut in half "door storage" style juice jugs and random clam shell packaging. Put a little bit of water in the tray and cover with the moisture barrier. I've used, cling film, space bags, and so on but I finally caved and bought something for the purpose, which cost $6 and was made in the USA so I'm not going to feel bad about it.
Place these items where they can get to the correct temperature. Peppers like it hot, 75-85 degrees. I put mind in a closet and set up a 60 watt. At this point heat is more important then light. You could store them in the dark at this point, if you have a lizard mat, heating pad, or ceramic heat bulb that would be awesome. I use the thermometer for the first couple of days as I figure out were the heat source should go to keep the spouts at optimal temp.
Then you wait, checking the moisture and so forth until you see spouts. What is when light becomes important and you need to change up to a multispectrum light and give them room to grow, you want to keep the light rather close to the sprouts because they can become very tall if they are reaching for the light.
Next up, moving them to pots...and starting tomatoes...

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