Last Friday, I finished up my work and then got started on something that I was waiting a month for… starting my heirloom garden seeds! I am trying something different this year, starting everything from seed! Overall, I think it’s going to be much cheaper and the variety will be very unique and different. I’m really looking forward to the neat varieties of peppers, beans, tomatoes and carrots and such.
I started up 6 flats of seedlings… several different ways. Some with our little homemade toilet paper tube starters and some with the little Jiffy expando pellets. Some in our little peat pots in trays.
I got some little popsicle sticks to write all the names of the seedlings on because I have so many varieties! I want to make sure that when I plant them in the garden, I’ll know what everything is. I probably will narrow down the selections next year to the things that really perform well and we like.
I actually tallied up the seedlings…
72 pepper plants
14 cabbage
40 pickle cukes
30 brocolli
12 northern melons
92 tomatoes
21 zinnias and 21 marigolds to plant here and there
Ended up with 302 seedlings. I’m not expecting to have them all make it, or to plant them all if they do well or else I’ll have SO many tomatoes and peppers that I’m going to be canning all summer long! If they do all make it, I’ll probably share with my friends and neighbors a few fun things here and there.
Saturday morning, I popped all the flats into one of the cold frames that gets a lot more sun then the other. I bought two little cheap thermomiters and have been watching the temperatures in them both and I was very surprised to find the south one reaching temperatures over 100 degrees. At mid-day sun, it hit 115 in there. I think that is probably a little too hot, so I’ve been venting them a little inch crack and that keeps it down around 85 degrees.
The northern one only reaches temps about 15-20 degrees more than the outside temperature. Since I don’t have anything else to plant as seedling starts, I think I’ll be filling that one with dirt and get something like peas or bush beans growing in there. Something that likes a little cooler temperature.
I also started 5 small window boxes of leaf lettuce in there too. See how that grows in the lovely hothouse environment. Soon as I have a little time to rub together, I want to get the cold frames stained and sealed. They will look beautiful. And give all the other beds a roller coating on the outside as well.
Got strawberries to plant, to fill in my bed. My initial 25 plants from last year, they did okay, but not great. I lost about 10 plants, yet I’ve seen some runner plants starting up. I bought 25 more starters from Guernys and they were delivered late last week. Gave them a good drench of water and set them out in the coldframe to get a little sunshine and acclimate. I hope this is the last that I need to buy of the berries because I am hoping that they thrive this year and fill up the bed a bit more.
I lost a couple raspberries, they rotted at the dirt level. I think our cold and yet dry summer last year really did a number on the starts. I got a few berries, though, even though I wasn’t supposed to. These are 2 year old canes now, and I should get a nicer crop. I really like the idea of permaculture plants, and hope to really nurture some of my fruits this year. Apples, strawberries, grapes, blueberry and raspberries. One blueberry is thriving and all over buds, the other two are kind of looking a little pale. One that we bought late in the season and discounted, it’s doing the worse. I thought it was dead and clipped a branch and was surprised to find green wood, so I’m not giving up hope. The middle one is budding, a but, but it’s a little less vigorous as the first one.
Well, that’s the story of the moby farm so far. I think I’ll be harvesting my first 2010 crop tomorrow. The chives have gone insane. I think I’m going to chop them all back hard, and then dice up all the herbs and dehydrate them! I might flash freeze a tray as well, and just see what I like better. Pretty cool!
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