March 2010 Archives

Deer continue to appear in my yard, too.  I found this footprint in my front flowerbed, the one right against my front porch!  The mailbox flowerbed was bad enough, but six feet from my house?!

Those impertinent deer had better be glad that I live in the city, that's all I'm sayin'.

I walked around the yard and dumped chili powder on all of my plants.  I saw 5lb bags of red pepper at an asian market yesterday.  I think I'll have to go back and get some. 

I'm working on a better solution for  deterring the deer, but I haven't finished thinking the design through yet. 

Meanwhile, in happy news, the calendula have appeared!

It looks like those weird little pod-looking things were the seeds. (I was concerned that the seeds were in the pod, and that I needed to break the pod apart.)

I didn't see any signs of life from the other seedlings in that tray, but I'm very glad to see the calendula. :)

Today I walked out to the mailbox to enjoy my tulips.  I was horrified to see that all but one had been scissored off about an inch from the ground.  Two footprints pawed in the mulch confirmed the culprit(s).  They also ate two pansies.

The tulips are (were)  IN THE FRONT YARD.  Right next to the curb.  *sigh* 

I'm very depressed about it. :(

I'm trying to think up a solution for next year.  My current thinking is along the lines of fishing line - it's transparent.  But the posts that would hold it up aren't.  I need cute posts. :P  I've got plenty of bamboo. Hmm ...

It frosted last night.  At 10:00am, there was still frost in the shade in front of my house, and the temperature was around 40F.  Brr!  Three weeks to go until it's theoretically safe to plant most stuff outside.  However, the snow peas apparently liked the frost.  Most of them burst through the soil overnight.  They're about 1 inch high, but their little leaves haven't unfurled yet.

I started working on containers to plant more peas in today.  I'm using 40lb kitty litter buckets. ^_^  I spray painted them purple.  I learned that if you use WD-40 to try to get the labels off the buckets, it's really important to make sure all of the WD-40 is off of the buckets before spray painting them.  I left the buckets outside to be rained on and I wiped them down before painting them.  I missed some spots.  Oh well.  The crappy-looking side can just face the shed. :P

Next to the shed, I think the chard I sprinkled into the big terra cotta pot next to the shed are starting to sprout.  That would be nice. :P  Maybe chard likes frost, too. *shrug*

Today is the first day this year that I mowed the grass. Ironically, it is also the day that I noticed that the wild violets have finally started blooming.  I did my best to mow around them.

I also had a crazy idea about the yard as I was mowing it.  The wire grass hasn't woken up yet.  I wish it would never wake up, but I don't think that's possible.  But I wonder if it can be starved out.  I have two big bags of red clover seed.  I wonder if the red clover would out-compete the wire grass.  I'm thinking about flinging the clover seed around the yard and finding out. 

Indoors, several more Amish Paste tomatoes are poking through the soil.  They're a little late to the party!  But they're still welcome. :)  I'll plant them ... somewhere.  I'm thinking about planting  some tomatoes in those topsy-turvy things and hanging them on my front porch - if I can find some in more tasteful colors.  They're kinda gaudy. Maybe I'll hang them off of the shed instead.

And the older Amish Paste sprouts are just now starting to form the second set of leaves.

Oh! One more outdoor thing to note:  Water does wick up through the bottom of the tray with holes in it, just as I hoped. The problem is figuring out how much water to put in the bottom tray - I don't want to waterlog the plants by having them sit in wet soil that can't drain because there's already water underneath it.  I guess I'll have to experiment to figure it out.

The tomatoes and peppers are coming right along, as you can see below.

A few more tomatoes have sprouted in the last few days.  I think two more Lollipops have popped up, and one more Gold Medal. 

The Thai Hot peppers are lagging a bit behind the other peppers, but if all goes well, I have a bajillion pepper plants, so I'm not really worried about it.

The white furry stuff is still hanging out on the surface of the soil.  I guess it must be some kind of mold, but I have no idea.

So I'm worried about my seedlings.  The indoor ones.  The Amish Paste and Lollipop seeds are kinda old.  That means they'll have a lower germination rate than fresh seeds.  I only have 2 out of 10 of each of those tomato varieties up.  The Gold Medal tomatoes are a year younger, and I have 4 out 10 of them sprouted.  As long as all of those seedings survive to adulthood, I'll be happy. But what are the chances of that?! 

Hmm, well, based on the last two years, pretty good, actually. *ponders*  That's a little more risk than I like in my gardening, though.

Also, it's likely  that a few more will pop up.  I'm particularly concerned about having enough Lollipops - they are the yummiest cherry tomatoes! 

I'm thinking about ordering some more seeds and planting a second round.  I should decide on that soon, but it doesn't have to be right now.

As for the peppers, more have sprouted.  There are also little balls of white fuzzy-looking stuff on top of the soil in some of the containers.  I have no idea what it is.  It could be root fuzz for seedlings that haven't figured out which end is up, or it could be mold.  I'm unfortunately thinking it's mold.  I guess we'll see.

In One Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka said something like "Nobody's garden is the same, and no two gardeners are the same.  Experiment and find a system of gardening that works for you."  That is a really loose paraphrase, but I thought that general idea was brilliant advice, and I decided to follow it.  Some of the ways I'd been taught to do things (or learned through research) were not working out for me for one reason or another. 

Today I started an experiment to attempt to solve one of those problems. 

The problem is that I'm not at home to cart tender seedlings indoors and then back outside as conditions dictate.  With the exception of tomatoes and peppers, all of the seeds I've started indoors and then put outside have dried up like vampires in the sun.  They can't survive the transition from indirect sunlight to direct for the 8 hours that I'm at work.  People who don't have to sit in an office for 8 hours a day can drag their seeds back out of the light after 2 hours, and then gradually increase the amount of light until the seedlings are OK with being outside all day.  Apparently tomatoes and peppers are more tolerant of suddenly being blasted by sunlight.

So I decided to start some of my seeds outdoors so that they'll grow up with the sun and wind and not die from shock when they meet the sun and wind for the first time.   I didn't just plant them into the ground itself because I've still got about a month before the last frost date for my area, and I don't want to tempt fate.

I want to avoid dumping water on the seeds before they get established, so I drilled holes in the bottom of a nursery tray.  The idea is that I'll be able to put water in the cover that the tray is sitting in and the water will wick up through the holes.  I hope.  This is an experiment! :P

Here's sunlight shining through the holes I drilled in the tray.  (I got to use a power tool, woo! :P  You know, I think that's the first time I've actually used a drill. Huh.)

I totally put the wrong dirt in the tray the first time.  I wanted to kick my own butt.  Luckily I noticed before I planted the seeds in it, so I dumped the potting soil back into the bag and poured the sterile seed starter mix into the tray. 



Then I soaked the mix down with rainwater from my rain barrel and started planting the seeds.  I've never planted calendula before, and the seeds are weird!  I'm not sure if these are really little seed pods with the seeds clinging to them, or if the whole thing is a seed.

I planted the tomato and pepper seedlings a week ago.  After about three days I began checking on them daily.  Every day, no sprouts.  Until today, exactly a week later! Yay! ^_^ 

I have one Amish Paste, one Lollipop, and two Gold Medal sprouts.

Here's a picture of my seed-sprouting set-up:

And here's a close-up of the cayenne pepper container with the kitty.  Because if you can have a picture with a kitty in it, why wouldn't you? ^_^

The cups are little plastic Solo cups.  I wrote the variety and number of seeds planted on the label, then taped a Ziplock bag over the cup.  They're hanging out in my sort-of dark laundry room until the sprouts get a little more established.  (But when I took these pictures yesterday, nothing had sprouted yet!)

And here's a picture of the tulip fortress:

Yesterday I planted some snow peas.  I also noticed that the violets are starting to sprout.  Some of the violets are surely upset because I chopped down a bunch of bamboo that was providing them with shade. 

Today I planted the tomatoes and peppers.  I'm trying something different this year for the other seeds I plan to plant, and I'll start them later.

Tomatoes

• Lollipop
• Amish Paste
• Gold Medal

Peppers

• Jalepeno
• Cayenne
• Hungarian Hot Banana
• Orange Bell
• Thai Hot
• Doe Hill Golden Bell

I also tossed some dill and chard seeds into one of the big terra cotta pots - the one that had garlic and mustard planted in it until the squirrels came along and destroyed the seedlings.  Hopefully they will move along and leave the pot alone this time.  ... Maybe I'd better put some wire over it just in case. *sigh*  I planted them just in time because it rained again this afternoon.

Speaking of wire, I think that all of the tulips I planted have sprouted, yay!  I'm so happy to look out the front door and see them happily sitting around the mailbox. ^_^  (If something happens to them, I'm gonna be crushed!)

The daffodils are still struggling along.  I think they're not  getting enough sun because they're shaded by some nearby bushes and bamboo.  The tulips are growing a lot faster than the daffodils are.

Oh, I also wandered around and gave all of the shrubs a good squirt of liquid worm poop.

The tulips have sprouted! *jumps up and down excitedly*

After all of the trouble I went through to build a critter-deterring tulip fortress, I am very glad to see that the tulips were able to navigate through the chicken wire and the mulch. Yay!

The daffodils are finally coming up!  The ones I planted in the Fall are about 2 inches high now.  The ones I planted the previous Fall ... some of them are about 2 inches high, too.  I'm afraid their leaves were cut too early. There are only a couple of them up so far, and I wonder if any more are going to come up.  Maybe they're just sleepy-headed like me. :P