Braccias, eggplants and peppers

Well - our baby was finally harvested this weekend, so we welcome a new gardener to the family.

In the days leading up to the birth, we kept active in the garden a little bit. Yesterday I transplanted 5 eggplant, and 6 peppers into the cold frame. These were started as seeds in a six packs on or around 3/11. They had gotten to be about 4 inches high and I was afraid that their roots were going to get too bunched up in those six packs if I kept them confined much longer. I don't plan to plant them unprotected in the garden until June, so that is still a long time to wait. I prepared a small section in the cold frame and covered them with one layer of plastic. I plan to keep these covered in the evenings and on cloudy days. On sunny days I will open it up for ventilation.

I also did some various transplanting this weekend. I moved the cabbage and broccoli out of the cold frame and into their permanent homes in the sun garden. For the most part these seedlings have done quite well. Throughout the early spring I noticed that a few broccoli leaves had begun to be eaten by critters. I very liberally plucked these seedlings and tossed them in the compost pile. So the remaining seedlings (both broc and cabbage) are very healthy and big. I'd say they are between 6 and 8 inches high. There are 14 total (6 cabbage and 8 broccoli). I spaced them approx 12 inches apart. I composted the bottom of the planting hole and also side-dressed the seedlings with compost. This sun garden plot also has some spinach and green onions growing in between the braccias. The groundhog has not found the sun garden yet, so I am hoping that these veggies are safe. He ate all the braccias in the sq foot garden.

I weeded, respaced, and composted the cold frame lettuce and spinach. I could not be happier with the health and vibrancy of these. Not a bug hole in site, and big thick spinach leaves. These are much, much better than any spinach I have ever grown before. The romaine lettuce is also top notch. Some of those heads are approaching 1/2 size. One head now will give us a full family salad.

I dropped a few radish seeds in the corn row of the sun garden in order to keep the succession planting moving along. My radishes took a hit from the groundhog last week.

I hilled up the potatoes for the first time. They look wonderful and seem to grow 6 inches a day.

I planted some foxglove, delphinium, and rhubarb inside in homemade seed starter mix. I had previously started all these seeds inside in January and it is looking like that was way too early. The seedlings started strong and were ready to transplant long before the outside temps were ready. Then they just got weak and leggy inside. I doubt any of the transplants that we tried will survive. So we are trying again.

The harvest is up to 6.5 pounds for the season. Asapargus, spinach, lettuce and onion tops are being harvested daily. As you can see in the photo, we are also harvesting cut flowers including iris, lilac, azelea, and bleading heart

Compost

You got yourself a whole mess of compost pictures and videos here today. It was a nice afternoon , so I cut out of work a little early and headed home to play in the dirt. Quinn and I stirred, turned, chopped and piled the compost. It was absolutely amazing. All the books told me not to use leaves and not to use wood chips in my compost. Well this pile is just about nothing but leaves and wood chips - layered with mushroom manure. Let me tell you it couldn't have been cooking hotter. Steam was just cascading off the pile as I dug and turned it. The whole pile looks beautiful. Keep in mind this contains an entire winter's worth of cardboard boxes, paper bags, rope, banana peels, avacodo cores, apple cores, jimmy johns cups, and even two "compostable plastic cups" (see photo). Just about everything was broken down. Even the compostable cups are well on their way to decomposition.

This isn't my first foray into composting. I have had a couple smallish piles for years, but these two 25 cubic foot bins are an operation unlike any that I have ever had before. First off the quantity is astounding. After my work this afternoon, I have one completely full bin. Inside this bin are 2 full truck loads of wood chips, two full truckloads of mushroom manure, an entire fall worth of raked leaves and an entire winter worth of kitchen scraps. That is an amazingly big pile! I actually think we are going to have enough compost this year. The other astounding thing is how quickly this stuff is breaking down. Keep in mind these piles sat dormant and frozen for most of the winter. Only three weeks ago on 3/7 did I activate them for the first time by layering in manure and stirring them. Now on 3/27 they are just burning up, and breaking down. It is utterly amazing. I said in my last post that I thought we would have compost by June. Well that seems ridiculous to say today. Heck we can start pulling compost out of this finished pile in a couple weeks if we need it. All we need to do is wait for it to cool down a little. Check out the video above of the steam coming off of the compost pile.

I did some planting today also...

1. buttercrunch lettuce seeds approx 30 in chimney garden
2. romaine lettuce seeds approx 30 in traditional cold frame
3. spinach - approx 15 transplants, and 10 seeds in cold frame
4. 5 red cabbage transplants in cold frame
5. 3 buttercrunch lettuce transplants in cold frame
6. 2 brocolli transplants in cold frame
7. 14 onion transplants in cold frame

I also fashioned ribs for the cold frame out of some 1/2 pvc piping that I had laying around the basement. These ribs should help allow the rain to cascade off of the cold frame and not puddle. They also give the plants a little more room as they start to grow.

A little later in the evening I did some indoor seed starting...

1. 12 california wonder (shumway 2008) bell peppers
2. 12 serano hot peppers
3. about 10 aneheim chili peppers started in wet paper towel and plastic bag to see if they have any life to them at all.
4. transplanted one delphium to a larger pot
5. transplanted one foxglove to a larger pot

Pepper Frustration

Let's talk about indoor seeds for a little bit. For the most part my indoor seed starting has been going well this year. I'm not going to talk so much about the stuff that is doing well - instead here are the things that are not doing so well...

1. Peppers - I did indoor plantings of various peppers on 3/9 & 3/11. I did about 30 seeds total. I planted 3 kinds (California Bell, Serano Hot, and Aneheim Chili). All these seeds were at least one year old and the Seranos and Aneheims were two years old. So far I only have 6 seedlings spouting. They are all from the 3/9 planting. The best I can tell is five of the six sprouted seedlings are California wonder Bells from Shumway 2008 seeds). I may have one serano chili (2007 seeds) up as well. I read this morning that peppers sometimes take 21 days to germinate and that they need heat. Well it hasn't been 21 days yet, and it certainly ain't hot in our house! I'll give it another couple of weeks before I pull out the seed starter mix again and fire up another batch. If I do, I'll likely only use 2008 seeds, which will limit my variety this year.
2. Delphinium and foxglove - I had to go back to the old three ring binder to figure out when I started these seeds. Looks like these were a new years project - started in a wet paper towel on Jan 3rd. Here it is almost three months later and the results are pretty disappointing. The delphs are about 1 inch to 2 inches tall with three leaves min each, but they are yellow and certainly aren't thriving. The foxglove are even worse. None are bigger than an 1/8 inch and although they have 4 leaves they are so small you can barely see them. These seeds have been growing under grow lights in an east facing window sill forever. Last year we tried delphs as well and had only one successful transplant. It went in the ground at about the same size as our current batch. Sarah thinks she saw it yesterday - it is still alive.
3. Moulin Rouge sunflower and leeks - These were both planted on 3/9. The other sunflowers that were planted the same day are about 3 inches tall already. I got these seeds in an exchange, so am not sure how old they are or weather they were saved or not. The leeks I also got in an exchange, but they came in packet from seed savers. I think they were 2008 seeds. I think they will eventually emerge. I've never grown leeks before so I don't know how long I should expect them to take to germinate.
4. impatiens - besides being super small, only about 1/2 of these seeds germinated. We planted two and 1/2 flats - probably about 200 seeds total and I think we'll be lucky to wind up with 75 plants. Right now they are about 1/2 tall. I started these on feb 2nd. Last year we had limited success with these as well. We transplanted them to their garden homes at no bigger than 1/4 inch, but all those that lived turned into fine mature impatiens with tons of flowers. So even if these are painful to watch struggle inside - I think it is worth it. Two $2 seed packs will give me 75 fine annuals. That is much cheaper than nursery stock.

I planted approx 50 red onion transplants from Chapons yesterday evening. It is 25 degrees again this morning, and these aren't protected by a cold frame. I hope they made it through the night. I am having my struggles with onions so far this year.

Today's photos are various pea planting paraphanalia - including the fabulous tepee. One is also a shot of the onions I planted.