soil analyses, coldframes and seedlings

This winter I scooped up two cups of our garden soil and sent it away to Penn State for some testing. They sent it back with some surprising data. Our PH is 7.5. While most PA gardeners are adding lime to their plots, I have been instructed to add sulfur to mine. They also recommended adding Urea for a nitrogen boost. I wonder whether the limestone house is responsible for our higher PH. If you look very closely at our walls you can sometimes even spot little seashells buried in the stone.

Anyway today I did as instructed and added the recommended quantity of both sulphur and Urea. I also built our coldframe in order to use it as a spring seed starter for cold tolerant plants. I planted a mix of lettuce (broadcast), radishes, green onions, onions, brussel sprouts, beets, spinach and carrots. All of this is covered with metal chicken wire and plastic for a cheap and easy cold frame.

In one of my main sun garden plots, I planted my broccoli seedlings. They are about 6 inches tall and have been transplanted and hardened off. I hope they make it. A mid-march planting date may have been too aggressive, but I am hoping for an early harvest before we move.

Finally, I stirred the compost. It is a very cold soggy mix right now. Hoping that this stirring will fire it up.

13 lb Mid-November Harvest

We had a beautiful weather weekend on the 14th and 15th of November, so we worked in the yard. We can still harvest a nice salad just about whenever we want. The current staples are lettuce, spinach, mustards, chinese choi, broc, radish, carrots and peas. This weekend we also harvested some quantity as we cleaned out the remaining carrots and beets from the large patio pots. We also harvested a nice 5 pound red cabbage to mix with the beets for some weekend borscht. We had two wonderful harvest surprises as well. I ran across a nice little red norland potato mixed in with the peas and I discovered a huge 3 pound zucchini (our only one this year). It was buried underneath the privite hedge beyond the garden fence. It still looks good, so I am hoping for some fried zucchini for the Steeler game today. All in all it was a 13 pound harvest. Not bad for mid-November.

The rest of our garden effort this weekend was focused on the compost cycle. We would load up the big huge blue garden bucket (1/2 a rain barrel) with leaves, spent veggies and flowers, and make a green compost deposit. Then we would fill the same bucket with the black gold for garden distribution. All in all we added about 10 huge buckets of compost to various garden plots. I just spread it on top pretty thick, and didn't even bother to till it into the soil. I am slowly moving to a no-till garden approach. I exhausted the black gold supply during this exercise. Now both compost piles are green. One is completely full. The other has 16 inches of fresh add-ins.

What a nice weekend.

Garden update

It has been a long time since I've posted to my little electronic garden notebook. Certainly there has been some garden activity in the interim - it's just that the late summer activity is all about harvest and weeding and watering - not exactly noteworthy stuff. Anyway - as garden season starts to wind down, I am going to continue the single veggie posts and start some 2010 planning notes. For today - I'll just play a little catch-up...

Harvest Weight - 412 pounds - We are still harvesting quite a variety. Yesterday we had a salad made with 11 garden veggies (chard, spinach, beet leaves, romaine, carrots, red onions, grape tomatoes, cukes, peas, green beens,brocoli). It was really tasty. The romas have been the bulk of our recent harvests, but their production is dwindling fast. Two weeks ago I harvested 17 pounds of romas, this morning only yielded 6 pounds. I am really proud of our harvest this year. By the time I put the garden scale away for the winter we will likely be near 450 pounds of home grown organic food. That is a lot. For a frame of reference my entire family of 6 weighs in at 445 pounds. So we grew and ate our weight in food this year. That is fantastic. I am sure we ate more veggies this year than we ever have in our lives. Now that I have a baseline harvest weight established, I can't wait to try to beat this target next year.

I have been canning a lot in the evenings. It has been going very well. We have a wide variety in the pantry this winter as opposed to an entire basement of spaghetti sauce last year. More on this process to come in a detailed canning post later.


Leek note: Mary Ann - my Verona garden friend who lives down by the river, gave us a bunch of leeks from her garden a couple weeks ago. They were about 4 inches tall. She told me they will be ready to harvest in spring. I am hoping that I can plant a summer crop of peppers or tomatoes in their place after their harvest. I put them in the former onion plot in the sun garden.

Asparagus note: I am trying for a small fall harvest of asparagus. I read about this strategy in a book once. This weekend (9/13) I cut the ferns on about 1/2 of our asparagus plot. I snipped them off as close to ground level as I could manage. Then I covered this section with fresh compost. The book said that I can expect a fall harvest of asparagus as these plants send shoots back up. With the cool fall weather these shoots are supposed to be super-tasty. Crossing my fingers.

Cooking note: Roasted Beets and Carrots are just about the best darn side dish ever invented. Just toss a bunch of beets and carrots in a big alum foil pack, drizzle them with olive oil and some rosemary and put them in a 400 degree oven. They will take a while to cook. when you take them out you can skin the beets easily and slice the whole pile up. The beets turn the carrots the nicest color and the tastes blend together. It is the bomb. Sarah has been talking about this side dish for days. She wants it to become a Thanksgiving staple.

Replacement Planting

I planted three raised beds in the sun garden this morning. The spring snap pea bed was filled with compost, raked and replanted with some green arrow peas. The spring root crop bed, which never produced like we hoped, was filled with compost, raked and replanted with early bird garden green beans. The spring onion bed was filled with compost, raked and replanted with a variety of greens (spinach, lettuce, chard, radish).

90 days till first frost

It is hard to believe given the relatively cool summer we have had, but we are only 90 days away from October 20th - the date known as our average first frost date. Our first hard frost date is scheduled for October 31st. This morning I did some fall/winter seed planning and a little planting. With 90 days to go until the first frost, any of the long season veggies that I hope to harvest need to get in the ground soon. Cabbage, beets, and carrots come to mind. If these have the time to reach full size they can be harvested even after the first frost. Carrots can be harvested well into the winter - and I have heard that their taste sweetens after frost. Peas, and beans have a slightly shorter days to maturity - along with some of the chinese cabbages and kales. The shortest days to maturity veggies are the spinaches, and lettuces.

This morning I worked a couple empty spots in the chimney garden. The three spots I worked had previously held garlic, lettuce, and spring snow peas. In that order, I planted early wonder beets, spinach, and green arrow peas. I also tossed in 3 random red cabbage seeds in a little corner of the spinach bed. Before planting, I composted heavily. This section of garden doesn't get a ton of light, so I am skeptical about the beets, but I think the peas and spinach will do just fine. The beets are also suceptible to the ground hog, so there is another strike against them. But my beet crop has been so crummy this year that I just felt I needed to give it one more crack. The spinach I planted inside a fenced area, so they should do fine. The groundhog hasn't eaten my peas yet.

Our harvest weight now exceeds 120 lbs and tomatoes are being harvested daily. One of my co-workers has a father who is a big gardener. She has been bringing zukes, cukes, peppers and cabbage in to share with us. Funny but I have harvested exactly zero zukes (groundhog), 3 cukes (groundhog), zero peppers (late start from seed), zero cabbage (still kind of small - waiting till fall), so these veggies actually are quite a welcome addition. I picked our first corn, and it was a dissapointment. It was from the earliest sun garden planting (golden bantam). Either it wasn't ready yet or this is a strange variety. We used it and a bunch of other random veggies to make some veggie stock.

The work I did last week on the rain barrels seems to be holding up. Instead of securing the spigots with silicone caulk as I had done previously - this time I used that foam insulating sealant called "Great Stuff". So far so good. The barrels are all full and holding their water with no visible leaks. Some of the barrels fill much faster than others, which I can't quite figure. I guess it has more to do with the roof and downspout placement than it does with the barrels, but I does always surprise me how slowly some fill (including my double-stack).

Replacement planting

Saturday's huge potato harvest left one of my sun garden plots empty. I added about 2 inches of compost to the whole thing and forked it, turned it and replanted it. The far left section of this plot is approx 3 ft x 8ft and I am surmising that it will get slightly more sun than the rest of this raised bed because the remainder of the bed is adjacent to my corn. So in this 3ft by 8ft section I planted a combo of things - breaking this mini plot into a couple super mini plots. I planted cukes and zukes contained inside two climbing apparati made out of wire fencing. This climbing fence will double as a groundhog gaurd - that little critter destroyed my first planting of zukes and squash, so I'm not taking any chances this time around. I also planted a small row of early bird garden bush beans - approx 40 seeds. I the remaining mini plot, I split the planting between swiss chard and spinach - approx 40 seeds for each variety.

The remaining shadier portion of this raised bed (2 ft x 10 ft) was planted with peas - a traditional variety - not snap peas. Last year I planted my fall peas on August 10th. We only got one small harvest from them before the frost killed them. This planting is a month earlier than last year, so if my plan works, I should get at least a full month of harvest. Who would have known when I started the garden this year that I would get a fall planting in the potato plot?

Our big harvest yesterday also cleared out two of our earliest plantings of beets and carrots. I replaced these with some fresh compost and seeds of the same variety.

The Spinach Blog - 2009 edition

Replacing my typical all over the place/what did I do today blog entries, I am going try something a little deeper today. This blog is all about spinach.

My 2008 garden notes mention spinach a few times. Here are the Highlights...

• "You can never, never, never plant enough spinach. Next year we need to buy spinach seed by the truckload and plant it in every single early spring garden spot."
• "It doesn't transplant worth a darn - don't you dare try to start spinach indoors next year."

The 2009 spinach season began on 12/30 with a one ounce order of Tyee Hybrid spinach seeds from RH Shumway. The description from the catalog: "An improved type with the earliest maturity and best disease resistance we offer. High tolerance to Downy Mildew. A semi-savory type that grows fast and is slow to bolt. Only 37 days to maturity."

Well I followed my 2008 advice on the first point (you can never plant enough), but ignored the second point (never start indoors) - and I'm glad I did on both counts. I started some spinach indoors in mid January and even nibbled on a few pre-salads made of alphalpa sprouts and spinach seedlings in early February. On the last day of February I transplanted 18 spinach seedlings outside in a cold frame. These seedlings held up fairly well, and did much better than the seeds I started directly in the cold frames. I began stealing leaves from these transplants for late winter salads as early as March 22nd. As for the quantity of spinach - We did much better in this area than we have ever done in the past. The key was an April 4th heavy spinach planting. Prior to this planting I had done small mini plantings in various square foot sections and mini-rows. The April 4th planting was big. I put approx 400 seeds in 1 1/2 of my sun garden raised beds. This planting yielded 4 large harvests of spinach for the freezer - on top of our various cut and come again succession plantings. On May 22nd I harvested the last major spinach crop. There remain just a couple odd spinach plants in our garden now. We ended up with 4 pounds (six one gallon freezer bags) of frozen spinach from the spring planting.

Other comments/lessons learned:

1. Remember how the RH Shumway said that this Tyee Hybrid variety was resistant to downy mildew? Well - not resistant enough. Ours got it - it wasn't awful, but that was part of the reason I went ahead and harvested the full crop as early as I did.
   
2. The spring spinach season is so darn short. I would have guessed my final harvest would have been late June not late May.
3. I think Fall is the "true" season for spinach. I am really looking forward to a fall crop and harvesting some protected cold frame spinach all winter long. I bet that downy mildew and early bolt won't be problems in November.
4. Will we eat 4 pounds of spinach this winter? If so how?

recent activity

Recent plantings:

• In the lower wall garden, I did some transplanting and re-seeding in the corn fence area. The vision here is a natural fence of 9 foot tall corn planted 3 rows thick and very tight. There is a pretty shady section of this fence where the low wall and the sun wall intersect. The seeds in this section did not take very well, so I thinned some seedlings from the other section and moved them over. I also re-seeded where things were sparse.
• Started 4 mini-rows of bush bean seeds in the sun garden. Three of the rows are planted with "early bird garden beans" from Shumway. The remaining row is planted with a bean called a slenderette.
• Started one large pot with carrots and leeks. Hoping for one leek in the center and carrots all around. The carrots that I have planted in the main garden have done poorly, but the ones in the pot have done very well. Today's pot planting was my attempt to not give up on garden carrots. Ditto for the beets below...
• Started on large pot of beets - mix of cylindra and detroit supreme

Recent Harvest Activity:

• Asparagus is done. I picked the last of the thick stalks about 3 days ago. I am letting the rest go to fern. Our first harvest was 4/1 and our last 5/19. Not bad for year two of a closely spaced bed.
• Spinach is going to seed. I did another one pound harvest of spinach recently. Most of the early succession plantings of spinach were starting to go to seed. Basically all the spinach planted in the cold frame or sq foot gardens were removed. The main spinach crop in the sun garden is still doing well. I now have 4 one gallon freezer bags full of spinach in the freezer.
  
• Pak Choi is done. It flowered super fast and the leaves never got very large. I was not impressed with pak choi, although it did add some variety to our salads and spring rolls. Perhaps a fall cold frame planting to harvest over the winter would be better for this.
• I harvested 4 tasty 5 inch long carrots from our January pot and one beet from the same. The beet could have used a few more weeks of growth, but was tasty.
  
• It hasn't rained in a while and the rain barrels are drying out.
  

Harvest weight is at 17.1 with 31 harvests

Pea blossoms

The weather has been wonderful and we have been busy planting, expanding and harvesting.

Planting:

• Started 10 musk mellon seeds and 10 pumpkin seeds indoors
• succession planting of 5 small spinach rows in the high wall garden- between romas (more on spinach below)
• succession planting of approx 10 seed saver lettuce seedlings in low wall garden (between romas)
• transplanting of various lettuce from sq foot garden to sun garden to get away from the critter that has been feasting on them

Expanding:

• We created a large new flower border - approx 25 X 4 ft, and expanded another. These plots border our back yard walls and had previously held a smattering of bulbs and annuals at the base of the wall. We like flowers more than grass, so we expanded. We filled these new plots with various perennials that we transplanted from our other perennial gardens. We planted bamboo, hosta, rhodadendron, black eyed susan, daisy, mountain blewett, calencho, sweet woodruff, mini irises, large irises, ferns, lillies, and mums. We also bordered these plots with impatien seedlings that we started indoors. This new garden gets very little sun.
  

Harvesting:

• Spinach - We did our second large spinach harvest of the season. We now have over 2 pounds (3 one gallon freezer bags) of spinach in the freezer just waiting for our winter soups and pizzas. While I am excited about the quantity of spinach that we have harvested so far, I am concerned about the remaining crop. It might have a blight. Many of the leaves are turning a whitish color and drooping. The harvest yesterday took just about all the large leaves, so we'll know for sure in a week or two if this little blight is going to take the rest of our crop. I planted 4 new rows of spinach in a totally different garden plot this morning in an effort to keep us in some spinach even if the current crop doesn't make it. The beet leaves are suffering from a similar problem.
  
• Asparagus - still coming in at a rate of about 3-5 stalks a day. I have been roasting it in the oven with Emerril's Essense for a nice late night snack while I watch the Penguins - Yummy!
• Harvest weight is @14 lbs and 26 harvests
  

Other:

• I did something goofy to the compost piles today. I had some 4 inch black drain pipe laying around. I drilled a bunch of holes in it and buried one 4 foot section (standing tall) in the center of each pile. All I have read says that proper pile aeration is one of the keys to quick compost. Most recommend frequent turning (which I do), but I have seen the smokestack approach recommended a few times as well. The idea here is that this pipe allows the gasses to escape from the pile and introduces fresh air allowing the various bacteria to do their thing.
  
• The other photo is a mid-May update of our main sun garden.
• Note: We saw our first pea blossoms last year on 5/26. So we are 12 days earlier this year. I planted an "early bird garden" short pea this year on 2/28. Very few actually germinated, so I filled in with snow peas a couple weeks later. I also had this section covered with a mini-cold frame through the late winter. Anyway - It was a lot of work for 12 days of extra pea harvest, but I bet we'll be enjoying the fruits of that labor very soon. We have also been harvesting pea leaves for salads and spring rolls for a couple of weeks.
  

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

How many rain barrels does one garden need?

How about 7 - holding 300 gallons of water. Does that sound like enough? We'll see.

I added two more rain barrels to my collection yesterday. The boys and I went for a romp through the Allegheny river flood plain hoping to identify another barrel or two, and we had much fun and success. As an ancillary benefit - I learned about the history of this area (from my sons) which evidently includes a ghost train and thousands of hoofed aliens. Every piece of litter we passed along the way (and there was plenty) was an artifact which helped us reconstruct the truth.

We found the mother load of rain barrels along plum creek, a small tributary feeding into the Allegheny. Altogether we found 6 barrels of various shapes and sizes and took two of them home. We took home one nice looking grey 60 gallon barrel. The only thing missing was a lid for this nice little barrel. But I liked it enough to add it to our collection. I fashioned a lid out of the plastic bottom to a pot. I didn't drill a spigot hole in this one because without a lid - it will be perfect for dunking the watering can, which fills it much faster. The other rain barrel I saved was a small 30 gallon clear one called the "cube". It has very thick walls and a handle on top. I think it was used for ice in it's past life. I drilled the spigot hole right at the very bottom of the barrel and set it up on blocks burried behind the privite along the stairs leading up to the house. This barrel and another 35 gallon one will water my roma tomatoes and corn in the two lower wall gardens. With my two new barrels in operation - I reorganized. I now have a 120 gallon double stack right beside the sun garden. Right on cue - not twenty minutes after completing and reorganizing my barrels - it started to rain.

My mom came to visit yesterday, and I showed her around the garden. We had asparagus for dinner, which was delicious. There isn't much left to harvest at this point, but we'll do the best we can. I think I can squeeze another meal of asparagus and at least three salads out of our current crop during her visit. The harvest isn't so important. What I really need the compost pile to do well during her visit. This blog and my mom's Ellensburg friends have turned my compost pile into the stuff of internet legend. I need that pile to heat up and turn to the finest peat by the time she leaves or else my reputation will be ruined. I plan to secretly bring compost into the house in the morning before my mom's arrival. One yard in the dryer and another in the oven should get the pile sufficiently heated up. I hope my wife won't mind.

3 more small harvests (asparagus- twice, lettuce, spinach, radishes, beat leaves, shallot leaves, onion leaves) since the last harvest update. Estimated total 2009 harvest now sits at 3 pounds.

Hot butt and dump

No this is not a compost recipe. This is a kids game that we played today while we gardened. We loaded up the hot and steamy compost into the wheelbarrow and then sat the kids on top of it (Hot Butt). "All hands and feet inside the ride please". Once the wheelbarrow, compost and kids reached the destination, they all got dumped! Hence the title for this post "Hot butt and dump!" Now don't you wish you were five again.

We did a ton in the yard today. I was outside from 7:30 till about 5 pm. Most of our effort was spent creating a brand new garden bed. This will be a partial sun to full shade bed that runs in front of the weeping wall (ask me later). It is about 20 ft long and about 6 feet wide at its widest point, but it serpentines. Sarah wanted to make this bed to help soften the wall and give us a little privacy from our neighbor. Yesterday we planted a cherry and a rose in this section - today was all about soil turning and prep. I turned all the sod. Sarah and Quinn chopped it and broke up the dirt clods. Then I mixed in about 7 wheelbarrows of compost.

I can't say enough about our compost operation at this point. Today was 4/4, and we were using compost that we basically started on 3/7. It was so hot as I peeled it off the pile that you had to pull your hand away after about 3 seconds of touching it. It is a deep brown and smells absolutely wonderful. This new section of garden really made a dent in our compost - our "black gold pile" is down around two feet high - from almost 5 feet a couple weeks ago. The good news is that I added just about as much or more material to the "green bin". I did a really nice job of layering these additions as we worked today. I would add a layer of sod (upside down), spread some lime and greensand on top of that, and then add about 4 inches or so of sticks and leaves. I repeated this several times.

Veggie work today was limited, but I did do some minor stuff. I planted approx 20 onion seedlings that I had started from seed. I put these in the chimney garden.

I also did a sun study today - a chart telling me when and where the sun is hitting all our various plots. Do you know we have over 15 mini plots? Isn't that amazing? Our property is just wonderful. I did a couple of these sun studies last year, but we have added so many plots that I wanted an update. Our current parking pad is of course our sunniest spot - and as each day goes by, we are closer to getting out the sledgehammer and converting this to yard.

I harvested one large kale, 9 small spinach, and snipped about 10 onion tops. I made a really nice egg dish with all this good stuff and homemade bread. It was delicious. Of course Carter could barely sit at the same table with us - He HATES EGGS!

Spinach day

I did an early morning spinach planting today. My initial garden plan had two sun garden rows devoted to the cabbage family. I am not completely tossing that plan, but I think I can get away with planting my brussel sprouts and fall cabbage planting later in the summer. According to my PA garden guide provided by my coworker Becky (who took the master gardener class), I can plant brussel sprouts in June for a fall harvest. Spinach is harvested in June. So I am going to try to stagger these plantings. My plan is to start the brussel sprouts inside in late May, early June. Toward the end of June I hope to harvest all the spinach I planted today and replace these plots with my brussel sprout seedlings. I planted the spinach this morning in great quantity. I'm thinking of this planting as a freezer crop, rather than a succession planting. Spinach freezes wonderfully and is a great add in to just about any eggy, soupy, noodely, saucy recipe you can cook. So to that end, I planted about 20 - 3 foot rows of spinach about 6 inches apart in 1 1/2 of my sun garden raised beds. I'm guessing I did about 400 seeds. I also sprinkled in about 4 rows of green onions. Prior to planting I added bone meal and green sand to the soil and worked it with the digging fork and rake, pulling out any lumpy unfinished compost in the process. The soil looks nice - a little lumpy, but really rich and loamy.

I also did some planting in the beet and carrot row in the sun garden. The carrots that I planted earlier in March have not yet sprouted. That is not a good sign. It has been almost a month. In order to continue to give the earlier planting a chance, but add new seeds - I sprinkled a new layer of seeds on top and covered them with 1/4 of screened soil. Then I worked and planted a new section of beets and carrots. I dug the dirt out to about 12 inches deep, loosened the bottom and built the soil back up by screening compost and dirt. I planted cylindra beets. These beets are long and thinner - look more like a carrot than your traditional round beet. I have never tried these before.

Oh yeah - I almost forgot - My pepper seeds are finally starting to sprout. This is the batch that I planted inside on 3/11. It is a mix of Serano (hots) and California Wonder (Bells). Both are sprouting. 6 have sprouted out of a planting of 24. That is great news. I was afraid that I would need to buy pepper seedlings, and I really wanted some more of those serano's for hot peppers and hot sauce.

In the afternoon we went to Chapons and bought two Cherry trees. One is called a Black Tartarian Cherry and the other is called a North Star Cherry. The Tartarian is sweet and the North Star is tart. They are both miniatures - maxing out at about 15 feet height and spread. We got two trees so they could polinate each other. We planted the Tartarian in it's permanent home in the back yard to the south of the stone patio. This spot was chosen to help give us a little privacy from our neighbor and because it has a little sun. We aren't 100 certain where the North Star cherry is going to permanently find a home, so we planted it in a temporary spot behind the shed. It is right off of our parking spot. In both holes I mixed a bunch of compost and watered well. They are about 6 feet tall at planting.

Where the tartarian was planted, we began cutting out yard to make another large perenial garden in front of the weeping wall. We transplanted a small rose that we had in one of our vegetable patches. We already have a currant that is climbing up a section of the wall. Sarah is planning out this planting, and I not 100% sure what she has planned. We'll soon find out.

I filled up the remaining squares of sq. foot garden #2. I planted 2 brocolli, 1 sq of onions. I also dropped 4 other brocoli sprouts into the traditional cold frame. Busy day- Sylvan canoe club for dinner - spring has certainly sprung.

Shallots coming up

I saw the shallots poking through last night. We also harvested more beet leaves, spinach, rosemary, carrot tops, and asparagus for dinner this evening. I am basically out of salad supplies. Only about 6 tiny little spinach seedlings are left. Lettuce is all gone. The "2nd round" of lettuce and spinach is still too small to pillage. I have some sprouts to tide me over and could probably make one more salad out of these 6 spinach seedlings. The asparagus is also coming in pretty well now. I counted over 20 of them this morning.

This year will definately go down as a successfull "test year" for spring season extension. But in order for next year to be a success, I will need much more quantity. I think a good thick fall cold frame planting of spinach, kale, swiss chard, beets etc will be the key. I also plan to improve my cold frame lids (possibly making a double layer of protection), and planting seeds in January. The fall planting of stuff will be my round #1 harvest and the January seeds should be round #2.

Carrots are not doing well in the garden at all so far. I think I planted those teeny, tiny seeds too deep because I was afraid of the cold. I need to start another batch this weekend. The 10 inch pot with carrots is doing quite well. I thinned them yesterday and had some carrot tops on my sandwich for dinner. The carrot roots were still very small, but were running nice and deep and were starting to turn orange.

I woke up at 5:30 - all excited to do some spinach and green onion planting. Yuck - steady, soaking rain. No gardening at all this morning, but at least the rain barrels are all full. Any chance I will need all that rain water? Doesn't seem like it right now in spring - but July and August? I bet we will need it. I pulled another barrel out of the river a couple of days ago and need to get it cleaned out and fixed up with a spigot. It was pretty dirty on the inside. I think I am going to go crazy with detergent and tri-sodium phosphate to get the gunk out. I will let water cycle through it for a couple times before I use this barrel for the garden.

Salads and Pizza

4th salad of the year tonight - Asparagus, spinach, and beet leaf pizza! Harvest season is in full swing.

Besides the bountiful harvest, I just did a few garden odds and ends tonight as the sun set over the river. I filled in some empty squares with lettuce seedlings and seeds, planted about 20 seed savers variety lettuce seeds in the chimney garden, and moved some garlic around.

Still no sign of pepper seeds sprouting, and I'm a little disappointed with the lack of carrots to date as well. Only the carrots started indoors in the pots have sprouted - "as soon as soil can be worked" - yeah right. Anyway - seeds are cheap. I'll try some more this weekend.

Seed fill in

I dropped a couple seeds in the sq foot garden cold frame tonight. The peas that I planted on the first day of March were very spotty. I planted probably 100 of them in 8 sq foot garden sections. Only about 20 sprouted. So tonight I filled in the blank spots. I did the same with spinach and green onions.

Planning note: I want to do a big spinach planting this weekend. Spinach does very well in the freezer and is typically spent by the end of June. I think at this point I have plenty of broccoli and cabbage in various places for the spring planting. I decided this morning to plant the remainder of the two raised beds that I have planned for the cabbage family in spinach. I will also sow some spinach in with the potatoes and in the chimney garden. This will probably give me somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 spinach plants. That should give us a plentiful late June harvest for freezing. As we harvest this huge planting, we can follow it up with a summer planting of corn, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and broccoli (all started indoors, and potentially kale, endive, swiss chard, etc. I like this plan.

One other possible change - given the huge pea plantings I have done so far, I may be able to plant one of the raised beds that I had planned for peas in something else (thinking non-roma tomatoes). I need to check and see how a row of tomatoes would work for my rotation plan.

Third salad

Another salad for lunch today - 2 romaine, 3 spinach and some onion tops. All three of these veggies began inside and were planted in the sq foot garden cold frame. The salad was delicious. Now that a bunch of stuff is popping up, I am more willing to harvest my meager little seedlings.

What is doing well?

1. Beets in the planter are doing excellent. The beet leaves which I have harvested twice already, are big and vibrant. If I would have taken the time to check on them this afternoon, I certainly could have had a bigger salad.
   
2. Aspargus - We counted 21 spears poking up now. The largest is about 4 inches tall. I bet we will have our first aspargus harvest next weekend. They are growing about 4 inches a week.
   
3. Spinach - all over the garden little spinach seedlings are emerging. The seedlings that are planted in the cold frames are growing quite well and are about 8 leaves per plant.
4. Peas in the sun garden - These are popping up everywhere and very thick. These peas are kicking the holy crap out of the peas that I planted in the cold frame. Those are really spotty despite the fact that I planted about 100 of them, I bet only 20 seeds have emerged yet.

After my harvest, I replaced the lettuce and spinach with 4 small seed savers lettuce seedlings. These were started on 3/9. They aren't huge, but big enough to survive I hope. I also replaced a dead geranium in sq foot garden #2 with 4 swiss chard seedlings.

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

Second Harvest

We had another small salad for dinner last night. I harvested 2 small heads of romaine, three heads of spinach, about 5 beet leaves, and about 6 radish seedlings. The romaine harvest cleared out one of my squares in sq ft garden #1 (cold frame). I replanted this square with 5 more lettuce seeds (seed savers variety). The spinach harvest kicked our fall spinach that successfully wintered over. That was a nice little surprise. We certainly could not have made these two early salads without the spinach. You couldn't even taste the radishes.

The compost is hot, hot, hot. I can't wait to really dig in and turn it this weekend.

Harvest!

Well I did it. I ventured out into the 20 degree chill, opened the cold frames and harvested a salad for later today. It was 30 degrees inside the frames and the leaves were borderline frozen when I harvested them. I hope that doesn't ruin my plan for a nice taste of summer on the first weekend of spring. Anyway I harvested...

1. Chives from a six inch pot inside on a southern windowsill
2. Beet leaves from a 12 inch pot that has 5 beets in it. I took most of the usable leaves leaving about three young leaves per beet
3. Spinach - two full plants left over from a fall planting. They are small, but much bigger than any of the seedlings I have planted this year.
4. Romaine Lettuce - two small heads from seedlings started inside in Jan and planted outside in early March.

I can probably build two more salads of the same size and ingredients before I have wiped out the first seedlings of my succession plan. At this point it is hard for me to imagine the second wave of lettuce/spinach/beets will be harvestable (I love making up words) when the first wave is spent. There will probably be a long lapse between this salad and the next.

I will finish out the salad with some dried cranberries and nuts of some variety. Can't wait.

PM update: The salad turned out great. We each had a small one.

Later in the day we did some minor garden duties. Mainly I hauled two truckloads of rock (from the torn out herb planter) to my friend's "clean fill wanted pile". Then I built two Pea climbing apparati. One in the sun garden and one in the tepee garden. I used natural logs from various trees that I have cut down over the years. In each section, I built a frame with two posts and a crossbar. The peas will climb twine hanging down from the cross bar. Another pea popped up in the sun garden - makes two total. We haven't had any material rain yet this spring, so I filled the compost tea barrel with water from the hose.

Sarah spent a good deal of time outside while I watched the Pitt game. She helped load the rocks and watered all our new grass and various plantings.