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.

Barrels and Drawings

Yesterday was compost day and today was rain barrel day. I finally got the two remaining rain barrels water tight and attached to the gutters. I also completed one barrell to deliver to a work friend of mine. We are now rolling with 4 working rain barrels and 230 gallons of water. I still have one more barrel to work up to complete my barrel collection. On my downspouts I use a device called a water saver (clean air gardening $30). It diverts the water from the downspout to the barrel through a rubber hose. When the barrel is full, the backpressure in the hose sends the water back down the downspout. It is about an hour job for each downspout requiring some hacksawing and tin snipping, but for the most part is pretty easy. The extra work is worth it because the water saver automatically shuts off the water flow to the barrel when it is full. That little device saves me the pain of hooking up some silly looking overflow devices on each barrel and cursing an swearing every time I trip over them or they leak. The water saver is about $30. I'd recommend it.

That double stacked barrel in one of the photos is a new experiment for us this year. These barrels are closest to our main garden, so it saves us a long walk with the watering can. It puts almost 100 gallons right where we need it. There is also the hope that the additional height provided by the top barrel will give me enough pressure to water with a hose. We'll see if it works. I tested the water-sharing mechanism today and it worked fine. The bottom spigot on the top barrel is connected to a top spigot on the bottom barrel by a laundry hose. Both these spigots are continually left open. The water enters the top barrel from the downspout. When it reaches the height of the spigot, it drains into the bottom barrel. When the water in the bottom barrel reaches the height of it's top spigot, the water has no where to go, so it doesn't drain down and fills the top barrel. Pretty neat little system. I don't think I invented it - I'm sure I read about it on-line somewhere.

The other photo here is Sarah's drawing of our back yard. She is teaching herself to do landscape art drawings. They are very helpful to our planning and also quite pretty. I have always liked architectural drawings and pencil sketches as art. These drawings have a little of both.

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

Rain

The plastic drop cloth approach to making lids to the cold frames isn't very good. They don't hold up very well to the rain. The water pools on them and smushes the plants. We had a lot of rain the last couple of days. I might have lost some broccoli, lettuce and onions because of the smushing. When I am off for the baby this summer, I am going to build some permanent lids for the big frame.

The rain barrels are full. Both compost piles are letting off a ton of heat. That mushroom manure certainly is the key to getting those things fired up.

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.

Asparagus

A picture says a thousand words...

I couldn't sleep last night (so excited about asparagus), so I woke at 4:30 and worked the compost piles. In the new "green" pile, I layered the leaves and twigs "brown carbon" with a fresh pile of mushroom manure "nitrogen". I got this pile about 16 inches high. Until now it hadn't had enough nitro to activate it and get it burning. I hope this mornings activity will fire it up. I also began the process of turning the older pile over onto the new pile. This older pile isn't ancient by any stretch. It has only been burning for about a month - a cold month at that. But I did dig down far enough to feel the burn. It was hot enough in the spot I touched to have to quickly pull back my hand. That made me smile. This pile was very, very heavy with twigs, leaves and wood chips. I did layer it with manure as well, but I was concerned that it might not heat up. Once I finish this project, I should have another empty bin and a very, very full hot bin. I'm hoping and guesstimating that I will be able to pull some compost out of this bin in early June. Might not be perfect, but passable.

With harvest already sort of begun, I took a look at our freezer a couple of days ago and tried to imagine how the heck we were going to eat all those hot peppers. We still have about 3 large freezer bags full of them. They are too hot for standard cooking. I've put them on pizzas and in soups and it really overpowers everything. The best way we have found to eat them is to can them with vinegar. That softens them up and gives them a really nice flavor. The vinegar thing got me thinking - maybe I could turn them into hot sauce. I cooked a bag of them with vinegar on the stove top for about 10 minutes. Then I put them in the blender with a little water. You know what? It looks like hot sauce. It tastes like hot sauce. I made some pretty good hot sauce! By the way - I eat hot sauce on everything. Remember the character from Forrest Gump who ate shrimp with every meal? Shrimp scampi, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp po boy? Well that is me with hot sauce.

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.