Garden 2015: Getting Started

I didn't get seeds started indoors as I did the last couple of years, but I tried winter sowing this year. I used soda bottles instead of milk jugs to make my little greenhouses. I cut the bottles almost in half, put drainage holes in the bottom, added a few inches of moistened seed starting mix, sowed a few seeds, duct-taped them shut, and put them outside. That's it.

They were buried under about a foot of snow at one point, but they're actually growing things now. I started cold weather seeds: spinach, kohlrabi, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, and lettuce. And several of them have sprouted. I've never gotten spinach to grow before, but this time it's doing great. I hope to transplant them to a new bed in a few weeks.

The new bed is in front of the house in the area I call the Annex. I previously had long deep planters there, but the planters were four years old and starting to fall apart. The planters needed to be replaced, but I haven't found similar planters in a while, and the closest I can find cost twice as much as the original planters. So I decided to make a bed out of concrete blocks. It covers about the same area as four planters, but it only cost me as much as two replacement planters.

While I'm waiting for the seedlings to mature enough to transplant, I started snap peas, lettuce, and celery root in the new bed. The snap peas are planted along the back, and the lettuce is on the left side. Both have started coming up. When the snap peas get bigger, I'll put up a fence for them to climb. I don't know if the celery root will do anything, but it's worth putting the seeds in the soil to find out.

The old broken planters are being moved to the Squash Ghetto. They still hold soil, so I'll use them until they completely fall apart. Most of the planters I had in the Ghetto last year are broken beyond use. It was simpler and cheaper to build a small bed in the Annex to replace the aging planters than a long bed in the Ghetto to replace the destroyed planters, so that's what I did.

Two years ago I started asparagus in containers, but I didn't know what I was doing, and overcrowded them. I had planted three four-inch roots per 2-foot planter. This year I took everything out and put one arm-length root per planter. The roots were 6-7 times the size they were when I planted them! I was concerned that I wouldn't get any asparagus this year because I traumatized the roots while untangling and separating them, but my first spear is peaking out. Hurray for perennial vegetables!

I cleaned up my rain barrels to get them ready for the growing season. I've put one of the barrels a little higher to see if I can get enough pressure to use a soaker hose on the new Annex bed that's right next to it.

The splitter I'd put in the faucet of one of the barrels was leaky after leaving it out all winter, so I replaced it. But then I found that the ends were stuck in the hoses that had been attached to them. I'm still trying to figure out how to get them out. I can replace the hoses if necessary, but I'd like to keep using these if I can figure out how to do it.

The Squash Ghetto needs a lot of cleaning. I have already planted onions, leeks, kale, and fennel in the blocks that line the Ghetto. I've got plans to plant corn, sunflowers, and squash-bug-resistant varieties of squash. I also hope to try planting compact non-resistant squash varieties under a mosquito net just to see what will happen. If no eggs are laid on the squash, they might survive. The complication is that there's no way for bees to get under the net to pollinate the blossoms, so I'll have to pollinate them by hand. I did that last year because I was getting more blossoms than fruits at the beginning of last season. We'll see how it goes.

It's with great sadness and a little smirk that I must announce that Hoedun died. The handle broke when I was trying to remove a row of weeds from around the Ghetto blocks. Rest in Pieces, Hoedun.

This is Hoedun's replacement, Genghis. Hoelun (which I misremembered as Hoedun when I named my first hoe) was the name of Genghis Khan's mother, so the name is fitting. And this hoe looks like a Genghis. The spikes on the back look vicious and are very effective at taking out weeds. Genghis Hoe avenged his mother ferociously by taking out the row of weeds that took her out. I will miss the wordplay that came with have a hoe named Hoedun.

The daffodils came up well again this year. Here's Lucy dancing on the sidewalk by the daffodils.

Dog needed to smell the flowers, too. Dog has been doing all sorts of things with us lately. He went to Rhyme Time at the library and to the grocery store. He even went swinging with Lucy. Lucy had refused cake in favor of swinging, but she reconsidered when I asked if Dog wanted cake. She would have preferred to go swinging, but she thoughtfully took time out for cake because Dog wanted it. :)

Swinging barefoot in the sunshine because it's finally SPRING!