PNW: April 2014

I was so busy avoiding the internet on April Fools day, I forgot to start a new monthly thread!

I took a detour and had fun trying my hand at making some technical drawings for my table tops. I've also been trying to get all the holes in my pea and radish plantings filled in. I find it aggravating having missing sprouts in those cute little rows; especially when I only have 18 squares to work with. Every spot counts!

I'd like to know what you guys are having success with right now. I haven't been able to get any lettuce to sprout with direct sowing yet. I'm going to try that again and spinach this month.

I here ya on the squares missing seedlings Gwen....eek!....in our red spinach square....a new spinach we are trying this year..... 7 out of the 9 are missing!   

something has been pulling up our lettuce seedlings too!......now Im glad we over planted the lettuce   

our sugar snap peas are giving us a hard time too....for some reason they are wanting to grow side ways on to the dirt instead of growing up and climbing the trellis ?? never had them do this before......maybe more wind this spring?

today I transplanted 6 squares (54 total) of kandy onion seedlings.... a new onion I wanted to try this year....they are suppose to be large and sweet like a walla walla, but it said they stored better....

the herbs in the green house are hanging in there...still waiting for 2 out of the 18 to sprout....the carrots in the green house are coming up, but it seems as thought something is digging in them.....eek!...most likely a rat   he also ate the three lettuce seedlings we had planted in there....eerrr

our 2 sq's of radishes are up

no sign yet of the 2 sq's of carrots we sown & no sign yet of the herbs we direct sown yet either....

tasted some kale flowers just before they open today.....oh boy...they taste just like broccoli!!....very delicious.....I don't care for the taste of kale....but the flowers are worth the effort of growing them!

in the back garden the cole crops are doing ok....not the greatest...slugs have eaten a few, and they sure are slow in growing....

we were able to eat some fresh leeks from the back garden tonight in our dinner.....they over wintered really good and are big enough now to enjoy and just in time to harvest and replant in those boxes some carrots   seems like this may work out in this area.....alternating between leeks and carrots....

happy gardening
rose

Kale flowers? I'll have to try them tomorrow (opps, today).

sanderson let me know what your think of the kale flowers

I had to tell the family not to eat them all, because I want to save seeds!

happy gardening
rose.... who never thought she would have to limit her family from eating all of their veggies.... 

Slight broccoli flavor. I think they would be interesting in a salad!

18 squares just for one crop is pretty good, gwennifer! Good luck with your peas. I planted some a few days ago, but they haven't germinated yet. I'm really hot for getting some peas, because my fall crop grew nicely green but had no flowers and winter killed them all off-- and because I absolutely love fresh peas.

our sugar snap peas are giving us a hard time too....for some reason they are wanting to grow side ways on to the dirt instead of growing up and climbing the trellis ?? never had them do this before......maybe more wind this spring?

Mine were doing that this fall too. I hadn't considered that it might be wind. One or two went for the chain link fencing they're up against, but not the others.

Today I went with some of the folks from the master gardeners class on a tour of Greenleaf Industries. Started in the 70's by the 4H Club, it's now run by a fellow with a business degree named Nick, who says its mission is to help out the people who fall through the cracks. Now that's a heck of a lot of people these days. In Nick's specialized sense, he means that the government dealt with its inability to fund special needs programs by simply raising the test and IQ scores of those who it was willing to consider in need and therefore eligible for training, work programs, and other assistance. People who, for instance, in California would be eligible for public assistance are now not eligible in Oregon. Yet that doesn't mean they are capable of getting jobs or functioning in society without a lot of guidance. Greenleaf is a non-profit that gives them work and work experience, takes them on outings, donates plants to fund raising activities and drives for charities, sells plants locally in a retail site in town, supplies plants to some of the nurseries in the region, and donates over 5000 pounds of fresh food a year for local charities.

Nick showed us a machine he just got with a big grant this year. It cost $30,000 and can seed 400 and 500 slot seed trays in under a minute. With over a dozen long greenhouses and constantly moving stock of over a million plants during the spring and fall seasons, it's hard to imagine how he could get his plants seeded otherwise. And he does seed them all himself. He manages the business end, but also the soil formulations, planting and transplanting and hardening off, and the heating, watering, ventilating, and opening and closing up of the greenhouses. When the temperature drops too quickly, he jumps in his car and drives back to work to seal up greenhouses that had been left open to warmer temperatures.

Casually rattling off the factors involved in not just growing but precisely timing the stages of growth, Nick pretty much stunned the group with the depth and particularity of his knowledge. He wasn't showy with his knowledge; he just seemed to know everything! Beyond the intricacies of so many vegetables and flowers, he knew which varieties within a species of, say, petunia or rosemary performed better in which temperatures, soil mixtures, water pH levels, hardening-off protocols ... In knowing so much about his plants, Nick reminded us how much there is to know about the plants we want to grow. He's been at Greenleaf since he was 15, he said, doing odd jobs. It showed. The man knows his business at a level that could only come from many years of study and application. After the tour, some class members I chatted with agreed that following Nick around on his daily rounds would be a fantastic education, but that, if he were to tell us all the factors he measured and balanced against each other when making adjustments, it would largely be over our heads.

But we do get the results of all that knowledge in the way of the sturdy, and quite inexpensive, plants made available at Greenleaf's retail store. I was impressed at the hardening-off process Nick puts the plants through. He mentioned that many big box stores get plants fresh from California, or Northern Oregon; put them out in our volatile Southern Oregon weather and they can fade within hours. Greenleaf's plants go from germination room to greenhouses of different temperatures, through greenhouses that are heated to differing degrees, to greenhouses with their plastic rolled up to admit the surrounding air during the day for a few hours, then longer hours, and then are finally left to weather the outdoors on their own. By the time they hit the retail shelves, they are fully locally adapted and ready to go out into the garden.

After the tour, a few of us went to take our first look of the year at Greenlead's retail store. I bought a horseradish plant in a one-gallon bucket. I love horseradish, and supposedly it's very easy to grow. I chatted with the cashier, who saw I still had my master gardener's badge and lanyard around my neck. She took the course in 2008 and served in a number of capacities with the master gardeners over the years since. I remember chatting with her and asking her advice last year; she has always been cheery and helpful. Another worker helped me pick out some trailing flowers for a partially shady area -- I got a four-pack of trailing lobelias. Very pretty purple flowers, and they trail down about eight inches almost as soon as they begin their rise from the ground. Perfect to cover a dull stretch of our retaining wall out back. I also got a lemon thyme, which has yellow-outlined leaves. I love thyme first because of the flavor, but also because it is incredibly durable. I also got some deep red romaine lettuces. Once my hands were so full I couldn't carry any more, I had my signal to pay the nice lady and leave before I got myself in trouble buying so many plants I'd have no place to put them.

An interesting morning and early afternoon! I pulled some weeds in the neighbor's garden on the way home, and then put basil opal, Blondkopfchen yellow cherry tomatoes, Redfield tomatoes, Thai basil, and rainbow chard into some peat pellets. Peat did terribly for me last year, and this year is my attempt to verify. If they still do nothing for me this year, then two years is enough of a try, and no more peat pots for me. I'll be planting the seeds elsewhere too, as a control ... and so that if the peat pellets don't work out again, at least I'll have something to plant!

I planted cabbage for the first time in a few years, and much to my surprise,  they are  thriving.  On the down side, slugs have found them already.

Some of my broc and cauli transplants are still just sitting there shivering.  I was beginning to wonder if this spring was cooler than last, but GDDs are the same.  I'm battling aphids on them, so maybe that's slowing them down.

I've been seeing leaf miner flies already, and today found some eggs on my chard leaves.  

And to top it off, several vets have said that fleas are bad already.

Looks like it's going to be my year for battling bugs and slugs!

Marc Iverson wrote:18 squares just for one crop is pretty good, gwennifer!

*lol*  Those three table top beds are all I've got Marc, so I only have 18 squares total.  Six of them I've planted with peas.  I do love garden fresh peas!

Hey boffer, your post reminded me of a page in a book my kiddos have about a puppy looking for a good place to sleep:

Marc, I had no idea the Master Gardening program would have so many tours and what-not. Wow. That Nick fellow sounds amazing. What a neat opportunity.

boffer wrote:I planted cabbage for the first time in a few years, and much to my surprise,  they are  thriving.  On the down side, slugs have found them already.

Some of my  broc and cauli transplants are still just sitting there shivering.  I was beginning to wonder if this spring was cooler than last, but GDDs are the same.  I'm battling aphids on them, so maybe that's slowing them down.

I've been seeing leaf miner flies already, and today found some eggs on my chard leaves.  

And to top it off, several vets have said that fleas are bad already.

Looks like it's going to be my year for battling bugs and slugs!

ugg!!!

we really need a good garden year this year!.....last year was so frustrating losing all of our corn, a 4x8 & 4x10 beds worth to critters!....and then losing all of our late tomatoes to blight!....then in the fall we lost ALL of our winter cole crops to some kind of critters again..... either rats, raccoons or opossums or a combo of all three of them! this year hubby wants to put an electric fence around our corn beds! and we will have to make sure we are diligent on keeping the other beds covered!

this year our cole crops are getting swallowed up by slugs and are shivering too!

I cant believe you have aphids already   ....say it not so!....last year aphids were not to bad....but the year before.....they were awful!

there will be success and an abundance of something....there always is right?....

last year it was our green/yellow pole beans.....50 pints canned + more frozen and fresh eating and over 20 winter squashes.....

the year before we had over a 100 pounds of plums.....

the year before that I believe it was our corn.....I believe that year we had about 100 ears of corn....enough to fresh eat....have enough to feed a large family and friends gathering and froze the rest to enjoy over the winter.....

and our very first year putting a couple of seeds and transplants into the ground in our front yard in between our rose bushes....before we built our very first SFG beds we had over 50 cucumbers from 2 plants and to many tomatoes to eat from just 3 plant starts we bought....  

hugs
rose

Boffer & FamilyGardening - try using used coffee grounds around & in your your beds for the slugs.  I read something recently that they hate coffee.  MIGHT have been on here that I saw it...

And apparently it also confuses the Carrot Rust Fly.  The recommendation is to sprinkle it over your carrot beds.

Please let me know how it works.  Seems to be working in my garden, but I'm behind y'all.

Transplanted a four-pack of lobelia flowers and one of red romaine lettuce into one-gallon pots. Now I've got almost a dozen lettuces growing, all from transplants. Hope they don't get bitter! Also a lemon thyme. Smells just like it sounds like it would -- really nice. Two borage seedlings sprouted out of their peat pellets, of the four I planted. Keeping fingers crossed for the other ones. Beautiful day out -- too much yard work as usual keeping me from gardening, but it was nice to wear shorts for the first time this year!

The five-gallon bucket I use to give sun-warmed water to my little backyard container garden was full of swimming things. I had no idea if they might be mosquito larva, and they didn't look like tadpoles, so I dumped the water out into the yard.

Found some works in the soil I took from a few-gallons bucket I buried most of the way down in the dirt by our retaining wall out back. A few inches long and whitish. Not sure what they were, but I figure if they're eating my vegetable scraps, they're probably good ones. So I put most of the soil back, as I was only using it to fill gallon containers and I didn't want my miniscule worm crop to die in them. Yay worms! I haven't refreshed that container for a while ... have to look up to see if there's anything wrong with giving them banana peels.

Spinach and peas are starting to sprout out back! Woo hoo!

Gonna put my horseradish plant in a big container so I can hopefully get lots of root from it. For now, though, my back is killing me, and I'm done for at least today and I hope not tomorrow as well.

FamilyGardening wrote:...there will be success and an abundance of something....there always is right?..
hugs
rose

Right!    

Along with a little failure to keep us humble.

this is keeping me humble.......*cry*   

checked on our tomato seedlings today thinking they may need some more soil added to their cups......found them in horrible shape....they have been kept inside under lights....not sure what happened....could have over feed them....perhaps the cups were to close to the lights and they got to hot....what ever happened they I'm sure are goners.....

decided to put more potting soil into the cups as they did need it....then took them out to the green house....I do not believe they will make it....but willing to give it a try......



I told hubby I didn't want to start over and we will just buy some starts this year....blah...we even purchased a new seed that is suppose to be super duper blight resistant *Iron Lady* and a really early one called *4th of July*....then you have our favorites *Sweeties* and *Red Robin* plus we were trying a blue/purple *tomatillo* for the first time....  

happy gardening
rose

on a positive note     

SFG bed #1

I think these are Green Towers Romaine



Red Romaine



French breakfast radishes......my favorite   



SFG bed #2

sugar snap peas. Kandy onions and carrots that are not up just yet



Kandy Onions in our new SFG herb beds




4 Tier SFG box out in our front yard

2 Black Seeded Simpson and 1 Butter crunch



Red fire Lettuce



Great Lakes Head Lettuce



and...... our sons Sorrel    and   our Potatoes are UP!!!!

happy gardening
rose

FamilyGardening wrote:this is keeping me humble.......*cry*   

checked on our tomato seedlings today thinking they may need some more soil added to their cups......found them in horrible shape....they have been kept inside under lights....not sure what happened....could have over feed them....perhaps the cups were to close to the lights and they got to hot....what ever happened they I'm sure are goners.....

decided to put more potting soil into the cups as they did need it....then took them out to the green house....I do not believe they will make it....but willing to give it a try......



I told hubby I didn't want to start over and we will just buy some starts this year....blah...we even purchased a new seed that is suppose to be super duper blight resistant *Iron Lady* and a really early one called *4th of July*....then you have our favorites *Sweeties* and *Red Robin* plus we were trying a blue/purple *tomatillo* for the first time....  

happy gardening
rose

Don't count them out yet.  The picture doesn't look like crispy critters.  Watch the water so they don't get root rot and they may put up more leaves.

Kay

Marc,

Several years ago, I hit upon the idea of placing lids on the 5-gallon pails used for warming the water.  That would certainly keep the mosquitoes away!

That's what I did last night.

Also, I have to get some smaller buckets. I can leave a five-gallon container with water in it out overnight, and it will cool down too much to be used to water in the morning or even afternoon.

Three more borage seedlings came up overnight. Woo hoo! It's time for me to go get some seeds from my deadheaded marigolds I saved from last year, too, and plant them.

I sure hope my lettuce doesn't get bitter this year. I don't want to be a bitter man about bitter lettuce.

Borage! Yeah!

Mixed up another five-gallon bucket of MM and am slowly filling one-gallon pots with it. I'm going to see if swiss chard can get along in that small a container.

Almost all my peas and spinach have sprouted. It's getting in the high 70's here now, and just a little more than a week ago it was hitting freezing. Hope the seedlings don't get stunted or killed by our wild swings in the weather. But the way the season is heating up, if I don't plant spring crops now, it may soon be too late.

Top-dressed some pots with worm castings. Found some swiss chard seedlings have popped their heads up, and I moved them outside already. They did fine outside last night even though barely showing their true leaves, as the night was really warm. But I may take them in tonight.

Can't for the life of me find where I put my packet of toy choi seeds, and I've been looking for a week now.

Tomorrow is another day helping out with the master gardener volunteers at a local elementary school, and in the evening I'll go to a presentation on building raised beds -- good timing, since I'm about to build one or a few myself and have never done it before. I've volunteered to build a 1x6 tomato bed for the school, so I guess I'm going to be learning on the job, so to speak. The volunteer job, that is.

Well all my peas that I pre-sprouted in a wet paper towel in a baggy on top of the fridge have now shown up, so I did end up with 100% success rate with that method. And since I didn't trust it, I have five extra now too. Going to pot them for a neighbor's little girl who's friends with my daughter. She's always trying to get her mom to do a garden since we have one. Peer pressure.   

Everything is growing more quickly now so I need to give lettuce another try. I am lettuce challenged. I feel your pain Marc.

But first I'm taking the kiddos on a little trip for Spring Break. Going to visit Cottage Grove (home of Territorial Seed Co. and an assortment of charming covered bridges) and the wildlife safari. Never been to either; should be fun.

So you're going to visit Territorial Seeds? Do they do tours? Sounds like it could be an interesting visit. I wonder if you'll see Andrea Mull, who came from Territorial to give us a presentation down here. Nice gal, sharp.

Good for you on your peas. I found more success sticking them in the ground than soaking them, but it sounds like you tried a more elaborate measure/attempt to improve on the norm too ... perhaps because sticking them in the ground didn't work for you too well? Or just out of curiosity?

Re my day, I went to help at the elementary school gardening program today. The kids are supposed to take back to the teachers a write-up of at least the highlights of what they learn when they come to visit us for their 15-minute sessions, but there's so much information that I just wrote it down for them and told them to hand it to their teachers. The teachers like the idea of the gardening session being in some kind of a lesson form, and to help gain and keep their support, we return to them a write-up of things they can talk about in class if they'd like to.

Our Fearless Leader, Phil, gave the kids a short lesson on seeds. Trying to copy it down on five different pieces of paper in time was tough! Overall the kids liked the lesson, though, and one group of them got to take a packet of seeds home each, which really excited them. I think most everyone likes any kind of prize or freebie, and kids all the more so. Some other kids returned with flowers. All the kids got to eat snap peas while looking for the seeds inside as Phil talked to them about seeds and had them pull them open to look inside them. Everybody had a good time, and -- WOO HOO! -- we had a parent unexpectedly come join in. She wanted to get involved and try to get other parents interested, too. Maybe with a little luck, we can turn this school around from low participation to one with enthusiastic parents and teachers. The kids, for sure, seem to be having fun and very curious.

We had thought none of the peas we planted last week were coming up, but a little girl saw them in a long narrow box just off to the side of where Phil was speaking. Good eyes! She had to look really hard to find them. The watering system hadn't been turned on yet, so they got no water all week. I had thought for sure their sprouting would be delayed, at best. I told the little girl she just spotted them on their birthdays; it had been one week from the day they had been planted. She smiled and was very happy to have spotted them all by herself. Being that it was their birthday, I asked if she had brought them a present and she giggled and said I was silly. Of course, she's right.

Got a few donated tomatoes for the tomato planter I want to build for the school, as well as a few free donated pansies, as there didn't turn out to be any place to put them. A four-pack of beefsteak and a four-pack of roma. I'm only building a 1x6 bed for the tomatoes, so I'll just take care of the toms for the week and bring them back. A fellow MG volunteer said he'd contribute two cherry tomatoes -- a sungold and a sweet 100 -- to the kids from his greenhouse. I'm happy to have those because they grow so easily, and so plentifully and quickly that each kid may be able to have at least one or two tomatoes before the school year ends come June. Bigger tomatoes are great, but tend to grow more slowly and are less foolproof. Anyway, that leaves me with two cherries, a roma, and a beefsteak to plant.

Went to Greenleaf Industries and couldn't resist getting a four-pack of Jubilee Tomatoes. They grew huge brilliantly yellow tomatoes for me last year, and I'd love some more this year. I think I'll give a Jubilee to the kids' garden so they have a change of color, and drop the roma from the list so we'll have instead sungold, sweet 100, beefsteak, and jubilee. If I had my druthers, the kids would have 20 tomatoes to choose from. But four is a nice start. Trellising should be a good lesson and kinda fun if I can keep the kids from breaking the stems!

In the early evening went to a presentation on building raised beds. Unfortunately it was taken over by audience members asking every random gardening question under the sun, and derailed. But really, if people felt they were getting their questions answered and their five dollars worth, I suppose I shouldn't complain. Even if the presentation wasn't particularly useful for me, it was good for the community and had their obviously enthusiastic participation. We didn't learn much about building raised beds, by my standards at least, but there was hardly a chair to spare, and sometimes enthusiasm and community participation in Master Gardening presentations may be worth a lot more than drilling down into the details and staying on point. I certainly should add that the presenter had a terrific personality and credit him for getting everyone involved.

Got a moisture meter today. Stuck it in a few plants. Reading: dry. Stuck it in a bowl of water. Reading: dry. Uh oh.

Got my master gardening final back today. 98%! Woo hoo!

Congratulations Marc!

                            



Very proud of you!

MGM (Master Gardener Marc),  98!    Congratulations.  You've worked hard for this honor.

   

Thanks!