New England MARCH 2015

+1 on Camp's comment.

Annual or perennial, with borage, it scarcely matters!   It will re-seed itself.  I have a few new plants poking their little heads up right now.  As seedlings, they resemble cucumber seedlings.

NHGardener wrote:Ooh! Pretty, and a pollinator plant! And it spreads!

Is borage a perennial in our zone, or an annual?

an annual that readily self seeds. Its wonderful and easy to rip out if it goes where it shouldn't!

I don't have many borage seeds so it'll be hard to plant them out without trying to be perfect about it. lol  Should I wait till the soil warms up a bit, and then maybe cover and water them?  Maybe I'll try a couple in pots, too, since Sanderson had success.

Today at my house:
2nd yr in a row I'm using this avatar.


Tomatoes sprouted this morning.  I put them in the window but that's probably a mistake since it's only 55 in there. Anyway, I'll be planting swiss chard & more kale seeds today for the heating pad.  The collards, original kales and lettuces all have true leaves now.  And I'm determined to plant out peas on Wed thru hook or crook.  Just wish I could get to & use my compost pile, center of photo, and get my wheel barrow out of this snow drift:

CC

PS just got a Roku Streaming Stick and am playing with that hoping to cut the cable tv...not sure about it yet though.   I'll keep checking it out.  Good day for it.

Naw, no need to baby them. Just sprinkle seed when you see dirt where you want to grow them

I like my Roku..

camprn wrote:Naw, no need to baby them. Just sprinkle seed when you see dirt where you want to grow them

I like my Roku..

Good to know on both responses! Thanks!

We have the biggest fattest snowflakes I've ever seen falling here right now....

CapeCoddess wrote:
PS just got a Roku Streaming Stick and am playing with that hoping to cut the cable tv...not sure about it yet though.   I'll keep checking it out.  Good day for it.

Okay, is a Roku Streaming Stick a northern contraption.  I don't have the faintest idea what it is.  Could you please clarify.

Just googled it.  Some kind of Antenna for a TV.

Yolos, it's not a garden thing, just a TV thing, which is why it was a PS.  Just  something to do while it's snowing like a bad boy outside.  Google it and be amazed.


Oh, you already did. Yes, but it works with wifi and not cable.

Gardening update for the third day of Spring, 2015:

Inside the onion babies are about 3" tall, with some varieties growing better than others. North Holland Blood Red seems susceptible to damping-off.

Outside it was -5F this AM, and my beds are still under 2-3' of snow. A couple of days ago when it was in the high 30's a huge slab of ice slid off the roof, bounced on the ground and hit a window in my basement so hard it set off the alarm and cracked the whole window in half. I have a smaller crack in another window on that same side of the house. I guess I need to call my homeowner's insurance agent...

Will it never end?!!

CC - Pretty neat about the stick! My TV is a dinosaur with no USB drive (and subsequently I only use it for DVDs or Netflix or Youtube via the Wii) -- there's such a world of unknown technology out there.......

Molly - Yikes! I hear you about this never ending ice age v2.0. At this rate I will run out of firewood. Hmm. Power company only estimated my power last month due to snowbanks and it looks like they will have to this month too....

Long range NOAA maps show warmer than average temps thru the summer. So if we squish all the temperatures together we may get a day or 2 of nice weather.

Still looking at my empty trays, thinking I better get started seeding...

Gosh Molly, that's horrible.  Is home damage a normal occurrence up there?  Or is it just from this wacky winter we had?

The sun feels so good and is melting everything very quickly!  Call me crazy but I took the day off from work, found a mostly thawed out box and PLANTED OUT! Four squares consisting of three kinds of spinach, Grand Rapids lettuce and some old snow peas:
Even though it looks like mostly 40's ahead, I have no expectations...well, except maybe the spinach which always comes when it's ready.

It felt dang good working in the MM!  The stuff is so beautiful!  And, since my SFG is on the side of the house, I got to talk to lots of neighbors (one who said my plantings won't produce - spoil sport), UPS guy and the mail lady - most of whom I've missed all winter.

What a great day!

What is that brown stuff in that box?

Here I was so encouraged because the top of my hugel pile is starting to show thru the snow in a few spots. Otherwise, my north facing slope of a lot is completely covered in snow still - a good couple feet. The rain tonight ought to help thaw it out.

Microclimates!

I know now why I get panicky every spring. It's because the window of opportunity to get things planted in the short season is so small - once the snow thaws and the soil warms a little, then bam, gotta get everything in there right away.

One reason why I really want to go perennial as much as possible.

CC, In a few years, you can retire, or work part time, and tinker in the garden for hours. I see your tennis.

Hi guys!

Tonight is my SEED OR BUST night. On the list: onion (yeah, late), lettuce, celery, kale, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, broccoli, and I'm thinking beets, but I don't see anyone mentioning seeding beets. Do you seed beets indoors?

I was looking thru the threads of prior years - we've come a long way! Actually I was looking for a seeding excel chart someone had linked way back. It had all the dates all nicely charted for indoor seeding of different things, but I can't find it. I vaguely remember it, it was that long ago.

Vines like squash, cucumber, pumpkin, watermelon will be more towards mid April.

It's interesting looking at weather patterns from years past - I think it was '11 and '12 that spring came early and hot, at least for a while. Then other years we were covered in snow wondering when it was all going to melt, similar to this year. Screaming at March snow and high winds.

My yard is still covered in snow, but there are sink holes in the garden, and the asparagus bed is showing more. Actually it kind of looks nice covered in white, because once it melts it reminds me of all the work I have to do yet, cleaning it up. 

Edit: Aha. Sow the beet seeds directly in the soil, 4 weeks before last frost date. It looks like my last frost date is May 13, so hopefully the snow will be gone in mid-April, and I'll set the beet seeds out there around then. They say to seed again in 2 weeks to keep the supply going.

NHG
http://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-dates/NH/Rochester

http://awaytogarden.com/when-to-start-seeds-calculator/

Did you not hear me 'say' I wasn't going to start any seeds this year, that it was too much trouble?  Did I not say I was going to buy all my tomatoes and peppers and a few other things as well?
Today I couldn't resist.  I got one of my growlights out of its corner, found a bag of Jiffy seed starter mix in the garage, also several used starting pots in the tool shed from last year.  In among my craft supplies, a few hundred popsicle sticks.  Well, what red-blooded gardener could refuse.

All my tomatoes, some determinates, some mini's, and some indeterminate favorites started today and under my lights.


And a couple of Swiss chards, Flamingo and Rhubarb.


I'm trying a different tack this year.  If anyone watches Gary Pilarchik's  youtube channel of The Rusted Garden in Maryland, he'll tell you he starts his seeds under lights all the time.  And from his videos he gets wonderful results.  So I'm starting mine under lights for the very first time in my life so we shall see what happens.

My gardens, both veggie beds and flower beds, are still under a foot of hard-pack snow that hasn't yet melted.  I hope to see the ground in another week or so.

OK, since you're planting them, do determinate tomatoes really need nine square feet? (Or, did I misread that in the book?)

FRED58 wrote:OK, since you're planting them, do determinate tomatoes really need nine square feet? (Or, did I misread that in the book?)

I plant mine about every other square and stake them.

Good for you QB!

I have found that the answer is "it depends." I plant tomatoes in corner boxes or in buckets. The one yellow pear is in a bucket right now with a cage and can do what ever it wants. I had determinants trained to single stems, then let 2 suckers grow, also. Got 8+ feet tall. I have stakes prepared for the tomatoes and will try some French weave along with my usual overhead dangling stretchy tape.

sanderson wrote:I have stakes prepared for the tomatoes and will try some French weave along with my usual overhead dangling stretchy tape.

Do you mean the Florida weave or is there such a thing as French weave.???

camprn - Yup, I saw those same sites! But that old excel file gave specific dates, which was nice. I'm going to look around on my archived files thumb drive and see if it might be saved somewhere.

quiltbea wrote:Did you not hear me 'say' I wasn't going to start any seeds this year, that it was too much trouble?  Did I not say I was going to buy all my tomatoes and peppers and a few other things as well?

Yay, quiltbea!

Reminds me of a meme I saw on the internet recently: "I'm sorry for all the things I said when it was winter" - haha!

Spring fever has officially sprung.

Fred - last year I had 1 or even 2 per square foot & they did fine.  All sorts of indeterminates though...

Quiltbea - yeah, I seem to remember you saying something about that..........

            Glad you changed your mind.  Bet the plants will too.

My early tomatoes are determinate , but the catalogue says they are small plants. The Long Keepers and San Marzano are indeterminate. Any info on the weave?

Yolos, Florida Weave!! Thanks for correcting me.

I don't cut off the suckers on my determinates.  They need all the growing and fruiting they can get since they get flush for a short period of time and then fade.
I've put them in beds before, 3 in a 4' length (in back) but I kept the row in front of them bare so they could stretch.  They can get pretty full.  Some are taller then others so it depends on the variety.  I prefer to put all my tomatoes at the outside edges of my 4 x 4 beds and leave the middles free for spreading or for tucking in a lettuce plant here and there to be shaded by the leaves.

For Indeterminates I also place them in the outside squares of my 4 x 4's, allowing them to grow a bit into the middle but I also sucker them and train them up a single string.  Again, shade-loving greens get to grow in those 2 squares between them or a basil plant.
They grow and flower and continue all thru the summer and into the fall.