March 1, 2011 in the PNW

Those are some great plans.

Lucky you in the PNW. Here in Maine I'm still waiting for the snow to melt.
Good luck all of you.

Don't forget, I am trying those grafted tomatoes this year. For those of you not familiar with grafted tomatoes, the idea is the nursery takes a tomato rootstock that is supposed to be more resistant to soil born viruses and diseases, then they graft on the growing part of a "more desirable" tomato that you typically would grow for flavor and appearances.

I am waiting for these grafted tomatoes to arrive in late April. The experiment will include the following varieties.

Brandywine

Japanese Trifele Black

To complete my experiment, I will be purchasing two transplants of the same varieties and have already started the same two varieties from seeds. I know this is really ambitious, since tomatoes do not grow well in the cool, damp, foggy Oregon Coast in the PNW, but, I want to try.

FM, you're sooooo organized! That makes it hard for me to maintain my preferred low stress, casual approach: 'I'm gonna throw some seeds in the dirt one of these days and see what happens'!

That being said, everything I've planted outside is so slow, that I started 50 peat pellets of broccoli and cauliflower last week. It's past time-I want to see something growing! Even my peas aren't sticking their heads up after 3 1/2 weeks.

I started making another TT today. I don't know what will go in it, but I'll have it when I need it.

I also started some gutter gardens for greens. I mounted them on existing 4x4 posts. It's just something different to experiment with ; it might free up TT space for other stuff. Sorry, I'm without a camera until next week.

Poor Quiltbea! Snow on the ground and no end in sight; I don't think I could do it!

Quiltbea, you and I will have to live through them vicariously for now. It's been for 3 days, not much accumulation though, and I have snow in the forecast all week.

boffer wrote:Everything I've planted outside is so slow, that I started 50 peat pellets of broccoli and cauliflower last week. It's past time-I want to see something growing! Even my peas aren't sticking their heads up after 3 1/2 weeks.

I started making another TT today. I don't know what will go in it, but I'll have it when I need it.

I also started some gutter gardens for greens. I mounted them on existing 4x4 posts. It's just something different to experiment with ; it might free up TT space for other stuff. Sorry, I'm without a camera until next week.

I love it, making another table top just so you will have it when you need it

Those gutter gardens sounded pretty neat, but I just have to rein myself in.

middlemamma wrote:Quiltbea, you and I will have to live through them vicariously for now. It's been for 3 days, not much accumulation though, and I have snow in the forecast all week.

And I see you are sending it MY way! We have 3 days of snow forecast starting sometime this weekend (I say sometime, because it never starts when they SAY it is going to start )

There are sick teachers so I have to go in to school today instead of staying at home with my distance-learners and spring gardening. Bleck!

The kewl news is that I just found out that Uprising sells black garbanzo beans for the PNW!! The uber kewl thing is that garbanzo's go into the ground at the same time as peas. I am on a quest to grow calories this year. As soon as I can score a few of these I'll put them into the 4 center squares of Box 3. Garbanzo's are not big producers as far as I know, but I'm gonna try them anyhow.

Uprising also has a red veined spinach that I would have interplanted with my bloomsdale today if I was not working BUT the new moon is this Friday (March 5) which is the start of a better phase for leaf veggies.

I should have started all those tomatoes yesterday. I hurt my back watering the dogs (of all things!) Too many pain meds to feel motivated to roll and fill newspaper pots....although I did roll and fill pots for nine broccoli starts. I did two pots each of seed from last year (Umpqua and NutriBud), two of a new to me broccoli (Thompson and I don't remember if it is OP or F1, I have such bad luck with broccoli I may have given in and got the F1) and 3 of a broccoli-kale cross called Peacock which sounds quite useful and pretty. I do not remember having so much trouble with broccoli in the mountains as I have with broccoli in my SFG. After a bit of reading is sounds like MM is way too high in Nitrogen to produce good heads. Instead it makes loads of leaves and tiny side shoots (which is what I noticed last year) I need to figure out how to solve this without taking the broccoli out of the box.

The micro greens and artichokes are coming along (and crowding my counter space)

Deborah....was it just me or was it warmer last night then it was yesterday?

Wow you guys are so on the ball. It's only March and I already feel behind.

I still don't have my boxes. I guess with knowing they will come within the next two weeks I could start something inside. I do have some Mel's mix already but need to get more mixed.

There is one place along my fence that would be a nice place for peas and beans so I think I am going to go ahead and start that this weekend. There won't be a box there and I am going direct into the ground. We are still getting flurries at night but hopefully the worst is over.

Some of my herbs are still going from last year and it seems the snow hasn't fazed them at all.

Still no strawberry plants available.

Once I do get out there I will get some pictures for my before and after too.

On another note, I only have certain spaces in my yard that get enough sunlight. Now along the side of the house that I plant it is getting too much shade from some wild tall growth in my neighbor's yard. I am thinking of going over and asking them if they will let me trim it if I haul it out. What do you think?

Wreanne,
I see you've only posted 6 times so I take it you're new with us.
Welcome aboard the Food Train. You'll love it.

As for the neighbors......if you are on talking terms with them, yes, I'd offer to cut back their weedy growth for the trimmings which may please them, but you could also tell them you'd be happy to share some lettuce, tomatoes or whatever it is you plan to grow in that particular area after the sun is available. They might be more cooperative if the reward is good.

Good luck with your SFG. I hope to see you posting more often with good news.

I have to apologize for these really bad photos, I was having focus problems :scratch: These are my Brandywine Tomato seedling that I planted on 2/24 in vermiculite. I tried to plant 7 seeds in each little pot of vermiculite so I would end up with 6 seedlings to transplant. Look at the long roots on that little seedling laying on the paper towel next to the pot of vermiculite.


Yesterday, I up-potted them to little 2 inch cells filled with Mel's Mix and made sure I buried most of the stalk. I also up-potted my Stupice and Black Krim.


The Manitoba, Gilbertie (from seed exchange), Black Plum, Black Trifele tomato seedlings were not big enough, they still had their little seed caps on and the seeds leaves had not opened up. Probably will up-pot them over the weekend. The Aunt Mollys Ground Cherries have not yet sprouted.

Now that I have three open pots with vermiculite available, I will start the Cherokee Purple, Tom's Black Cherry and Tomatillo's all from seed exchanges. I had tried the tomatillos in jiffy pellets, but did not have good results. I think straight vermiculite will give them a better chance to germinate.

I took some photos this past weekend so I can do before and after photos. I will download them once I get my boxes all set up. I have some soil mixed and more bags ready for mixing. I also could only do so much money wise so I have two areas where we are just going direct into ground so my peas and beans are in there too. I took advantage of the sun breaks and now with the forecast am I glad I did.

The most exciting is my son called and tomorrow I get my boxes he made! Yay!!! Oh and my neighbor was just lovely to speak with and is quite happy for us to trim her tree/bushes? to let in more sun, she even asked if she needed to do anything in her yard to protect ours. She is due in two weeks so I told her to go put her feet up and relax and that would work for me.

Good news all around.

Boxes coming and more sunlight for your garden. (If the sun decides to show it's pretty little face)

That's exciting. Don't worry about being behind. This wasn't a good year for starting early outside. I didn't gain much.

Hey FM - did you bother thinking about evacuating yesterday or are you already far enough inland that it wouldn't have mattered anyway? Once I heard how little the tide rose in Hawaii, I laughed at the drama the news was trying to create over a tsunami hitting Oregon. Has that ever happened?!?

Oregon has had tsunamis, though the ones I've heard of were small. Also major river floods, especially in Portland. (I lived in Portland and surrounding areas for about 5 years.)

the river floods I know about since I remember my cousins laughing about how the Oregon Trail museum was built at its location because it was supposedly above the flood plain...and yet it got flooded the next time the Willamette River flooded after it was built. Oops!

My family is doing just fine, and thanks for thinking of us.

Actually, the fire dept came to our door at 3:30 AM yesterday to inform us of the tsunami. They did not ask us to evacuate, but since we are caretakers for a county park, we needed to notify our campers. The campers from other campgrounds right on the ocean were evacuated to higher ground.

I live 2 1/2 miles from the ocean, but the lakes here are directly connected to the ocean by a big creek, and the concern was that the tsunami wave could travel up the creek and cause problems at the lake.

The state police actually closed low lying portions of Hwy 101 for just in case. Some of the local bays saw changes due to the tsunami.

It is absolutely better to be forewarned and disappointed than to have something like this creep up on you unawares. Japan only had 20 - 30 minutes warning.

Locally, one of the harbors at Charleston had damage to the docks, but remained operating.

Brookings in extreme Southern Oregon had substantial damage.

Local Tsunami Damage Report

In 1964, there was a tsunami that caused several deaths when the wave washed timber and debris into a campground about 80 miles north of where I live. I have camped there and the campground is at least 1/2 mile from the high tide line, but the water funneled between some bridge abutments and inundated the campground.

wow! Didn't realize there actually was damage from this one here in Oregon. Thanks for the info. I'm more petrified of hurricanes than tsunamis even though the only hurricane that did pass over Oahu when I was alive happened in the 80s and I have no memory of that. Maybe it's just the fear factor of what hurricanes can do. When I lived in New Orleans for 4 yrs for school, I was more afraid of hurricanes than growing up because I knew they actually hit the south with more frequency than they do in Hawaii. Thankfully I only had to evacuate once and that hurricane (ivan) ended up going to Texas. I actually left NOLA 3 months before Katrina but many of my friends were still there.

Being from the East Coast I am very familar with Hurricanes. I have a brother and sister both on the Gulf Coast of Florida and some more distant family on the Atlantic Coast of the Carolinas.

At least we don't have hurricanes here on the West Coast and Tsunami Warnings are very infrequent.

Hooray, I have a working camera again!

Here are the gutters I'm experimenting with. You can see I started planting on the lower left. Every weekend I plant another foot of lettuce. Each gutter is 10 feet long and holds 1 five gallon bucket of MM.


This is a covered bed, protected from the rain, but not the temperatures. Two types of lettuce planted on 1/17 and exposed to temps in the low teens. The garlic and potato onions were planted last Oct.


This bed is covered on the ends, and it has a soil heating cable. Some lettuces, spinach, broccoli, turnips, and bok choi, planted on 2/1


The winter look of part of the garden