Sunday, October 26, 2008
Paper towels are bad for germinating
Despite what any novice pothead will tell you, paper towels suck for germinating seeds. Oh sure, the little shells do seem to love the ratio of water, light and air. However, once the roots start to develop they intertwine themselves with the loose fibers in the towel. When it's time to pull the layers apart, the tiny seedling gets shredded.
Fall harvesting, cleaning & planting
Harvesting:
As per usual, the tomato plants did not get the memo suggesting that as November looms they should stop blossoming. I picked 2 dry pints of cherry tomatoes and nearly 3 gallons of red slicers, the crimson carmellos. A batch of tomato sauce made from a mix of the cherry tomatoes and slicers was very tasty.
The basil is flowering madly, but was too dry to harvest. I'll give it a gentle deep watering and pick most of it in the morning.
There are quite a few red peppers on the pepper plants. The lone pepper that was in with the cucumbers is trying to make up for lost time. It's covered in blossoms and is setting quite a bit of fruit. I'll feed it a bit today as well.
Cleaning:
Today I tore down all the forlorn corn stalks that had been decimated by squirrels. The spent sunflowers came down as well. The trumpetvine which cascades over the eastern fence was blocking a lot of sunlight to the ground, so I cut that back very aggressively.
There was quite a bit of wood sorrel choking the basil, that's now gone too. However, the backyard is generally looking like an episode from Weeds Gone Wild. I'll have to convince TheRoommate to bust out his weedburner.
Planting:
The seeds that germinated at the beginning of the month have yielded some results. I sucessfully transplanted about 6 of the fennel seedlings, but only 2 of the broccoli seedlings.
Today I'm going to direct sow broccoli into a long planter box. When the fennel seedlings get bigger they'll go into the barrel where the sweet peas had been previously. I added a few seeds to the planting box where the bigger seedlings are. Hopefully, they'll germinate.
As per usual, the tomato plants did not get the memo suggesting that as November looms they should stop blossoming. I picked 2 dry pints of cherry tomatoes and nearly 3 gallons of red slicers, the crimson carmellos. A batch of tomato sauce made from a mix of the cherry tomatoes and slicers was very tasty.
The basil is flowering madly, but was too dry to harvest. I'll give it a gentle deep watering and pick most of it in the morning.
There are quite a few red peppers on the pepper plants. The lone pepper that was in with the cucumbers is trying to make up for lost time. It's covered in blossoms and is setting quite a bit of fruit. I'll feed it a bit today as well.
Cleaning:
Today I tore down all the forlorn corn stalks that had been decimated by squirrels. The spent sunflowers came down as well. The trumpetvine which cascades over the eastern fence was blocking a lot of sunlight to the ground, so I cut that back very aggressively.
There was quite a bit of wood sorrel choking the basil, that's now gone too. However, the backyard is generally looking like an episode from Weeds Gone Wild. I'll have to convince TheRoommate to bust out his weedburner.
Planting:
The seeds that germinated at the beginning of the month have yielded some results. I sucessfully transplanted about 6 of the fennel seedlings, but only 2 of the broccoli seedlings.
Today I'm going to direct sow broccoli into a long planter box. When the fennel seedlings get bigger they'll go into the barrel where the sweet peas had been previously. I added a few seeds to the planting box where the bigger seedlings are. Hopefully, they'll germinate.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Fall planting
It's only been about 5 days and all of the kale, fennel and broccoli seeds have gone to town germination. The rainbow chard sprouts are very pretty. I don't have time to get them situated into little pots this morning. Tomorrow, tomorrow.
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