March 2022

     

February Garden List

1. Continue clean up seed starting area

2. Continue to grow lettuce and Radishes

3. Continue to hang florescent lights

4. Work on planting onions and cabbage

Daily Activities

March 5 - Started sprouting onion seeds

March 12 - Planted sprouted onion seeds

March 13 - Watered onions

March 20 - Made seed tapes for radishes and lettuce

March 21 - Turned over potato bed Terra Nova Gardens

                    Still frozen in spots.

March 22 - Watered onions

Saturday, March 5

I planted onion seeds in 18 ounce glasses but only a couple sprouted. So I decided to just dump the rest of three of the packs of seeds on a wet towel; encapsulate it with saran wrap on both sides and see what sprouts. If any sprout, then I'll plant the sprouts. I am sprouting them in the War Room which is a constant 75 degrees. Hopefully, I'll get some sprouts. If not, I'll send for fresh seed.  Onions can be a little hard to germinate when the seed gets more than a couple years old.

This is the method of sprouting of the onion seeds. I place the saran wrapped seeds on the towel seed side down. Two magazines are placed on top of the seeds and a weight is placed on top of the magazines. That way the seeds stay in contact with the moist paper towel. If and when the seeds sprout, I will plant the sprouts. It's a way of first knowing if the seed has germinated and then getting a 100% plant starting seed without waiting two weeks to seed if the seeds are germinating and how many seeds have germinated.

I bought a dragon a few days ago. It's a 100, 000 btu torch that attaches to a propane tank designed for the purpose of weed scorching. It doesn't have to set the weed on fire but just scorch it enough to kill the weed. It's a way to kill weeds without using harsh chemicals. I've wanted one for many years. I do have a propane tank but I'm not sure it's any good. I'll have to take it up to Keith's and see what they say about it.

The roadside at Terra Nova Gardens is starting to look good again. I still have to put down some mulch. I can start buying the truck loads of mulch again. I used up all the mulch that was delivered a couple years ago. I have learned not too chintzy with the mulch. The deeper the better. When I get done, I think I'll need another layer just as deep as the first layer to keep the weeds under control.

It looks really good from where I started from. This area was all dead Rugosa Rose bushes. Then died from many things but the last straw was when they were smothered by bind weed. Bind weed will grow up through and over a bush until it just can't get any sunshine. I have battled bind weed every year that I've gardened here. When the bind weed is under control then comes Creeping Charlie. It's a never ending battle for the land.

Planting the onions in seed starter didn't get a single onion to sprout. I put the seeds on a wet paper towel and sealed it into a Ziploc bag. This is what happened in five days. Sometimes the best way to start seeds is to sprout them first. That way I know that the germination will be 100% for each seed cell. The seeds seem to germinate faster. The normal germinate time for an onion seed is 7 - 14 days. Granted,  the planting of sprouts can be a little tedious.

This is the onion sprouts planted in PVC cells. It takes a lot longer to do it this way, but I think it's a better way. Each cell contains one sprout. Alisa seemed to sprout much better than the other two. Stuttgarter Onions didn't sprout a single seed. The onions seeds are three years old so old seed doesn't sprout too well. That is except for Ailsa Craig.

Monday, March 14

Once again the weeds got out of hand in at Terra Nova. I just haven't been able to control the weeds since 2017. Things always seem to get bumped up more important than weed control in the garden. I tried to remove the carpet from the bed but it's still frozen to the soil under it. This is really a late spring.

It looks a little better. I put together a makeshift burn pit at the end of the bed to burn all the weed debris. I don't want to light the fire until I get the water tower tank filled with water and the hose ready to keep any escaping fire or embers under control. When this gets burned, I'll move the pit over to the next bed and do the same thing there. The garden in general needs mega clean up. 

This will be to potato bed this year when it's all clean up and prepared. I hope it's ready by Good Friday. It's April 15, so I have about one month to get this bed ready to plant. That will be the first bed planted. The bed next to this one will be the onions I believe which will be planted about the same time.

The sprouted onion seeds are starting to peek up through the soil. I received the fresh seed today. I might try to start another 72 cell tray of onions.

Sunday, March 20

Spring solace is upon us. Two more days until the official spring is here but it's not quite weather wise spring just yet. The temperatures are still down in the 30s at night but day temperatures are starting to warm up.

I made seed tapes for Radishes and Lettuce. It's for the newly finished backyard raised bed. I want to plant one 32 inch row of radishes and another 32 inch row of lettuce every week or two with the seed tape. I am hopeful that it will be productive and sustainable through out the garden year. I may need to do double rows. One row of radishes is only 14 radishes and one row of lettuce is only 10 lettuce plants. Once lettuce starts producing it may just take over the radish space.

Monday, March 21

This bed has been dormant for two years. I covered it with carboard and held down the cardboard with rocks. The cardboard is crumbly from the contact with the moist dirt. I managed to pull off the cardboard and pile it up on the compost pile in the back of the garden. I need to get some green in the compost pile. That should be rectified when grass mowing starts. I always have too much grass during the peak season of the mowing year.

I managed to get the soil turned over but it was a struggle because of some frost still in the ground. It seemed that the sides near the rocks were thawed but the middle was not. It was a wet soil. I'm hoping the coming rain will soften the frost chunks and allow me to smooth it out the next time I come to the garden.

Wednesday, March 30

I hauled another 100 gallons of water out to Terra Nova Gardens. I cleaned up the bed for corn just a little. I took all the tires out of the bed. It still needs a lot of work. If I can just continue to little bits at a time, I'll be able to accomplish a lot. I do want to cage in a space for the corn this year. I think it's just going to be 10 feet. I've decided to build a path down the middle of the beds. Each section will be 10 feet with a three foot path in between the beds. That way I can just add on to the cages each year. 

February 2022

    

February Garden List

1. Continue clean up seed starting area

2. Continue to grow lettuce and Radishes

3. Continue to hang florescent lights

4. Work on planting onions and cabbage

Daily Activities

14th - Water lettuce plants in basement

14th - Planted onions in 18 oz cups

14th - Daffodils are starting to grow

15th - Water lettuce and onion seed in basement

27th - Onions not up

Monday, February 14

The garden year starts on Valentine's Day. This is a 90 onion root trainer tray make from PVC. If this grows out to mature onions it would give me an onion every four days. That is about what I would want. I don't expect that every onion start would produce a nice mature onion. And I don't expect that an onion would last a whole year in storage.

Here are the onions that will be used to plant. They are at least a couple years old so the germination rate is most likely not the best. Germination goes down hill fast for onions. I think I'll geminate the seeds in a community container and then transfer the sprouts over to the tray.

Here's a few radish trainers. I tried to use these in the past and it didn't work well but I've since noticed that growing radishes in general doesn't seem to work well. I will experiment with different radishes to see if that could be the issue.

Tuesday, February 15

Ideas are starting to sprout in my head about improvements and expansions to the seed starting area and the several gardens. The daffodils are up with tulips not far behind. The spring flowers looked a little anemic last year but I really don't know what to do to help them out.

The first sign of spring. I do need to rejuvenate the whole spring flower bed. This time I'm going to spend a little more time on the design. But that won't happen until fall. I'm going to do it in stages instead of trying to do the entire thing at one time. I haven't really taken care of it very well. I just planted the bulbs and dowsed it with mulch some years ago and walked away. It think there might be more to it than that. It has looked a little stressed and anemic the last couple years.

I've been thinking about what to plant in the driveway flower pots. I want something different this year. Marigolds do grow good in the pots but I've been thinking about a giant sunflower. I'm not sure if I can pull that off. Since it's in a pot I would have to support it somehow to keep the Nebraska winds from blowing it over.

I'm hoping to be able to spend more attention on yard and garden this year. It seems that Dot always has things happen in March or April when most of the garden activity happens.

I have some potatoes that I ordered but I'm not sure they will be any good. They sent them as soon as I ordered them in January and didn't tell me when they were delivered so they set outside all night in single digit weather. I wasn't too happy about that. Most companies will send potatoes at the right time for planting. I ordered more potatoes from the company I ordered from last time. They will send them in March when planting time. Planting time this year is April 15th. I have a while to get the potato bed ready for planting. The bed I have for that this year has been dormant for a couple years.

Sunday, February 27