Seeds on order!

[Sweetened]

   

I am so overjoyed. Do you have a seed order coming in?

[ooptec]

$149 worth not incl. flowers

sheesh

[Sweetened]

Yeah, I'm not far off that. Growing some of the same, some different. First batch of seeds arrived yesterday! Can't wait to get things started.

How do you do your starts? I was thinking of trying flat starting this year, where you fill flats with dirt, scatter seeds and once they sprout, carefully pluck the individual start out and put it in its own little growth pot.

[ooptec]

Flowers are jennifer's domain. Tho help weed, prep ground



Mostly for veggies start peppers, eggplant, ground cherries, tomatoes inside in 4 in pots in flats in south window of kitchen. Peppers and eggplant are going now as seems bigger the better for transplant /yield and like tomatoes about 4 in tall (3rd node) to transplant. Save eggshells and grind into dust and put a tbsp in bottom of each hole for blossom end rot



Used to start a lot more like onions and leeks, but they seem to about the same if started in place. Do white yellow and red ones. Last season neighbor got a pillowcase full of onion bulbs from the auction for $5 so gave me a ton. I already had onions seeded directly so ended up eating as many of those as could as green/spring onions. Will do an extra row of seedt this year just for that again. They were green onions for quite a bit of summer.



thinking of starting melons, squashes, pumpkins just so they sprout to 2 leaf stage as last 2 years have been such a cold start they don't seem to germinate more than 20%. Put under cover till warms up.



Some herbs overwinter inside like oregano, italian parsley and thyme. Will put back out and also grow more from seed tho take in again, tho oregano can take in the same bush year after year as it splits easily. Thyme gets too big and I think parsley is a annual(ish)



Garlic I plant a bed w/reg cloves from groc store and plant a bed every year. Leave alone and harvest in 3 years.

Here are some bulbettes that were produced from flowers of last years harvest



Like gardening ......... A LOT lol

[Sweetened]

Awh! Inspiring. I grow weeds, very well. In fact, I'm so good at growing lambs quarters I ate a lot of it last year. This year I focused a bit more, looking at all the seed varieties, Ryan will disagree, but it's true.

How much do you have tilled up to garden, do you think? We have a 50x30, give or take? and I'm going to have a few more gardens dug up this year. Planning on clearing snow this weekend to try and give the ground the opportunity to dry up so we can get a tiller in there early and I can get potatoes down.

[ooptec]

Have upper garden that incl the raspberries which is prob 100 X 50. Do the viney stuff up there except cantaloupe, cukes and watermelon as they don't spread too badly

Bottom garden which was a cattle pen for ever and ever a LONG time ago is about the same size. Made 2 X 4 frames w/stucco wire to form corners and 1/2 way on long sides for braces/support/gate then staple stucco wire between to keep birdies out.

Yea first few weedings are a big job. But once veggies are 1/2 grown or more slack off a little. Use string trimmer for large open spaces like where melons/cukes will grow into. Top garden leave enuf space and plant squash and pumpkins in straight lines so can weed w/rototiller till they really take off then they overpower anything else. Last good crop spread a thick cover (6-8 in) of oat straw everywhere up top and worked pretty good for the portulaca and a lot but had to mow the volunteer oats w/lawn tractor a couple of times. Is a annual so after tilling in everything after harvest went pretty well

Edit: to make coherent lol

[niglefritz]

You will have ground that will be thawed out that much? In areas around here, the freeze went down up to 7' in some areas. Let me know how your snow pushing/early soil drying goes. You might want to put black plastic or something of that sort over it as well to help heat it.

Talking about weeds...I got so discouraged over many years that I attempted gardening. There was no amount of weeding, tilling, etc. that would take care of the jungle that always seemed to take over. I would have it clean (or so I thought) and try to keep up with it even through the biggest weed growing season, and it always got the best of me. I could not keep up. I grew fantastic portulaca (thank you birds), wild buckwheat and more. Yippee. I hate weeding, yet I gave it all I had. Some relatives said that I didn't do things right...um, I did just like they did (except NO Roundup, maybe that was the kicker?)...and that I needed a smaller garden. I did downsize and it made NO difference. Now, I have knee problems and some other health issues  that will not help, but after a break of a couple of years (babies take so much time, you know...) we will try again. We have a better tractor (can do row cropping), and we are going to try to use it more if we can. That should help cut down on some manual labor.

Mulching never did help me either. It just grew more weeds and propagated mice. I was so disappointed...how do some people do it?

We hope to get cats again this year, but with a dog that won't let them stay and now a resident horned owl (he is beautiful...), who knows if that will be of any use.

Hey, ooptec...just read between the lines if my posts are incoherent. I try, but it doesn't always work.   

[ooptec]

make my post understandable not yours lol

Weeds could be a real prob, esp if had gone to seed. Maybe summerfallow 1/2 and keep tilled w/tractor/tiller and crop other 1/2 ??

[niglefritz]

Yes, I got that. I just figured that if you run across one of mine not being coherent, just go with the flow...and  

We had thought about that and also about using clover as a ground cover and till it before it flowers. That is what a lot of organic producers do. The space we currently have is too small to do both in the same year, and our alternative garden space is now in pasture and will most likely be flooded this spring/summer due to the heavy snowfalls. We are needing more land...and looking...

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