Turns out it’s not as quick to set up the hoop house when it’s freezing cold and very windy! I went out around sunset and the wind was incredible. The temperature has already started to drop like a stone now that the sun is down. AccuWeather says that though the airport (our official weather station, typically warmer than my garden in cold weather as it’s nearer the ocean) is officially registering 37 F, it already feels like it’s 20 F. It says the wind is clocking in at a steady 23 mph with gusts. I tried to hold the hoop house down best I could with some of the myriad surplus rocks (dug out of the garden). We’ll see if it works. The poor little seedlings look so tender and fragile, though I am aware I am likely anthropomorphizing. I think I strained my shoulder crouching, bracing myself against the wind, trying to make sure the hoop house was secured. I should definitely not wait quite so long next time, going out enough before sunset that it’s not quite so cold! I’d best stop typing now so I don’t further strain it.
Seedlings and hoop house 8 April 2009
Much to my astonishment, several seedlings have sprouted out of the rescued soil from the flower tray disaster. No idea what they are at this point, of course, so we’ll have to wait and see. Some of the tomato seedlings are getting quite large and I will need to transplant them into bigger pots soon. I was right that a second eggplant seedling was coming up, but no others have yet. Outside, there are numerous tiny sprouts in the front flower bed and the main crop bed, but I’m not sure yet what all the tiny seedlings are; most of them don’t even have their “true leaves” yet.
I received the little pre-made hoop house last Friday. Today is supposed to be the coldest night since I received it, so I thought I’d finally break it out and try to work out how it works. Figuring out how to un-scrunch it (it was wrapped up into a scrunchy compactness) actually took longer than setting it up! In just a few minutes, I had looped it around my little crop plot, such that it covered literally nearly every square inch of it (plus a couple of things I couldn’t avoid in the looping, like the sea holly that’s next to the plot). Since my soil is so rocky (even though I have dug out soooo many rocks [not only is the front garden’s entire border made of rocks, but there’s a pile of at least as many left over], every winter the freeze/thaw cycle heaves new ones, along with fresh glass shards, rusted metal, etc.), the longest part was driving the stakes in to new spots when they hit something in the soil. The hoop house is MUCH shorter and thinner than the ones you can (and that people typically do) build at home, but it seems like it would work well for young plants. The metal hoops are very bendy, so I imagine that you could make the house wider & shorter, or taller & thinner, if you wanted. We’ll see how it works overnight (and if it makes it through the night; I’m still a little skeptical that things like that won’t be stolen here on my busy city street, where I have had people come up into my garden and dig up entire plants, but we’ll see). The plastic is much clearer than I’ve seen on typical plans for homemade hoop houses, but I don’t know what difference that would make other than not diffusing the light much and probably also meaning it couldn’t be used very effectively while sunlight was shining directly on it. (I need to do more reading on season extenders to better understand their exact mechanics.) It does not appear to have slats on the sides (for ventilation), but it is easily vented at the ends.
Work in the garden / Seeds sown / Mustards / Season extenders 28 March 2009
I’ve done a lot of work in the garden in the past couple of days. Yesterday I did some more clean-up (I will never, ever intentionally plant a maple or locust near garden plots: the detrit0us is mind-bogglingly huge and very difficult to clean up because of how small it all is compared to most plant refuse) and then planted 60 pansies and violas – 3 six-packs of violas and 7 six-packs of pansies. I planted two yellow-and-purple violas with a straight-up yellow one, and pansies in clusters of two color themes; three clusters of the white, yellow, mauve, and blue ones and two clusters of the maroon, royal purple, and yellow-with-blushes-of-red-and-orange ones. Violas bloom so much more readily in six-packs that they were blooming a lot more than the others right upon planting, and they really cheer up the currently low-bloom front garden, and distract the eye from the lavenders behind them, which are currently putting out fresh leaves and looking a bit mangy. I went out today to take photos of this and my other work, but my rechargable batteries once again abruptly failed. Unfortunately, while they were recharging it got thickly cloudy, and in my experience macro pictures don’t turn out so well in those conditions with my camera. (I really need new rechargeable batteries. My old ones finally lost the ability to recharge a few months ago and I went to the camera store where I’d bought them to get new ones, but they were carrying a different brand. They turn out to be the worst rechargeable batteries I’ve ever encountered in my life. Really, they are so staggeringly bad I have no idea how someone could even make such an inferior product, much less a store sell them!)
When I was at the nursery I asked if they were going to get viola ‘Tiger’s Eye’ (AKA ‘Tiger Eye’) in again. Not only is it my favorite annual viola of any I’ve ever grown, but it got me in-person compliments and has brought a surprisingly large number of hits to the blog entry about it via search engines. The nursery owner didn’t remember it, but the pansy/viola supplier was making a delivery at the time and said he had it this year, so the owner said he’d bring some in next week. I’m psyched! It was the star of the shadiest portion of my spring to mid-summer front garden last year, and even the heat of summer (and believe me, the front garden has heat!) didn’t completely fell it.
Anyhow, today I did yet more clean-up – primarily picking up more detritus and cutting down seed heads (earlier I’d left the seed heads that still seemed to have some seeds because they looked cool and I thought the birds might want them) – and planted the six herbs I bought yesterday at the nursery. I got sage, purple sage, cilantro ‘Salsa,’ and three thymes – lemon thyme, garden thyme ‘Compactus,’ and a creeping thyme with white flowers. Thyme (especially garden thyme) and sage don’t do as well in my garden as the other Mediterranean herbs, and I’ve tried some previous theories as to why. Now I am trying a new theory out: Planting them early might help them settle in before other plants really grow much. I’m hoping that the sages will get big and strong enough to not succumb to mildew this year (though I know from other gardeners in the area that for some gardens, sage is just prone to mildew, period) which makes them look gross, makes the leaves presumably inedible, and sometimes eventually kills the plant. As to the garden thyme, it’s just good to plant thyme early so it has some time to adjust before hot weather sets in. It doesn’t mind hot weather, but it’s generally not too fond of being put out in it. I think in the past garden thyme has simply gotten too shaded in my garden as the growing season goes on. Here’s hoping I placed it in an OK spot this time. Ironically, without the other plants having grown much yet, it’s hard to say for sure!
The first flowers I sowed earlier this week are up now, all the same kind, painted daisy. Four were up last evening and then the last time I checked it was up to seven. I haven’t seen any other flower sprouts yet. Yesterday I sowed greens outside and lettuce inside. The outside lettuce hasn’t come up yet (not particularly surprising with the wildly swinging temperatures of late) and I thought I’d try my luck inside, plus I read recently that transplanted lettuce is slower to bolt than in-situ-sown lettuce, and it seems the opposite might be true too – that in-situ lettuce might be more cold-tolerant than transplants – so I thought I would do an experiment and see what actually happens.
When I sowed flowers, I ran out of seed trays, so I bought another one this week to sow the lettuce in. It’s a different shape than the others (and made of much flimsier material), and it lends itself to six holes per variety, with twelve varieties total, so I just followed that inclination. I picked ‘Eva’s Burgundy,’ ‘Merlot,’ ‘Tom Thumb,’ ‘Craciovensis,’ ‘Red Tinged Winter,’ ‘De Mourges Braun,’ ‘Gotte Jaune D’Or,’ ‘Oak Leaf,’ ‘Deer Tongue AKA Matchless,’ ‘Blushed Butter Oaks,’ ‘Brown Dutch,’ and ‘Spotted Aleppo.’ (For descriptions of all the lettuces I soewd outside, including these, see my recent entry “Lettuce and Spinach.”) I sowed two seeds in each hole except for ‘Eva’s,’ which had fewer seeds in the packet, and got one per hole. No action yet, but it’s only been 24 hours.
Outside, I sowed the hardiest Asian greens I got in my Kitazawa Seed box (which actually covered most of the greens; there are many fewer frost-intolerant ones) plus the Chinese celery. I’ve never successfully grown celery, but this one is supposed to be super easy to grow, so we’ll see. I smartly sowed each in a little patch and labelled it, which I also should have done with the lettuce and spinach. I sometimes just don’t think through how this little crop patch is nothing like my old garden’s and does not lend itself well to scattershot things like flicking lettuce seed onto bare ground. Space is by necessity so much more economical here.
Anyhow, here are Kitazawa’s descriptions of the greens and celery:
Chinese Celery ‘White Queen’ This very special Chinese celery has a flavor and aroma that is stronger than Western celery. The long white stems are considerably smaller than those of Western celery, and the jagged green leaves, more delicate. This easy to grow variety prefers cool temperatures. A must for many Chinese dishes, this celery makes a delicious addition to stews, soups or stir-fries. Include both the stalks and leaves. Maturity: Approx. 60 days / Planting season: Spring or late summer
Mibuna ‘Early Mibuna’ This traditional Japanese green is cultivated in Mibu, in the Kyoto prefecture. An early open pollinated mibuna variety, this vigorous grower is tolerant to both heat and cold. The leaves add a mild mustard flavor to a fresh green salad. They are delicious lightly steamed with a soy dressing, and are also commonly used for pickling. Maturity: Approx. 30 days / Planting season: Early spring or late summer to early fall
Japanese Chard ‘Umaina’ Umaina is a tender Japanese Chard. The leaves are deep green slightly waved and smooth. The mid-rib is pale green with short stalks. This variety is can withstand warm and cold temperatures and slow bolting. It is prepared like pak choi and very similar to spinach. Maturity: Approx. 55 days / Planting season: Spring to fall
Molokeyhia / Egyptian Spinach ‘Molokia’ This Middle Eastern super green, known as Egyptian spinach, has a high vitamin and mineral content. Prepare raw or cooked. Harvest young shoots and leaves. Use in stir-fries, soup or salad. Maturity: Approx. 60 days / Planting season: Spring
Mustards
‘Garnet Giant’ The solid, rounded leaves of this baby leaf are deep purplish red color. Leaves produce their color early in the growing season and retain it through summer. With its mild but distinct flavor, Garnet Giant complements any collection of greens.
‘Golden Streak’ This fast-growing baby green mustard has a bright spring-green color and a delicate, lacey habit that contrasts strikingly with dark green or red salad greens. Its mild spicy taste adds interest, as well. Use the Golden Streak to perk up a salad or sandwich or as a perfect little side garnish.
‘Mizuna Red Streak’ This pot-herb mustard strongly resembles Ruby Streak. Its ornately fringed purple and green leaves deliver a peppery flavor that is milder than arugula and packed with nutrients. The thin green stalks are tasty, as well, making Mizuna Red Streak a perfect baby leaf salad green. Mature leavescomplement stir-fries and soups. Sow seeds in spring to fall and suitable for growing throughout growing season.
‘Ruby Streak’ Arguably the prettiest baby leaf mustard, the Ruby Streak adds a delicate spice and colorful elegance to a salad plate. Stems are green, with airy, thread-shaped maroon leaves. If left to mature to full size, the leaves take on the jagged shape of a dandelion leaf or Mizuna mustard. Still tender enough for salads, full-grown they are also great in a stir-fry.
‘Osaka Purple’ This broad-leafed mustard has reddish leaves. It will tolerate cold weather. Grows fast in warm weather. Both leaves and stems can be pickled, stir-fry, steamed or added to salad. The younger the leaves are picked, the milder their flavor will be. Individual leaves or the whole plant may be harvested.
‘Red Giant’ This deep purplish, large, broad-leafed mustard has a mustard-like pungency. Use in soup, salad, stir-fry or pickled. Harvest the leaves when young for salads or layer into sandwiches instead of using prepared mustard. The leaves can be cut from the plant, which will rapidly grow new ones. Make your own prepared mustard by letting the plant go to seed. When the pods turn yellow, harvest and place the seeds in a blender with vinegar, spices and water.
‘Serifon’ This winter-hardy mustard has green leaves with jagged margins and a slightly pungent flavor. The spicy flavor increases with age. Sow seeds in early spring for summer harvest or late summer to fall for winter harvest. Used in stir-fries, salt pickling or salad. This mainland China native is popular preserved in salt and fried with pork.
‘Gai-Choi’ This is a popular Chinese mustard green that is easy and quick growing and tasty raw or cooked. The mild flavor is appreciated in soups, stir-fried or pickled. A specialty of Northern China, the root is boiled, peeled, sliced and served with soy sauce and sesame oil.
‘Hatakena’ A popular Japan mustard leaf that is bright green in color. Its leaves are hairy with slender stems or petioles. Mustard pungency increases as plant size increases. Harvest at your desired flavor. The mild pungent leaves can be used in soup, salad or stir-fry and commonly pickled in Asia. As with other mustard greens, Hatakena is a wonderful source of vitamins, fiber, calcium, iron, and other minerals.
‘Oka Hijiki’ Also known as “seaweed on land,” this variety is considered to be one of the healthiest greens eaten in Japan. Loaded with vitamins, it is usually sold in Japanese markets in very small packets. The green stick leaves are 2″ long. Oka hijiki is used in many Japanese dishes and is excellent simply steamed for a few minutes and eaten with mustard or vinegar.
As you may be able to tell from the list, I love mustard! However, locally mostly mizuna is available, and I don’t know if it’s mizuna generally or the specific cultivars grown, but I tend to find it a bit tough and often somewhat bitter. So I wanted to devote a portion of my plot to growing out some other mustards, focusing especially on ‘baby leaf’ types (the first 4) and others you can pick as young leaves for salads. I’m also fascinated by the idea of “seaweed mustard” (the catalog’s category for the last one) which I have, as far as I know, never had, and am excited to see what it is like (knocking on wood that it germinates OK).
I wanted to provide an update on my quest for a good season extender. I discovered this week (through a gardening catalog’s e-newsletter) that there is a little pre-built hoop house available on some American websites (a Google search turned up more sites carrying it). It is under $20 (how much under varies from site to site), and a search for reviews turned up some positive comments/reviews and only one rather ridiculous negative one (someone was bitchy that they needed to remove it during the day so their plants didn’t get overly hot – um, are you aware of the concept behind “season extenders”? Even greenhouses are opened sometimes!) so I decided to give it a try. Building my own hoop house here seems impractical and like it would cost at least that much anyhow since I’d need a fair amount of materials for a small amount of space. I also feel like having a hoop house that I can easily completely remove is helpful since I will be putting it in the front garden, in easy view of the multitude of pedestrians and vehicles that go by on the busy street. I’m continuing to gather information on them for when I move on to a larger garden where I will once again have enough space for sowing lettuce at random to be practical instead of rather silly. Working in the front garden, I have realized just how cold the soil is there since the sun still isn’t up very high or very long (it makes more of a difference in that garden than any other I’ve ever been in), so hopefully starting to put the hoop house out on cool nights will help things germinate faster and get a better start. I just hope nobody steals it on a cold night. Such is life in a city garden on a busy street.
By the way, the comments I read used the little hoop house for things that make more sense than the people who gave the lecture – many people used it to start out and transplant everything in spring (starting from the very earliest things, though I would imagine probably earlier in the season than the lecture-givers), but tomatoes were mentioned frequently, though perhaps just because what extender to use to transplant tomatoes early is such a common question on garden sites.
When I got home today, one of the regular/semi-regular pedestrians who follows my garden was walking by and stopped to talk with me about what’s coming up so far. I’ve often thought it would be fun to have fan type pages for gardens like there are for blogs and other websites – e.g., “People Following This Garden–” with a little box like on some blogs. I know from working out in the garden that there are at a minimum several people who live in the area and track it. There are some who track it because they know me, and others (like today’s visitor) who only know me because they started tracking it and stopped to tell me when they saw me out working in it.
One of the apartments in my building has just rented to someone who wants to garden too. I only met the other person who will be living there, who made it sound like this one is a novice gardener, but I am not positive on that. It will be interesting to have two gardeners in one building, though the back yard certainly seems big enough (for a city) to accommodate two gardeners. I have no real interest in doing much more in the back yard besides continuing to plant the beds I dug up two years ago (which still have a good amount of room for new plants, unlike the front garden), taking my tender plants back outside, and putting pots of vegetables in it. Hopefully that will leave enough room for the other person to do whatever they want. Hopefully they are strong enough that they will not mind the back-breaking work involved in attempting to dig anything in the back yard – you cannot believe how big and thick and strong and close to the surface tree roots can be – and/or are flexible about growing things in pots. Well, we’ll see either way. And whatever happens, at least it means that if I move out and they are still here, hopefully there will be someone interested in continuing to care for the garden instead of it becoming abandoned like several other yards in the neighborhood that were gardens various numbers of years ago (I judge how many only by how far gone they seem to be, which may be inaccurate) but are now a mix of the hardiest garden survivors, weeds, and saplings of trees or shrubs.
Seedlings and flowers and books 24 March 2009
I didn’t count it all up yesterday: The ground cherries have finally sprouted, as I said; so far one ‘Horning’s Farm’ has sprouted, and several ‘Cossack Pineapple.’ The alpine strawberries, ‘Red Wonder’ and ‘Yellow Wonder,’ have also finally sprouted, with ‘Yellow Wonder’ having higher germination so far. (Unfortunately I didn’t read about cold stratification improving alpine strawberry germination until after I’d already sowed them.) By now, every chile/sweet pepper finally has at least one sprout as well. There are still no sprouts of either type of tomatillo ‘Purple,’ though, nor of the three okra cultivars that hadn’t sprouted yet last time I mentioned them. It is still frigid and windy out, so not surprisingly, I haven’t seen any new sprouts in the garden. The kohlrabi are starting to develop true leaves finally, and I think it’s time to thin them. I wouldn’t have even thought of eating them if I hadn’t read recently in a catalog that they are now being offered in some so-called “microgreen” mixes. (I’m still not completely clear on how “microgreens” are all that different than sprouts, but who can tell with fancy restaurant trends.) But now that I’ve got the idea, I think I will use them to top a salad, or maybe as greens in a sandwich or a garnish for a noodle dish.
Yesterday and today were/are ‘flower days’ in bidynamic gardening parlance – the best days for sowing flowers (especially) and also doing other flower-related activities – so today I am planning to sow the flowers that need to be started the earliest indoors. There are a few that I actually should’ve already started, but hadn’t sorted the flower seeds thoroughly enough to remember. So hopefuly starting late will be OK. Those are the two mixes of bloodflower/scarlet milkweed/whatever you want to call it – the main tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, which has naturalized in much of the Southern US. (More information on it here.) My nursery does sometimes carry them, but man, is it expensive here, so I figured that it would be cheaper to try growing it myself, plus I’d get more variety (as my nursery typically only sells one variety of it, and not many plants at that). So I have two mixes, a straight-up mix from Monticello and a named cultivar mix (‘Silky’) from Select Seeds. I also should have already started the petunias and salpiglossis I got from Turtle Tree. Also on my seed-starting agenda: Rudbeckias (several species & cultivars from various sources – some annual, some short-lived perennials), snapdragons (1 mix from Turtle Tree), 1 mix of perennial pinks as mine have started to decline as pinks unfortunately do, cleome (1 standard garden mix from Select Seeds and a species I haven’t grown before from Victory Seeds, the one that Lewis and Clark found according to their description), 2 annual phlox mixes, 1 didascus (annual), 2 Tithonias (the common “Torch” and 1 that appears to be the straight species), 1 echinacea ‘White Swan,’ and 1 mix of annual daisies. I picked up a packet of ‘White Swan’ because I noticed as I was cleaning up the front garden that the birds had nearly picked the white echinacea seedheads clean (it’s the one that was just labelled “white echinacea” at a plant sale two years ago and so I don’t know more about it than that) while leaving a decent portion of the seeds of the standard purple echinacea, so I thought I’d try to grow out more of the white ones, and starting them early inside is supposed to make them more likely to bloom their first year. I’m also hoping to start some stuff inside that hasn’t produced the greatest germination results outdoors (perhaps due to squirrel & bird eating), in particular sunflowers and Four O’Clocks (that’s also why I’m starting the Tithonias inside), but they grow so fast I’m going to wait till closer to last frost to do that. (That should also help with space because some of the hardier stuff should have been moved outside by then.) The okra are growing so fast in my warm and bright kitchen that I think I started them too early, so I don’t want to repeat my mistake. Usually I set up a seed-starting station on the porch, but the porch is open to the air and recent weeks have taught me that on a cold, windy day such as this, I’m likely to freeze as the wind whips the top layer of soilless mix off the trays and tips over the little pots. Consequently, this time I think I’ll spread some old newspaper out on the floor and just do it inside.
My package of books containing my replacement copy of Four-Season Harvest came this morning, which makes me happy. That book does indeed have information on hoop houses (he calls them “high tunnels,” the most common alternate name for them), which I hadn’t even remembered – probably because the shape of my old garden made fitting a hoop house impractical – so I am looking forward to reading his take on them. In the same box I also got a replacement copy of my favorite rose culture book, Growing Roses Organically (inexplicably renamed in the paperback version to the much more generic Growing Beautiful Roses), as well as copies of The Mother Earth News Handbook of Homemade Power and a book I read about on a website by a homesteading woman, called Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer by Jeanne Tetrault-Sherry Thomas. The former was priced at $1.95 in its mass-market paperback state back in 1974, and the latter larger book was priced at $6.95 in 1976. I wonder if they had any idea back then that their books would sell for triple the original price as used copies over thirty years later. The worn edges to the cover of the former, and the coffee stain faintly visible at the top of the cover of the latter, speak to their well-used status in their old homes.
Hoop houses, tomato seedlings, and root vegetables 12 March 2009
There were two talks at last night’s garden club meeting. The first was on hoop houses. I mentioned that one here yesterday as I was excited to hear more about them, and hoped the speaker would be good.
I felt like they (a couple) did a very good job of explaining how to construct a hoop house, but I was surprised by a couple of things. Firstly, what they grow in the hoop houses doesn’t really make any sense to me. They grow things like kale and other greens (kale was the one they mentioned by name) and garden peas. In my experience, those kinds of things are pretty tough by springtime in my climate – I’ve had kale, some other greens, and some cultivars of garden peas all quite literally growing through snow in past years – and I’m not sure why someone would expend the effort to build a special growing space only to grow things that would likely be OK outside, especially since they said they don’t start using it till around this time (they said that if they hadn’t reconstituted it last week to take pictures for the talk, they likely would do it within the next couple weeks). The other thing, which I only retrospectively found frustrating, was how much they downplayed the problems that can occur with hoop houses. I recently got something in the mail offering me a free issue of Countryside Journal, and, intrigued, I filled it out and mailed it back. The free issue happens to have an article on hoop houses and cold frames. I hadn’t read it before the talk, because I wanted to hear the talk first to better understand the short article. This morning I read the article and I realized all these potential problems that the talk had completely glossed over. The author talks about how much hotter it gets inside a hoop house than the ambient air temperature, and how by the time it warms up a bit in spring you have to regularly take the time to open the hoop house and then re-close it. He talks a lot about wind (I’m guessing from the article that he lives in a fairly windy area); when someone asked about wind problems at the lecture, they said that they didn’t have any but added that their back yard is very sheltered so they wouldn’t. The third major problem mentioned in the article – and to me, the most glaring omission in the talk – is that hoop houses are apparently extremely prone to damping off, particularly after a lengthy bout of rain. The talk made the moisture-holding sound like a good thing (you don’t have to water as often, they said, because the hoop house will literally collect water that drips down onto the ground) but it makes sense to me that it wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing.
However, all that having been said, the set-up in the talk made more sense to me than the one in the article. It took me a couple reads of that portion of the article to figure out his set-up because he was using the term “PVC pipe” to mean a different kind of constructing material than the speakers had. The speakers used PVC plumbing pipe attached to the wood frame to hold the PVC flexible non-plumbing pipe/piping (I’m not sure what it’s called; the article calls it “PVC pipe”) sturdily, which I do feel would likely help lessen wind problems vs. the article’s suggestion to just put the piping directly into the ground. But, yes, this is the biggest problem to me with both of these – PVC is not an environmentally friendly material; it releases bad stuff when it’s being made and when it’s being eliminated, and there are some questions as to whether it also might leach. I know that green builders try to avoid PVC plumbing in homes, so I’m not particularly comfortable adding it to my garden, most especially around food crops! I tried googling for “hoop house without PVC” but I just got a bunch of PVC hoop house plans that happened to have the word “without” on the page. Then I tried “hoop house -PVC” but that didn’t work either, as my top hits were pre-made hoop houses for sale and articles that talked generally about hoop houses without talking about anything specific about how to actually build one. I’ll keep looking. I did also find a couple recommendations for a book from the magazine Growing for Market called The Hoophouse Handbook. Here is the page selling it. When slim books (60 pages in this case) cost a decent amount of money for their size ($12), I try to balance how much it costs with how unusual the information is to find in print. I haven’t made up my mind yet on whether to purchase it, but it does seem to be the only widely available English-language book with hoop house in the title. If you know of another book that covers hoop houses extensively, please let me know. The speakers adapted their own hoop house from a plan in Jeff Ball’s 60-Minute Vegetable Garden, but they already printed out the plan for us, and I wouldn’t want to invest in an unrecommended general gardening book without flipping through it first.
One more thing about hoop houses: The opaque plastic generally used to cover them helps even out the light, according to the speakers, so that the full hoop house gets the same amount of light the whole time it’s covered – the same principle behind most modern greenhouses. I’ve read season-extending-book reviews that are critical of authors for not addressing cloud cover issues that plague some areas in colder months, but I feel that betrays somewhat of a lack of understanding of how things like hoop houses and modern greenhouses work. The reason they’re opaque and domed is for precisely the reason the speakers said – that way, every area gets the same amount of light the entire time they’re closed.
The other talk was on tomatoes, given by the person who supplies the local nursery’s heirloom tomato seedlings. I thought that talk was very interesting, and a sharp reminder that sometimes my reading so many blogs, magazines, etc. from other regions and countries really screws with my internal timeline. She mentioned in the talk that when she first started selling the seedlings to the nursery, she would start them inside at the start of April, but that in recent years, as the climate has been changing more rapidly, she’s started them a little earlier. It had been some years since I’d started tomatoes indoors and my own internal clock was completely off about it, with me feeling bad that I hadn’t started them earlier when in reality when I did do it (this week) is probably the very earliest I should have done it. She added that it should be a far waning moon fairly soon (it was full yesterday) and that she had heard that that’s a good time to start tomatoes, so she was considering doing it then this year. Another tip to pass on is that she uses an organic fish fertilizer for her tomatoes. I know the same company puts out an all-seaweed fertilizer (since I try not to use animal products) so I think I will try that on them this year. Lastly, someone asked her if she knew what the oldest heirloom is, and she said that she wasn’t sure but perhaps it was one of the Mexican varieties, since tomatoes originated in the region. She said that when she went to Mexico, she saw a Diego Rivera mural about the history of Mexico that had tomato ‘Zapotec’ right there on the mural. I thought that was great!
I potted up the multiplier onions yesterday, ‘I’itoi’s Onion.’ Here is Native Seeds/SEARCH’s (brief) page on them. I don’t know if they are hardy here or not. It did remind me that I had meant to order potato onions and forgot. Unfortunately Fedco Co-Op’s Moose Tubers had already sold out of them (not surprising, as they said they had a limited stock this year), but I did order shallots (because I love them and, quite disappointingly, the farmers’ market didn’t have any this year after having them for weeks the previous year) and, in the continuing tradition of trying to plant more than I really should, the one sunchoke they still had in stock. I was lucky to order when I did as Moose Tubers’ ordering season ends tomorrow. This morning I came up with the possibly brilliant, possibly stupid idea to plant some of the seeds for the radishes and carrots in pots and some in the ground and do a trial seeing how they do. I wouldn’t be able to do that with longer carrots or with the other root crops I have – parsnips, salsify, nor scorzonera, and probably not the turnips nor skirret either – because the soil is so rocky here in this garden that I just can’t guarantee they wouldn’t hit one. Even with smaller root crops, it is a gamble to believe that they won’t. But radishes germinate so fast and so easily that it is a gamble I am willing to take. (I once heard a story about 100% germination in radish seed that was some absurd age like ten years old.) The talk last night with the implication that kale and garden peas need heaps of coddling also made me want to race out in the morning and sow them with abandon just to prove their wrongness, but I don’t know as I’ll actually do that. Back in ‘fruit days’ there was snow on the ground so that I couldn’t sow the peas (considered a fruit in biodynamics). Now it’s ‘root days,’ but biodynamics does allow some flexibility in that if you can’t sow on the right day, you can work the soil around the seedlings on the right day and that should help give them an extra boost.
The two kohlrabi seedlings on Death Watch are still fuzzy with mold, but I’m giving them the full 24 hours to see if they can recover. The grow light is back on now that I’m up, and I’m still hoping the heat from it will help burn off the mold. We shall see soon enough.
[ Note: I am feeling frustrated at how WordPress keeps saving my posts as drafts instead of actually publishing them when I hit ‘Publish.’ It just happened again with this post. Luckily by now I’ve learned to paste the post into a file in case it happens, as oftentimes (like this time) the draft will be an incomplete version of the post. I suppose I should write to the staff, since this problem has just been occuring in the past few weeks. ]
A Bee in the City 
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