Waiting for Spring

Rain, snow, ice, sun, snow, sun, rain, sun. This is a day in the life of an Ohio resident. My yard has been completely water-logged, then dry, then frozen all in one week. I planted one hundred and fifty peas a couple weeks ago when the ground was perfect and the temps were mild. I am glad the peas knew better than me and did not germinate. Three days after I planted them they were under two inches of snow. I heard the spring peepers, so that is my excuse. =) 

So while spring and winter fight it out, we are moving forward with the garden preps. Below is an update on the plants we started indoors a few weeks ago.

The top row is mostly tomatoes. They are doing well. We are still having some germinate, but even if no more came up, our germination rate would be good. 

Here is a close up of some tomatoes. I really like these smaller bins. It makes moving and rearranging the plants so much easier.

I recently had to raise the lights up. These tomatoes are growing fast. Smells like summer every time I touch one.  

This is an experiment. I collected hundreds of Allium seeds at the end of last summer. I broadcast seeded these two bins with the collected seeds, a mix of leeks, red onion and green onion. I also had a bunch of Brassica seeds in the bottom of a bag and decided to throw them in as well. 

I am not sure what is growing, could be broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage. The plan is to pull them out soon and transplant them into peat pots to plant in the garden as soon as possible. The soil is very sandy, the mix is 1/3 compost 1/3 sand 1/3 peat moss. Once the Brassica's are out I will let the onions grow to "set" size and transplant them into the garden.

Here are some cabbages. As soon as these go in the ground I plan on planting more from seed directly in the garden. We eat a lot of cabbage so, in my opinion, you can't grow enough.

This bin is full of odds and ends. There is Walking stick kale, tobacco for pesticide, cabbages, broccoli, salt bush and some volunteer Curcubit that didn't germinate last year but did this year. These soil cubes are left over from last year.  

This bin has various flowers like cosmos and zinnia. You can tell these are left over soil cubes from last year due to the moss growing on them. 

The full set-up. I am so excited to get back in the garden. Every year we have done a better job and learned many new things. We will have garlic this year and we can harvest our three year old asparagus patch. Can't wait!

Odds and Ends

It's that time of year again! I don't know what is is but I have always loved growing plants indoors. When I was a kid I used to grow flowers from seeds in flats in my bedroom window. I have stepped up my operation since then.

Here are the first brassica's that came up. We have broccoli, cauliflower, walking stick kale, cabbages and brussel sprouts going indoors. 

Here is the first tomato that popped up. They are doing great now I will post pics of the growth soon.

Here is the insulated dog house I am building in the garage. I will have a full post on the construction and design when I finish it. 

Dara was prepping and planting some raised beds on Sunday. She found these giant carrots still going strong. One of them had a soft top and I am sure both were very woody at this point. They went into the compost, but I think if we plant some carrots in the early fall and mulch the bed really good we could pull carrots out through the snow all winter long. 

I started an entrepreneurial experiment recently. I planted 40 Jerusalem Artichokes and 20 Russian Comfrey starts in one quart containers. We plan on making a sign saying something about "Edible Perennial Plants for sale" and trying to sell these from the property on the weekends. We will see where this goes.