Spring Starts

Do you already have your spring starts going? The time is nigh, past nigh! I had to fight the urge to start my tomatoes and peppers in December. We planted our brassicas, tomatoes and peppers at the end of February this year.

What is that you ask? A dirt crab? A yeti fur-ball?  A comfrey root? Yes, you were right the third time. It is the Russian bocking 14 comfrey root to be precise. Symphytum x uplandicum for all the plant nerds. This cultivar is sterile, meaning it does not produce through seed. The only way to propagate this variety is through root cutting. It only takes a little bit of root to get a new plant, as many people who have tried to roto-till this plant to death have found out.

I potted up 48 comfrey starts all said and done. I will be giving most of them away to friends this year. I plan on planting about half of these around the property. I have comfrey in 5 spots around the property right now.

Here are some happy little brassica's growing in soil cubes. Here is a post I did on making soil cubes if you want to learn more.

Here are some tomato starts. We have peppers going as well. Hopefully this year we won't have the wet spring we had last year. We couldn't plant out our starts until mid May last year.

Here is the set-up this year. Looks very similar to the last three years. =) I can't wait to get out in the garden this year. We had poor garden performance last year, mostly our fault from neglect. We plan on paying more attention to the annuals this year as well as continuing to establish perennial plants that will produce with very little input. 

Get out and garden this year!

Starting seeds indoors with soil cubes

 This is the Soil Cube Tool, designed and sold by 

Clayton Jacobs. ( www.soilcube.com )  

This is a pretty simple design that is practical and

 easy to use. Basically inside the white squares are 

metal plates attached to the bolts. When you push

 down on the handle the plates compress the soil

 medium into cubes and leave a divot for seed
placement. The springs push the handle
 back to the starting position. 

These are the components of the soil medium. The ratio is:

          3 parts peat moss

       2 parts compost

          1 part garden soil

1 part sand 

  1 part perlite

           Add lime if desired

You can also add fertilizer at this point if you wish. 

I would personally use worm castings and some compost tea. 

You can tweak this mixture for making soil cubes 

but I would stick to the ratios and use medium

 similar to the products in the picture. 

I mixed everything together dry in this large "hose" bucket. 

You can get these at your local box store for $4. I then split 

the mix into three buckets so I could make sure it gets mixed 

consistently. Add just enough water to get a thick oatmeal 

consistency. Once the first 1/3 is mixed add more dry soil 

mixture and repeat. I make a lot of this once a year, saves

 time and it doesn't hurt to have extra.

 Press the tool into the mix and press it against the 

side just filling the inside of the tool with the soil mixture. 

Press down on a hard surface, hold for a second then push 

the handle through the tool and the cubes will fall out. 

It takes a bit of practice to get consistent cubes but if you

 mess up just crumble the bad cube back into the mix.

Here is a close up of the cubes when they are done. 

They hold together very well and readily absorb water. 

Here are the same cubes growing tomatos. 

We have 188 cubes started right now. We are growing

 8 types of tomatos, 7 types of peppers, eggplant,

 celery, leeks, 3 types of onions, broccoli, cauliflower, 

brussel sprouts, green cabbage, red cabbage and kohlrabi. 

Place the cubes in a tub like this, it is very 

easy to move them without handeling them. 

You can pour water in the bottom of the tub which 

the cubes will soak up and wick through the cube. 

Don't let them sit in a pool of water, 

use just enough to saturate the cubes.

This is many varieties of lettuce, spinach, cilantro and amaranth. 

They are growing in trays filled with the grow medium. 

You can grow salad greens all year round without 

them bolting or going bitter in the heat.

Here is the whole set up. The lights are full spectrum

 4 foot fluorescents hanging on chains from a stainless

 steel shelving unit. The lights are on a timer set to come

 on at 5am and go off at 9pm. I have heating pads under

 the peppers and tomatos to help them germinate. I use a 

one gallon hand pump pressure sprayer to mist the cubes 

gently so the seeds are not disturbed. 

Planting Veggie Garden

We started most of the plants indoors in February on a metal shelving system with lights
set to a timer. We were able to move all of the seedlings the first day of planting.
There are still some seeds left to sow but most of the veggie garden is in!

Here are the seedlings that were started indoors in February and March.

We made the cubes of soil with the Soil Cube Tool and it is amazing. Very simple device
but definitely worth buying. The cubes held together nicely and the plants loved it.
Very minimal root disruption when transplanting.

The garden plan... sigh... this updates about every 10 seconds

(and as you can see... I lost my pencil).

Some of our seeds... and the peanuts that have no home yet. We buy seeds from High Mowing, Seed Savers, Botanical Interests and Landreth. We buy from a few others but these are our faves. I love Landreth because they have the coolest, best designed catalog – which is the most important thing of course. Botanical did send me a sweet desk calendar, though.

Kale and Swiss Chard in one of the smaller beds

The potato box and it's companion horseradish. This will have it's very own post later.

The idea is that as the potatoes grow we will stack more frames on.

The garden guardians.

And the star of the show right now. Beautiful Cabbages. I just hope it doesn't get too hot!