New Starters

Started more crops two days ago. I used an egg carton that we had around, poking holes in the bottom and using the lid as a water catcher. Twelve cells in all I planted: snapdragons (2), basil, R.G. double cosmos rose bon bon, nigella blue love in a mist, morning glory, arugula, lucullus chard, forellenschluss, bright lights swiss chard, aji amarillo pepper, and a yellow pear tomato.

I also planted twelve pots that are about 2 x 2 x 4. I planted four of the spitfire nastys (experimenting with clipping part of the seed in two (I will go in further detail about this later for the GROW project), four more chard, 2 more snaps, 1 cilantro, and one violet wave kale.

This brings me up to 50 cells/pots/containers of plants. All strategically located on the window sill.

Fence

I built a fence yesterday out of bamboo sticks and garden netting. It is a little difficult to see from this photo, but the netting is there. Time will tell if it holds up against the dogs. But, for the time being, it was a quick and cheap way to keep them out of the onion and garlic patch.

The squash plant is loving life in the sunny corner, growing huge leaves and budding. The lettuce and chard are doing well, too.

Even some of the basil is starting to come back (a la 2nd edition). No sign of the onions yet, but it is too early.

Onions

Started two different kinds of onions yesterday, six cells. I hope they sprout... I read somewhere that onion seeds only last one year before the germination rate goes way down. I think one of the kinds of onions are valencia from Abbo and the other came from the seed pods harvested from our garden.

February Goals and Other Topics

I believe I successfully signed up for a garden blogger's project set up by Mr Brown Thumb (check out my blogroll if you want to read his blog). If I did, Renee's Garden will be sending me a packet of Spitfire Nasturtiums. I'm not quite sure if I signed up in time (they only take 50 and there may be a million garden bloggers), but it will be really cool if I get a packet of seeds in the mail some day soon.

To participate in this project, I will be blogging on the first Sunday of each month about the nasturtiums. It sounds like a great idea: have garden blogger's around the country share their experiences with the same seed. Education is a great thing.


I have some good news and some bad news about my starters. The good news is that the chard and lettuce are looking good. The first true leaves of the chard are coming in and you can see the growth with each passing day. The bad news is about the basil. I torched them. Trying to create a miniature greenhouse, they got too hot, shriveled up, and died. :( So sad. Oh well, I planted them again and they should start to come up in a couple of days.

I started thinking about planting an obnoxious (my sister's favorite word) amount of starters, so much more than I could ever use myself and giving them to friends. Kind of on the lines of Johnny Appleseed, I could have plants all over Boulder. I wish I could knock on everyone's door and ask them if I could dig up part of their yard and plant a few things. Who wouldn't want fresh produce in their yard that they could enjoy??? They world would be a better place if...

I read somewhere that 90% of the energy used to cultivate crops goes towards transportation and packaging. Only 10% goes to actually growing the crops. Think about that the next time you go to the store and buy something wrapped in plastic. Even Whole Foods will shrink wrap a couple ears of (local) corn because they have found that it sells better that way. Instead of having a marketing team figure out how to sell more produce, why doesn't Whole Foods spend that energy (money) elsewhere, perhaps trying to educate people NOT to buy food wrapped in plastic?

Anyways, its almost February. Some goals that I have for this month:
-build a fence around the garden so that the eight dogs who call my front yard their home do not completely destroy the onion and garlic crop
-start more plants inside
-figure out how to utilize the cold frame better (though the chocolate mint and strawberries are loving it right now)
-gain employment, perhaps on a local farm
-read and learn more about horticulture and sustainable agriculture
-spend the month of February eating everything in the cabinets. Julia completely organized our cabinets (labels and all) and we have challenged ourselves to eat what we already have.

Random Pictures

A funny picture and possible future cover to 'J & J Burrito Safari' as well as latest lettuce harvest that complimented our salad.

Kind of Cheated

Yesterday, Julia and I went to The Flower Bin in Longmont to use our $2 worth of Sunny Money! We ended up buying two small herb plants: French Tarragon and Tomillo Thyme.

Therefore, in addition to those two plants, we have about six basils growing, as well as seven kinds of lettuce, two kinds of chard, and one mystery sprout that is probably a squash.

We plan to go back to The Flower Bin come late February/early March to buy crowns of asparagus. I was looking up prices for crowns and they are expensive. I don't think we will save money on this crop this year. But, hopefully we can have a bed of asparagus for a few years.

Genovese Basil

The basil started coming up today. It only took 6 days (and not 8-10 days). The lettuce and chard are already starting to sprout as well.

Julia hung up her photos today at Alfafa's Whole Foods. There is a grand opening next Friday 6-8pm. Free cupcakes.

Planted

Yesterday (01/12/10) I planted another six pack of various seeds.

Three lettuce varieties: Hyper Red Rumple, Merlot, and Arugula

Then some chard: one lucullus and two Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Probably still a little early but I couldn't help myself. I read that you can transplant the chard when the lows average at a minimum 28-32 degrees. Based on the averages for Boulder, that won't happen until the first or second week in March. But, thats why I have a cold frame. Plus, chard is very cold resistant and if there was a colder night, they could be saved with some cover. I could even play around with some of the spare windows I collected and create something similar to that in the photo. That way, if it did snow again, which it will probably do a lot of in March, at least the crops will be safe. The windows will create a greenhouse effect as well and warm the soil slightly.

Genovese basil

I planted five small planting pots of Genovese basil this morning. Hopefully, I will see them sprouting up in 8-10 days. I plan on transplanting all of the successful pots into a larger pot to live in the sunny corner indoors. We still have a large jar of dried basil that Rich gave us back in the fall. By the time we use that all up, hopefully we will have fresh basil to eat.

Sprout Salad #1

Did a little thinning to the lettuce last night as a highlight to our salad.