Gardening Bug

My gardening bug has me again.  This season is a new zone for me, and a new (quite a bit smaller) garden in containers. I've been researching and learning a lot of things from scratch. I'm going from a supposed 5B (I always planted sooner than recommended) to 7A.  The last frost dates, however, indicate a later last frost date here in Alexandria than in St. Louis. Besides those differences, everything is in containers, and has its own microclimate being that I'm 9 stories up, and actually tucked away from much, if any, wind.

My lettuce, spinach, and green onions have all overwintered well on the balcony.  I frequently run out for a few clippings of spinach and scallions to add to my morning omelet.  I gave most of the lettuce a good trim a week or so ago to clean out the burnt leaves, but all of the plants seem to be putting out plenty of growth.

My Aerogarden is in full swing again. It's about time to harvest some lettuce! I am growing three kinds of lettuce, two basil plants, and a strawberry plant in my Aerogarden right now. I found an excellent Thai recipe for Red Coconut Curry, and it uses a lot of basil. I have never had much of a use for the basil I've grown, but the $2.49 I've been spending on a small container for this recipe meant that basil was a priority for the Aerogarden planting!

Here is a lone lettuce seedling I pulled from the Aerogarden when I bought some strawberry plants, and decided to try one out.  I couldn't bear to just trash this, so I'll eventually transplant it outside.

Planted so far, I've got radish, spinach, lettuce, and snow peas. I also grabbed a few strawberry plants from Home Depot this weekend, and I'm trying my hand at some wintersowing.  I decided that since my apartment doesn't really allow for the room to have my full light set up (nor plant many tomatoes/peppers), I'd go this route with a few varieties.  I ordered a few plants from Henry Fields, (and will have to share some of those even!) but decided back up plants never hurt.  I threw in some jalapeño, Green Zebra tomatoes, marigolds, Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, and some saved Cherokee Purple seeds that came from a tomato I got from seed given to me by Jeff at Our Engineered Garden.   All of those seeds went into a divided gallon milk jug and a water bottle, and now they're just waiting.  We'll see how they do! I like the idea of not really having to harden the seedlings off when the time comes.

Well, this post has gotten wordier than planned, so that's all for now. 

Mail

Got an exciting package in the mail that had me squealing before the door was shut.

Many thanks to Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions and her seed sharing for this delight! I'll be having some sweet gardening dreams tonight!

Garden Planning

I've had a lot of time to do some garden dreaming this past week. When I sub in a high school, and am given plans that say, "Show this movie, and collect corresponding worksheet at the end of the hour", I get a lot of time to plan. I brought my seeds with me, and made a rough inventory of what I've got, and did some organization.

Here is my original sketch and dreaming sheet:

I was able to start some seeds on Friday, things I planted were:

Spinach

Vivian Lettuce

Little Caesar Lettuce

Valeria Lettuce

Buttercrunch Lettuce

Romaine Lettuce

Basil

Marigolds

Chives

Cilantro

Petunias

Impatiens

Jalapenos

California Wonder Bells

Carnival Mix Bells

So far, I've already got some lettuce seedlings that have germinated.

I spent the weekend in Oxford, Mississippi to see a band play with some friends. We had a nice road trip from 50 degrees to 72 degree weather. I thoroughly enjoyed the break. We were able to do some site seeing on Sunday, which included a trip to William Faulkner's Homestead. We weren't able to take the tour inside, but we led ourselves on a tour of the grounds, and it was a lot of fun for my imagination. The weather made me REALLY want to garden!

Here is my pencil and paper sketch for the 2011 garden year. I included several stages, because I am going to try to use the garden area well this year, so I've included plants that will be planted together, but will later be removed when their seasons are over, or when they will overcrowd the next plants coming in.

Seedling Saturday

I have a seedling Saturday this week. Not completely by design, but here goes.

I've got the stuff that I planted in the Aerogarden 16 days ago. I'm still loving how much growth I get to enjoy with this thing.

I've got true leaves on my basil plant. Pesto here I come!

My lettuce seedlings are sizing up nicely.

And here she is. The Pineapple tomato seed that I stuck in the Aerogarden 24 hours after the seed saving fiasco. I had NO intentions of having a tomato seedling on January 15, while snow is on the ground., but here she is. I'm going to have to figure out a way to keep her alive between now and MAY. At least all of my seed saving wasn't for naught.

I had several days without a sub job this week (snow day, and then a day without a phone call...) I've been spending my time working on some crochet projects for an etsy that I started last week. If anyone feels like checking it out, and giving me some pointers, I'd greatly appreciate it! I still need to get pictures of the hats on actual people, but for now this is what I'm working with.

Garden in January

Here's the typical shot I take of the garden. This one will be fun to look at later on. We've got fresh snow on top of the leaves on top of the garden.

Here's an updated picture of what my tomato seeds look like after they've dried. I did stick ONE seed into my Aerogarden so that they won't be a total loss (and that was after they dried for 24 hours) and I can definitely see the radicle sticking out now.

Here is an update on my lettuce and basil seedlings that have emerged on my Aerogarden! It's fun to see how fast these grow, I planted them 12 days ago.

HELP!

So I tried to save my own tomato seeds from my Pineapple tomatoes this year, and one that ripened inside. I went with the fermenting method, but I had a bit of an issue. The tomato that was ripening was starting to mold, but we were leaving for PA to visit family for Christmas, and I wasn't going to be home, so I decided to put them in the refrigerator in a tupperware in water until I got back. This past week I left them sit on the counter until they got "cloudy". I went to dry them, and noticed the seeds looked sort of funny. Have they GERMINATED!? If they have, I'm in trouble, because this is a MONTH AND A HALF too soon! I couldn't possibly part with 100 some tomato seeds from my own garden! The little green guy at the bottom is my little lettuce seedling that I started, but is over a half an inch tall, the picture is old... Any help would be appreciated! I don't want to end up drying these out only to KILL them!

Ripening tomatoes

My tomatoes are working on ripening up! I had to pull a bunch of peppers the other night too, but I didn't take a picture of them, and a lot of them are looking black. I had a LOT of tomatoes to bring upstairs last night. Many of them are only ripening on parts of the tomato which is kind of annoying. I figure I'll just cut off the ripened parts and use them. A lot of my yellow tomatoes were ready yesterday, so those are fun to see again! My garden has officially had a freeze night so the pepper plants out there are the saddest, deadest thing around. Go figure that the high's this week in St. Louis are in the mid to upper-70's. That's just St. Louis weather though.I got my first seed catalog of the year, only to find out they sent me last years catalog. I'll have to request another one in a couple months and hopefully get the 2011 catalog. It won't be long before I'm pulling out the graph paper and dreaming. My grandma gave me her Aerogarden that I helped her set up. She didn't want to deal with it again, but I found out that she let the motor on the pump burn out... so I'll be hoping for a new one of those soon, so that I can grow somethings indoors and feel like I have a little garden.

I'm still kind of dragging with updating this blog, but I'm trying to get better! I'll be needing to do a saving seed post as soon as I get to try that. Some of the Pineapple tomatoes are showing signs of ripening...

I've also been baking a lot of bread recently, thanks to a very appetizing post by Thomas at A Growing Tradition Our Daily Bread I checked out this book at our library, and added it to the amazon wish list! I definitely will be trying a lot of these recipes! The steps are so much simpler than the bread I was baking, and I am very satisfied with the results! I've gone to buying jar yeast now, which I had no idea was so much cheaper. So there will be a post about the bread soon too!