Lessons Learned....from Tomatoes

My tomato seedlings were getting huge so I decided it was time to transplant them into bigger containers.

The first question: Where to set up to do it?
Now you know we live in a very small house. The basement is totally taken up with workshop for our Irish bagpipe making business. The half-story upstairs is taken up with my portion of our business plus my seedling setup. That leaves two small bedrooms which are full, the kitchen (not a good idea), the living room (also not a good idea) and THE BATHROOM which is complete with water available. Eureka! So that's where I did my transplanting.

Two photos crudely spliced to give you the idea of what lengths I will go to to get my transplanting done...


So I worked for a good 5 hours on my knees transplanting tomato seedlings into hand rolled newspaper pots the size of a coca cola can. The pots worked well. My knees nearly died.

LESSON LEARNED: Don't try to transplant unless you have a good, comfortable place to do it in that won't disrupt your entire household. LOL But it worked and they are hale and hearty in their new bigger pots.


I only did half of the tray. The smaller typed of tomato didn't have enough root built yet. And my knees couldn't take any more.

So Much Has Happened....

I think I told you all that I was going to give the idea of Square Foot Gardening a try for my new veggie garden. Of course I won't hold exactly true to it because I always have to add my own touch to things. LOL But it will be the basis for my bed.

I finally decided on the edging around the raised beds that I will use. The bed boxes are supposed to be 4'x4'x8" with no floor. Just sitting down on the ground. Space the beds (as many as you want) so there's enough room to mow the grass in between or walk easily without having to do a balancing act to not fall into one of them. The idea is that you can move around the bed and keep it maintained without having to step into it. The square foot part comes in by putting up suspended dividers that will divide the box into 16 foot square sections. You plant one thing (or several if they're small) in each section. I will put down a sheet of weed block cloth under the soil. I can't trust that the grass will not come up through even 6" of soil.

Fill the beds with the perfect soil combination and DON'T till it in. Just build the retainer sides for the box, fill it and start planting. Doesn't that sound fantastic? The recommended perfect soil is 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 peat moss which sounds fantastic. I will use something similar but I also have to use up about 15 bags of garden soil that I bought last fall and didn't use.

So, back to the edging... I considered the following:
**railroad ties---too heavy and may have contaminates
**treated 2x8x10' boards---expensive per foot
**untreated 2x8x10' boards---still too expensive per foot
**cement block with 2 big holes 8x8x16 --- $1.41 per block...getting more reasonable per foot
**landscape timbers---8'x4"x 6" with two rounded sides. Pretty, stackable, I used them as fence around the front beds but would need at least two layers so still pricey
**solid cement block 4"x8"x12" --- They were miss marked at the store so I got them for $.63 each.

I settled on the latter. Too good a price to resist. They will be delivered by Home Depot tomorrow. Now all I have to do is buy the soil.

CONCLUSION: These veggies will be the most expensive we've ever eaten, but I'm having a wonderful time. Next year will be more cost effective.

Also went to the nursery and bought a small Acer griseum, Paperbark Maple, one of my favorites. Hmmmmmm. I may be repeating myself from last post. Sorry.

Here's a picture of my tomato and pepper seedlings from today.


They are nearly 7" tall and have as many as four true leaves.


Tomorrow I'll start transplanting them into 2 1/2" newspaper pots. That's another story that I'll tell after I've gotten them transplanted.

I also started a whole new tray of seeds, squash, cucumber, basil, more tomatoes, oregano, thyme and parsley.

The long planter with the chives, lettuce and cilantro is now to the stage where I can carry it outside in the daylight but I'm still bringing it inside at night because dips too close to low 30's at night still.

Well, that's enough of the gardening escapades of Coneflower for tonight. Talk to you all again soon.

One more thing. Today I finally planted bulbs for my tiny early iris. I'm only 5 months late. It will be interesting to see what they do. Keeping fingers crossed.

A Wonderful Day

We had 65 degrees and sunshine all day here in NE Ohio! I went to a garden/home store and bought 4 genuine plastic chairs and two genuine plastic tables and we had a picnic on our deck for dinner tonight!

I also finished my little rustic fence around the front flower beds.


And now sitting just inside the litte fence is our new "Welcome" greeter dog.

It looks so much like our little Geordie who crossed the Rainbow Bridge last September that I knew it was the perfect addition to our front garden.

There are zillions of tulips that I planted last fall screeching up out of the soil. I must have checked them 20 times today. Last time, I had to jump aside so the growing tulip wouldn't knock me over. LOL.

I planted poppy and purple coneflower seeds in a strip along the south side of our house (on the right in the picture). I've never grown either from seed but I decided to try it. I'm simply desperate to be planting growy things. No stores have any perennials for sale yet. I'd be happy with the dry stumps from last year but stores won't sell them until they're up and blooming. Trouble with moving to a new place... you don't know anyone to bum plants from.

I do have a bunch of Bearded or German Iris in the ground that my cousin gave me last fall and most of them have survived showing new little green tips. I'm also going to toss some zinnia seeds that the same cousin gave me in with the poppies and coneflowers.

Another friend last fall gave me Corydalis lutea and a Halcyon Hosta and a very interesting sounding grass called Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea 'Skyracer'. You can check them out on Google. There are some good pictures there. I now have all of them planted as well. So I have LOTS more things to watch growing.

With my seedlings, tulips, daffodils, flower bed mish-mash, and dormant hosta, ornamental grass and Corydalis, I have LOTS of watching to do. I am a happy camper!!!

Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal (residents) and Seedling Updates.

We have a pair or two of cardinals who stick around pretty close. I've seen two males squaring off at each other on our front deck and a couple females are close by.





My seedlings are storming ahead in their growth. I've had to add a grow light. The lettuce looks like groundcover and the chives are hale and hearty.




And I have a forest of TOMATO PLANTS!!!

Lettuce!!!!

In the last post I showed you my daffodils starting to come up in the front yard. That was a couple days ago.

Yesterday, only 4 days after being planted, here is my long box planter, cilantro on the left, lettuce in the middle, chives on the right.


And TODAY, 5 days after planting, here is what I found:

One cilantro is showing, and two chives are showing but look at the lettuce!


This is such a miracle! I LOVE watching seeds sprout and grow! Yippee!!!

How many of you have heard of "Square Foot Gardening"?


It's a really cool plan to make gardening in general much easier. The author has a website which explains most of his theory. I'm going to try it in my backyard veggie garden for sure and maybe other places too. TBC....

Gardening Indoors

Look at this....two posts in two days.

I posted the whole attic thing to explain why my sanctuary, workshop, quiet place, INDOOR GREENHOUSE is in such disarray.


Not much of a sanctuary and certainly not very inviting, but it WILL get better and very soon....or else!

If you look closely at the far end of the room you can just barely see my indoor greenhouse. Here's a closer look:


And most exciting of all, while I was acting as gopher for DD who was in the attic doing that attic thing, I planted a long planter and a seed starter "system"!!! Hooray! It's starting.



The long planter has cilantro on the left, lettuces in the middle, and chives on the right. I plan to keep them there and not transplant outside.

In the seed starter tray are 12 each of five different types of tomatoes. First is one set of 12 of Sweet Banana Peppers, then a set of 12 of Tomato Sweetie Cherry, then Tomato Chocolate Cherry, next Tomato Pineapple, a set of 12 of Tomato Brandywine , and finally a set of 12 Tomato Cherokee Purple.


I know, I know.... I'm going to have tomato plants coming out my ears. I've never started plants from seed before so all this is very exciting for me. I'll be watching every day for a hint of green.

Speaking of green. Look what I found today in one of my front gardens.


Now THAT'S exciting!! It's tulips, I think. HOORAY!!!

Story Before the Story...

Sorry it's taken me so long to write again. Much has been happening, snow, rain, sun, drear, wind, calm. All the usual for Ohio late winter. We've had a few days with highs in the 50's believe it or not and days with highs in the teens. All very normal.

As often happens when I'm delayed in my writing, I have to tell a second story before I can write my primary one.

When we bought this house, we suspected that there wasn't much insulation in the ceilings and attic. So we purchased several rolls of "the pink stuff" and DD crawled into the two side attics that run along both sides of the one large room that comprises the upstairs....my workroom/shop area. He layed the insulation on the floor of these two attics. Then he wondered about the ceiling over the middle third of the room which is the only accessible part of the second floor. So to find out, he had to cut an access hole in the ceiling.

DD has a real knack for decorating. LOL

Once we could see into the upper attic we knew what had to be done first. The house needed a silvered reflective lining next to the ceiling joists. This would help keep the upper floor cooler for me to work in next summer (yes, it is coming) especially since I don't like hot heat very much. Most of the radiant heat will be reflected back out and not come into the attic at all....supposedly.

Very tight quarters. DD handled all this. It's too much for poor little me.... The strips of the liner (two layers of aluminum foil with bubble wrap in between) had to be stuffed down between the rafters.


Then at a different location, strips had to be attached to the joists themselves (leaving air flow gaps)



Finally when we got to the part of the attic that looks like an attic (through the new access hole) huge 4' by whatever pieces got stapled again to the joists.


My hero.....


All this to explain why my usually pristine, neat, orderly, very organized work space now looks like this:


GAAAAAACKKKKK!