Port Potager

It occurs to me that my last post was a little depressing , what with all the broken glass and hail. Things really aren't all that bad. Despite the way this winter insists on hanging around, we have a lot of new growth on our seed-starting shelf : Four whole trays of onions and leeks are getting bigger each day. They have their secondary leaves now and have been fertilized once already with some nutrient-rich aquarium water . These are brand new salad seedlings, which include arugula, spinach, lettuce and beets for greens. These germinated quickly, but will need to ride out several more weeks indoors until the cold frame soil warms up. The weather the past few days has not  been helpful in this department as lows have been in the teens. We also need to replace some glass on the cold frames to trap the heat they'll need to survive, so we're not expecting fresh salads any time soon. Our cabbage and broccoli seedlings are looking really good this y...

Back in February, I started some celery and parsley from seed . This is new for us. In the past, we've always just picked up a six-pack of each from a local nursery to transplant. They've been getting harder to find each year, though, so we decided to give it a go from seed. These two plants are notoriously difficult to start from seed, so I was very pleased when the seeds germinated well on our seed starting shelves . These were planted almost six weeks ago, and today the reminder to start hardening them off popped up on my phone. Let's see how they're doing, shall we? That's the parsley. So far each seedling has just one true leaf, in addition to the oblong cotyledon leaves . Looks good so far, but that leaf isn't even as big as my pinky fingernail yet.  Also, you need at least two, and preferably four true leaves before you start hardening these off outside in the cold and wind and (some day) blazing sun to get them ready to transplant. ...

Although it is much warmer this weekend that it has been — dare I suggest that winter has finally loosened its grip? — we weren't able to make much headway out in the garden. It just would be too much to hope for to jump right into a sunny, 60 degree stretch of days, right? We're squarely in the midst of some cold, soaking rain. Not that I'm complaining. After all, it's not snow. The rain has washed away almost all of our last bits of the white stuff, and I imagine the rest will be gone by Monday. Things are starting to thaw, and the soaking rains will definitely help bring things back to life as we ring in April. We did manage to get our week's worth of sap boiled and also opened up the cold frames to catch some of that free water falling from the sky (before closing them up again to protect delicate seedling and as-yet unsprouted seeds from the downpours we're meant to get over night and tomorrow). Still, we had to give up on our planned planting of ...

It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel...

When we sit down and do all the garden planning for the year , we are sure to label each section with not only the plants required, but also the dates that seeds are started and transplants are set out. Then I add those dates into iCal and set up alerts, so that we know what we need ahead of time for each weekend's task. This makes staying organized and on top of our seasonal rotations a snap.  This weekend had just one item on gardening our to-do list: Alas, this was not to be. The original idea was that, at the very earliest and with good luck, we could get seeds for spring greens started outdoors in a cold frame the first weekend of March. So we added it to the calendar and forgot about it. As you know, this winter has been a beast in the Northeast, and we are nowhere near ready to plant, even in cold frames: As you can see, there is still ice on the ground, both inside the cold frame and out, and there's plenty of snow in the background as well. Th...

The polar vortex is at it again this week, but we can't let that stop us from getting ready for spring planting! This year we are trying some new pants from seed: celery and parsley. In the past we have always bought transplants at a local nursery, but it's been getting hard for us to find celery. (You can get it in Methuen at Pleasant Valley Gardens  — an awesome nursery, but a little far to go for just one six-pack.) So I bought some seed to give it a go on our own this year. We've avoided it until now because celery and parsley are considered pretty difficult to start from seed. Take a look at how tiny they are, and you start to get an idea why: That's celery seed in my hand; parsley is a little bit bigger. Parsley is so picky that they recommend soaking it overnight in warm water, so I did: Since we hardly need a whole flat full of celery or parsley, I decided to start these in some seed starting pellets  instead. They are fun and easy to use,...

Behold the pitiful state of our okra seedlings: It looks like just about all of these germinated, but then all but one (maybe two...we'll see) failed to take root. This could have something to do with the extra-cool temps in our house while we were on vacation. We adjusted our thermostat way down while we were gone, and okra likes it hot. But I'm thinking a more likely culprit is the new seed starter cups we used. In general, these are pretty cool. They are little discs of coir wrapped in biodegradable paper that plump up when you add water. Each one has a little indentation in the top to place a seed, and once in a watering tray, they just soak up water and stay good and damp. These worked really well for our tomatoes and peppers, especially since you can just plant them, mini-pot and all into a bigger pot when they get too big. Those nightshade plants will grow extra roots up their stems, and they'll poke through the paper with no trouble. But for okr...

It is cold. It's been cold all weekend. Tomorrow it will snow, and we are expecting so much that the state had to reschedule the MCAS exam (our statewide, bullshit standardized test).  Major prognostication fail, Punxsutawny Phil . And so we wait. Seedlings are popping up in the cold frames and on the windowsills, and they are doing well despite the freezing temps. So well, in fact, that the leeks and onions are rather in need of a haircut: These are our red onion seedings, which we planted about six weeks ago. As you can see, they are floppy and unruly. (The leeks are far better behaved, standing upright like good little soldiers — yet another example of their superiority .) Once onions and leeks get to be over four or five inches high, you can trim them back so they aren't so top heavy. This is a finesse job, because you have to ever-so-carefully untangle and lift up individual leaves, which are still pretty delicate. After their haircut (which I perfor...

Yesterday Punxsutawny Phil did not see his shadow. While I have no love for groundhogs , I'm certainly a fan of the early spring forecast. Whether warmer weather is six weeks out or not, this weekend — the halfway point between solstice and equinox — is the time to start our first seeds indoors: And here they are, all lined up on the new shelves in the window. We have one full flat of leeks (144), one full flat of red onions, and one full flat of yellow onions (also 144 each). There's also a half flat of 24 additional leeks and 48 additional red onions. That's a lot, but we are just about out of onions from last season, so we need a good deal more to get through a winter until onions are available again in early summer. We have enough leeks to get us through until early spring, but we planned for more next season because they do so well in the extreme cold. Also, it's important to remember that not every seed planted will develop into a mature plant — there a...

Last weekend we made an upgrade to our seed starting system.  Last year , we had all of our seed flats on top of our window seat benches, but this wasn't exactly ideal when the kids wanted to get to their toys inside. So we decided to build some shelves in the windows of our four-season porch. The challenge was that we wanted them to be removable, since we only need them for three to four months of the year. Here's what we came up with:  We got regular shelf brackets to screw into the (wide and sturdy) window frames. Instead of using the hardware that came with the brackets, we got some brass threaded inserts and new machine screws of the same size. The idea is that with the threaded inserts permanently in the window frames, we'll be able to screw and unscrew the brackets as often as we like without stripping out the wood. The shelf brackets also happened to come with plastic covers, which you can see above. They hide the hardware, and also are a bit soft...

So far, the aquarium water fertilizer seems to be doing the seedlings a lot of good: This is just a day or two after I gave the broccoli and cabbage a teaspoonful of diluted aquarium water, and the results have been pretty impressive. You can see in the broccoli seedlings above that the real leaves are much bigger than they were before I fertilized, if you compare it to this photo taken the day I was working on the aquarium water thing: Ok, so I admit that this picture is taken from farther away than the first one, but if you click on it to enlarge, it's pretty clear how much smaller these seedlings are before they got the magic aquarium water treatment. If I were more scientific, I would be measuring and taking daily pictures from the exact same distance, but I'm not. Maybe that would be a good science project for one of the kids next year. Anyway, the point is that, so far, that tiny bit of fertilizer is working out. Maybe by next weekend I will need t...

Last weekend I started some tomatillo seeds. These plants get big and bushy and are quite prolific, so we only have three plants in our garden plan. I planted three seeds each in three yogurt cups to hedge our bets: They are in a black cake pan to try to give them some extra heat, since tomatillos need really warm temperatures to germinate — even at 75-80 degrees, it can take two weeks for the seeds to sprout. Nothing is going on yet, but that's not surprising since our indoor temps are likely around 65 degrees, and maybe 70 in that window on a sunny day. These seeds aren't exactly new (maybe three seasons old?), but we store them very carefully in an airtight container in the back of the refrigerator, and that has served us well for saving seeds in the past. Hopefully this is just a matter of being patient for another week or so.  The rest of the seedlings are doing well. The leeks we started two weeks ago have sprouted and are stretching up to the sun: T...

Fluellen : Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is  remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a  garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their  Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this hour is an honorable badge of the service; and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy's day. King Henry V : I wear it for a memorable honour; for I am Welsh, you know, good countryman. from Henry V, Act IV, scene vii Happy (belated) Saint David's Day ! Saint David is the patron saint  of Wales, and his personal symbol is the leek. It made sense, then,  to get our leek seeds sown on Saint David's Day, which was March 1.  This,  however, was what it looked like outside that afternoon: We had wanted to start the leek seeds outside in a...

We all had to go to work and the kids had school, but it's getting kind of crappy out there. March 1 and finally some snow, and I'm not even enjoying it because we had to white-knuckle it home, and it will all melt before we can even go sledding in it over the weekend. But it sure is pretty! I am enjoying the soft quality of light that comes in reflected off the snow, but I'm sure our seeds would appreciate brighter sunshine. We now have two seed flats going, and the Copra onion seeds we started last weekend have just sprouted over the last day or two: Below are our broccoli and cabbage seeds, which I rotate a quarter turn every few days. They are cozy and warm while it snows outside: Spring will be here in just 19 more days!

Less than three full days after planting, our broccoli and cabbage seeds are sprouting! This is excellent news. We don't have our seed tray on a heated mat or anything, but it looks like it is plenty warm enough in the house to get them started (at least these cool-weather guys!). They also get lots of direct sunlight on the porch: With all the shades pulled wide open, there is direct sunlight in here (barring the 20 minutes it's in that little shadow you see) for just about as long as the sun is up, because this room is lit from the east, south, and west. That is an excellent  feature of this house. At the Red House we didn't have such big windows, and the way the house was oriented on the lot, we were always struggling to get enough sunlight in a lot of places (indoors or out). Hopefully this will be enough to get these seedlings off to a good start! Update I originally posted the bit above this morning. Now it is afternoon, and it is a sunny 55 degrees. T...

It's time to plant some seeds! Part of the  garden   planning  that we have been working on (and finished this weekend, by the way — more on that later) involves noting when to start seeds and/or set out plants of each type of vegetable we are growing. A great resource for this is Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening , which has a handy chart of when to start everything in relation to your last frost date. After we had everything plotted out on the graph paper plans, we added planting to dates to our family iCal (I am a huge fan of this, since one of us can update something and the other can see it on his or her iPhone almost instantly). This will allow us to check planting dates easily from year to year since we'll have a record of it, and I also set up the alerts to remind us the Friday before of what we need so that we can run and get any seeds or supplies before  Saturday morning rolls around. Hooray for technology! Anyway, this weekend is 12 weeks before...