I Wet My Plants

I realize that my choice of words for pre-pre-orders and pre-orders was pretty crappy.  Here’s my attempt at correcting any misunderstandings.  There are two sales this year:

Buy a Seed to be Sown for You Sale
This is the pre-pre-order that closed on March 20th (yeah, dumb name but it was all I could think of at the time).  My thought was that people who really knew what they wanted early in the year could tell me and I would sow a seed for them that they could buy as a seedling later on.  These pre-ordered seeds would be sown at the same time as I normally sow seeds for my tomato plant sale (see next).

Buy a Seedling Sale
This is the pre-order that I had last year.  I’ve started about 50 different types of tomatoes (a lot of red-coloured tomatoes as well as cherries) and I have about 400 seedlings.  If you can believe it, I’ve scaled back from last year when I had 800 seedlings.  These seedlings will be available for purchase mid-May, after I’ve hardened them off.

Details of the Buy a Seedling Sale will be posted soon and people who are interested can email me with their selections for pick-up in mid-May.

In the meantime, here are my little seedlings in the garage:

So I’ve been really into the idea of extending the gardening season as well as protecting my cabbages, Brussels sprouts and broccoli from the dreaded white butterfly.  I’ve been scouring the interwebs for a good project to take ideas from and ended up at Johnny’s Selected Seeds Quick Hoops Bender.  Cool tool, eh?  It’s also a cool $69 plus $32.45 for shipping.  At just over $100 US, I couldn’t justify buying it and shipping it to Canada to only make a few hoops.  I set myself to finding a do-it-yourself (DIY) solution.

When I first tackled this project I thought 3/4″ PVC pipe was the way to go.  I’ve worked with it before when building props for Halloween (my other hobby) and I was used to the fittings and cutting of pipe, etc.  After reading blogs and posts from different gardeners who’ve built their own low tunnel hoop houses, I realized that the PVC would be too fragile to overwinter in my cold climate.  If I was going to build something, why not build something that will last?

Enter  electrical metallic tubing (EMT), a.k.a. galvanized electrical conduit.  These metal pipes are used to run electrical wiring in houses.  All the sites I’ve read (US sites, I should add) mention how a 3/4″ – 10′ length of EMT only costs about $2.  Great, I thought, this will be a cheap experiment.  Checking my local hardware store, I found out the same pipe costs $8.48.  I looked online at Lowe’s USA and found their price was $3.27, a whopping 2.6 times cheaper than here in Canada (btw, 1/2″ pipe up here is $4.98 and $1.87 down there. Ugh.).  I decided the next trip across the border would have to include a stop to Lowes.

In the meantime, I needed to find a way to bend the EMT without the use of the Quick Hoops Bender or a pipe bender – a handy pipe-bending tool that I don’t have and don’t want to purchase.  The problem would be to create the arc that the 10′ pipe would need to have so that the ends of the pipe would have a 4′ distance.  Basically, I was trying to figure out how to recreate the pipe in this photo.

To start my experiment, I bought one 1/2″ EMT, one 3/4″ EMT and one 3/4″ PVC pipe, all in our high Canadian prices.

Reviewing the Quick Hoops Bender manual (PDF), revealed that each hoop was to be extended 16″ beyond the end of the bender, i.e., there would be 16″ of straight EMT on either ends of the pipe.  I pounded scrap rebar into the ground until it was at a height of 16 inches:

I pounded another piece of scrap rebar into the ground 4′ away:

I took my 3/4″ PVC bendy pipe and stuck the ends on the rebar:

Stepping back, I had a 10′ long and 4′ diameter arc!

It’s not as perfect-looking as the Johnny’s picture but I didn’t care.  I dragged out a large piece of scrap plywood and placed it behind the pipe:

I took a Sharpie and traced the inside of the arc onto the plywood:

My next step will be to drill screws at 18″ intervals along the line to create a jig around which to bend the pipe.  Having two different diameter pipe will help me figure out which one is more suitable for this experiment.  Once I’ve got a few hoops made, I can then put them in my garden and cover it with remay to protect all my brassicas.

Yay!

Recently I had a look at the satellite garden.  It looks pretty sad:

Mostly it’s the encroaching grass and weeds that are depressing  as it’s going to take a lot of work to get it prepared.

There was a couple of interesting items to be seen, like overwintered garlic from last spring:

And some overwintered leeks that I had forgotten about:

I decided to try taking stem cuttings of some of the plants that I bought at Richters.  Here’s what I used:

• assorted plants from Richters for cuttings
• really sharp scissors
• Root-A-Maker natural rooting powder from Richters
• Wilson’s Roots liquid root stimulator from Lee Valley Tools
• cut up vinyl mini blinds for plant markers
• a flat of 9-cell trays filled with damp germinating mix
• a clear dome
• a water sprayer
• a seed spoon from Lee Valley Tools used as a dibble
• a Sharpie
• two small bowls

I’ve never properly propagated stem cuttings before.  My process before this adventure was to put a stem cutting in a glass jar with some water, hoped it developed roots and then stick it in some soil.  With all these new herb plants I decided to make the process more formal, even throwing in a good test on top of that: which would root stem cuttings better, powder or gel?

I gathered my supplies:

Read through my propagation book to make sure I was doing it right:

There was a lot to go through, especially the different types of cuttings: greenwood, softwood, semiripe, hardwood, conifer, cane, leaf petiole, leaf vein, upright leaf, monocot leaf and root.  I realized that I wouldn’t be able to propagate all of the plants by cuttings, especially the Society garlic.  At some point, after flipping back and forth through the book, I decided to just take cuttings of different plants and see which ones rooted.  Of course I couldn’t just root something, I had throw in a test between two different rooting products:

The powder on the left was chalky and the gel on the right smelled funny.  I put a bit of each into separate small bowls so as to not contaminate the main supply.

For each cutting I made sure that it was a minimum two inches long with at least one inch of stem.  Here’s a shot of a zaatar cutting where I snipped off the lower set of leaves:

I took the cutting and dipped it into the gel:

And dibbled a hole in one of the cells of the tray and put the stem into it.  I gently tamped the soil so that it would have good contact with the gelled stem.  For each plant I did three cuttings with gel and three cuttings with powder (the powdered zaatar isn’t shown).  I labeled each cutting with the plant name and if I had used powder or gel.

The whole process took a while as I needed to select a good stem to cut and be gentle with each.  Here’s a finished tray of both gel and powdered cuttings:

There’s zaatar, Greek oregano, Rex rosemary, Piss Off plant, hummingbird sage and mojito mint.  I was so happy with finally taking cuttings (I’ve been meaning to do this experiment for years) that I experimented with a few more:

That’s pineapple sage, BBQ rosemary and variegated marjoram.

I watered and spritzed the cuttings with my water sprayer and put a clear dome over it.  I placed them out of direct sunlight on a table.  So far none have wilted and died so I’m hoping that the cuttings have started to root.  I’m so excited about the idea of making more plants that I’m going to take some more stem cuttings.  Not only will I have more plants, the main plant that I’m taking the cuttings from won’t be spindly and will be forced to bush out, creating a healthier plant.  Woo.

I had an awesome six-day weekend and was able to get loads of gardening things done.

First off was the annual spring trip with my mom to Richters Herbs, Canada’s herb mecca in Goodwood, ON.

The entrance has a new pattern of tiles and soil in which I suspect they will plant some walking herbs like Lemon Carpet thyme:

Once you enter through the doors you pick up a cardboard tray on the right to carry all your goodies:

Not much has changed.  There’s still the seeds and sales counter to the right:

And their workshop area to the left:

Heading back into the greenhouse is where all the aforementioned goodies are:

All over the place I saw these yellow, sticky insect traps to catch all the little indoor pests.  There was even a line of these sticky traps along the length of the greenhouse roof:

I snuck back into the staff-only area and took a snap of the numerous flats of herbs just starting out:

One item that really caught my was the herb cone hanging planters that were hanging everywhere:

Of course  I bought a trunk load of plants, some new stuff and mostly stuff that I’d bought last spring and killed in the following winter months indoors:

Here’s a list of what’s in the trunk of my car:

• Greek oregano
• Variegated marjoram
• Society garlic
• BBQ rosemary
• Rex rosemary
• Pineapple sage
• Hummingbird sage
• Grosso lavender
• Mojito mint
• Zaatar
• a new-to-me Piss off plant
• Pesto Perpetuo basil
• Compact English thyme
• French thyme
• French tarragon

I also bought some Rainbow Swiss chard, Kobold garlic chives, Nelly chives and Monia dill seeds.

We drove to Foxboro, ON and visited Terra Edibles at the Village Green:

There’s lots of gardening related stuff in the store, however, we were mostly interested in the seeds:

In the attached greenhouse there were hundreds of seedlings that were unfortunately not for sale yet:

The owner grows some of her seedlings in recycled milk bag containers.  Here are some Believe It Or Not tomato seedlings:

Outside there were dozens of raised beds waiting to be prepared for summer plantings:

I picked up some Queen Alexandra sweet peas, New Zealand spinach and Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper seeds.

Back home the next day I decided it was time to prepare my home garden as the days had become unusually warm in the last couple of weeks.  I went to my local nursery, Pioneer Gardens, to pick up 10 bags of sheep manure and was delighted to find out they now carry Renee’s Garden seeds.  I bought Painted Lady runner beans, Magic Beanstalk scarlet runner beans, Sungold F1 tomato, Gala mache and Chelsea Prize english cucumber seeds.

I moved the herbs that had made it through the winter to one corner of the garden and potted up some volunteer Ruby Orach mountain spinach – this stuff sticks around, I didn’t plant any last year.  I added 7 bags of sheep manure and spread it out:

That lighter bit at the back is my little garlic plot.  I had mulched it with straw over the winter and my mom pulled it off to reveal little 2-inch shoots that have since greened up with all this weekend’s sun.

I dragged out the irrigation system that I had bought from Lee Valley Tools last year and lay down the hoses:

Then I remembered I needed to put down the twine to define my square foot gardening sections so I had to pull up the hoses, put down the twine and then put the hoses back down again:

That was when I decided to transplant out all my greens and lettuce seedlings that I started a couple of weeks ago:

The dark areas are where I watered with a watering can instead of hooking up the irrigation soaker system.  And just for kicks, here’s my garlic patch of garlic that I bought from Beaver Pond Estates last year:

If that wasn’t enough gardening for one day, I decided to tackle this one nasty patch in my flower beds that was becoming overgrown with some terrible weed:

It’s a low-growing weed spread by runners and it had infested a 5′ x 8′ space.  I’m determined to get rid of it this year and set to double digging the space:

I was only able to get through a 3′ x 5′ space:

From which I pulled out all these nasty weeds:

It was terrible – some areas were so infested with roots that I just tossed clumps of them.  I’m not even halfway through  the mess and I really want to get it done soon before they take off.

I took it easy the next day and made a list of all the things I need to do, buy and source.  I still need to buy some inoculant for sowing my pea and bean seeds, some seed potatoes when they come out in a few days and some mini blinds to cut up to make plant tags.

I want to make a floating row cover out of pvc pipe and remay cloth to protect my Brussel sprout, cabbage and broccoli plants from the dreaded white moth.  After looking around online I read about the Geoff Hamilton cloche which was exactly what I wanted.  I didn’t care for the wooden frame and instead used my Halloween prop-building skills to devise a PVC version that looks something like this:

That little bit in the upper left hand corner is my draft pea and bean trellis, based off a gardening friend’s permanent set-up.  After reading more about hoop house construction here, I realized that I’m going to have to add another hoop and make some minor modifications.  My main problem will be sourcing the special three-hole PVC fittings, a.k.a. 90 side outlet elbows and the pipe snaps.  I can always buy the cheap-o row cover at Lee Valley Tools for $15 if I can’t get this project together.

Of course my To Do list is a mile long (in terms of effort to be exerted):

• plant out overwintered herbs
• dig up spreading ajuga in side lawn
• dig up weedy sections of flower bed (40% completed)
• dig up hostas in front bed
• plant spring bulbs
• bag up alpaca poo (an offer from a local farmer – exciting!)
• bag up oak leaves
• start peas, chives and flower seeds
• edge satellite garden
• add compost and roto-till satellite garden
• build permanent pea/bean trellis for satellite garden
• source items for and build row cover
• spread cedar mulch on side flower beds
• spread compost on backyard lawn and reseed
• fill up holes created by dogs
• cut back clematis
• plant out lettuce (done)
• pot up orach (done)
• sow 2nd batch of lettuce (done)

As you can see, the easy stuff is already done.