I Wet My Plants

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.

I’m about a week behind starting my peppers indoors so I decided to start them this morning.  Pepper seeds need a lot of heat to germinate and,  since I’m behind schedule, the best and fastest way to do that is called pre-sprouting.  I’ve written about it before, however, I wanted to give more detail on the steps I take.

For my supplies, I use a Sharpie, sandwich-sized Ziploc bags, coffee filters, two plates (the left one is filled with water), seeds and a heating mat:

I take one coffee filter and soak it in the left-hand plate that has water in it:

I transfer it to the dry, right-hand plate and space pepper seeds in one quarter area:

I fold the coffee filter in half:

And then again so that it’s a quarter of the size:

I write the name of the pepper variety on a Ziploc bag using a Sharpie pen and place the damp, folded coffee filter with seeds in it and zip it up:

After I’ve packaged up all the pepper seeds that I want to pre-sprout, I put them on my heating mat, arranging them so that they all receive equal heat:

I started:

• Chocolate Beauty
• California Wonder
• King of the North
• Habanero
• Red Habanero
• Variegated Fish
• Holy Mole
• Early Jalapeno
• Joe’s Long Cayenne
• Bhut Jolokia

It’ll take a few days before they begin to sprout and until then I’ll be checking them every morning to see if they’re drying out and need extra water.  I’ll only add enough water for the coffee filter to soak up as too much water will encourage rot.

Here is that bag of Berger germinating mix I was telling you about:

It’s a pretty huge bag and I haven’t used even a quarter of it yet despite seeding a dozen trays and giving some to my mom.  Remember how I said that the quality was really good?  Look for yourself:

I like to use plastic seed tray inserts for all my indoor seeds.  The easiest way I’ve found to prepare the trays is by dumping a bunch of the seed starting mix into the sink:

And then adding a lot of water.  You don’t want the mix too dry or too wet, something similar to moist and crumbly:

The amount in the sink is enough to fill up three trays with a little bit left over:

In the above picture you can see my new two-tray seedling mat which is twice as awesome as my single-tray seedling mat that I gave to my mom.

Last week I finally got my grow op set up in the basement.  Since I got my camera fixed up, here’s a shot of the current trays of seedlings:

Those upper-left leggy seedlings?  Lettuce and greens.  The rest are mainly tomato seeds.  When you sow your tomato seeds, it’s good to have a clear dome on top to keep the moisture in while the seeds germinate.  Sometimes you’ll get a seedling that still has the seed coat on the initial cotyledon leaves.  This happens when you don’t tap down the germinating mix over the seed when you sow it – the seedling has to poke up through a packed soil surface, leaving the seed coat below the surface.  Here’s what you don’t want:

If you keep the dome on the tray, the moisture will keep the seed coat damp, allowing you to easily remove the husk:

If you take the dome off before you remove errant seed coat husks, the husks will dry and be harder to remove.

Here’s a shot of all my little seedlings:

They get about a half hour of fan abuse everyday to help them strengthen their stems (I was slow in doing this for my lettuce seedlings which is why they’re so leggy).  Here’s my list so far of all the tomato seeds I’ve sown.  The numbers in brackets indicate the number of seedlings that have popped up so far:

• Amish Paste (8)
• Andrew Rahart’s Jumbo Red (1)
• Azoychka
• Berkely Tie Dye
• BHN-624 (8)
• Black from Tula
• Black Krim
• Black Plum (7)
• Brandywine, Cowlick’s Pink
• Burbank
• Chapman
• Cherokee Purple
• Cuostralee (7)
• Eva Purple Ball (9)
• German Red Strawberry (1)
• Giannini
• Gogosha
• Gold Rush Currant (6)
• Goose Creek
• Jaune Flamme
• JD’s Special C-Tex (5)
• Josefina
• Juliet (2)
• KBX
• Martino’s Roma
• Matt’s Wild Cherry (7)
• Mexico Midget
• Momotaro
• Opalka
• Paul Robeson
• Pink Berkely Tie Dye
• Prue (5)
• Red Brandywine
• Red Penna (9)
• Riesentraube
• Ropreco Paste
• San Marzano
• Sapho (7)
• Sara’s Galapagos (5)
• Snow White (4)
• Sweet Pea Currant (8)
• Tommy Toe

Remember how I said that other organic seed starting mix was rubbish as there were lots of twigs in it?  Here’s a shot of some cabbage and chive seedlings that I started in that crummy mix:

See all those little chunks and twiggy bits?  The quality has really declined over the years.  Compare to the new Berger mix stuff I’m using:

It’s a pretty huge difference – it’s lighter and has a better consistency.