What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

So I'm pretty sure the onions I planted in the fall didn't make it because of the deep freeze we had. I still don't have anything coming up in those beds.... I had planted them because they were last year's bulbs that were sprouting in storage. I covered them with lots of insulation, but I think that 20 below zero crap that hung around for days did them in. Gonna have to go buy some more starts, I guess....

 

[TJAnonymous]

I have a lot of stuff to get in the ground, but have either had non-stop rain or other stuff going on and no time to do it. I was going to make Easter sugar cookies with the kids this weekend, but I think instead I might get my tilling done and push off the cookies to Good Friday since I took that day off work. I need to plant - broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, gooseberries, rosemary, Mexican petunia, and flax. At a minimum.... Probably some other stuff too that I forgot about.... Oh! Yeah...I need to get the drain tile for my new vertical strawberry beds because all my bareroots are here so I have to get them in some dirt too.....ASAP. So much to do......

 

[CluckNDoodle]

I was just talking to Dear Wife about buying some Baby Bok-Choy that she likes from the store, and then growing the base up to seed. Unfortunately, she does not get that Baby Bok-Choy in our town. She gets it from an Asian Market in St Cloud, MN, which is a 3 hour drive for us. She goes on a shopping trip to St. Cloud with her other local Filipina friends maybe twice a year. So, we might have to wait a while before their next trip.

In the meantime, I have been researching growing greens using the Kratky passive hydroponics system which I think might work for growing greens in the house during our long winters.

I tried growing some Swiss Chard in pots in the house a couple of winters ago. It worked fine for a few months, but then the plants got infested with aphids. Looking back, I am sure that bringing the plants in with their outdoor soil was the problem. But maybe if I can grow things hydroponically, without soil infested with fungus gnat eggs, etc..., I will have more success.

Of course, everything looks easy on YouTube. It sure would be nice to grow fresh greens in the house in the winter months if I can.

Depending on how badly she wants it, maybe one of her friends could send her some to plant for seeds? It's working great for us. The leaves grew quite a lot too.



It's the YouTube editing, 3 weeks or even 3 months, can be edited down to a nice tidy 10 minutes for viewing on YouTube, lol.

 

[gtaus]

Depending on how badly she wants it, maybe one of her friends could send her some to plant for seeds? It's working great for us. The leaves grew quite a lot too.

View attachment 3448794

It's the YouTube editing, 3 weeks or even 3 months, can be edited down to a nice tidy 10 minutes for viewing on YouTube, lol.

Well, Dear Wife and her (local) friends travel to St. Cloud to buy their Asian food at the market. They don't know anybody there living in St. Cloud. So having someone send them seeds, or anything else, is not an option.

I did find some seeds locally, and others have given me some online links to order seeds if I need something else. I realize that Asian seeds are not going to be in high demand in northern Minnesota, but I hope to get a start on some of the plants in the house and transplant them when it gets warmer in summer. Some seeds require longer growing seasons then we could ever hope to have here in the north unless we start them early in the house.

 

[gtaus]

Made some more progress on my seed starting today. I got a bin 27 gallon storage bin and dumped my potting soil from the garage in it so i can warm up the potting soil. It's 32F out in the garage, so I wanted to bring the potting soil inside the house to pre-warm it before I sterilize it with boiling hot water. Figured it might not work too well to kill potential fungus gnat eggs if I poured boiling hot water into frozen potting soil. The frozen soil might cool down the boiling water way too fast to kill any eggs.

I also washed up a half dozen 4-inch pots I saved from last year's flowers that Dear Wife bought. Don't know what I will put in them, but they are clean and ready to be used. I have maybe another dozen pots like those that I could wash up and use.

Filled up a couple of pots with potting soil. I planted some store-bought green onion bottoms (bulbs with roots) I saved and put in a jar for a few days. They had started to grow new greens so it was time to put them in some soil. I like to put green onion greens in lots of my food stuff. It they re-grow good in the pots, I will only snip off a few leaves at a time to have a continual harvest.

Got my hands good and dirty today. Felt like a real gardener for a few minutes. Looking forward to working outside, maybe sometime in April if our snow ever melts. Winter is hanging on this year.

 

[karenerwin]

I got the cattle panel archway installed between 2 raised beds. Planted over a 100 onions sets, a little bit of garlic and planted 25 strawberry crowns. Located 7 blueberry plants from what we planted last year and made sure they had a stake near them so that no one mows over them!

Moved the 9 chicks outside to a brooder that I put together in one of the coops.

Went on an egg hunt. Found 2 hidden nests.

Ended up with 24 eggs in 1 nest. The total egg count today was 50
Lol. They weren’t all laid today that’s for sure!

 

[Sueby]

Woke up to a text from DH saying do NOT go outside. Look out the window & everything is covered in snow. Windchills in the teens. & I didn’t cover the lettuce bed.

I did get the peach tree sprayed yesterday!

 

[Swiss]

Thank you everyone for the replies! It really has helped to put my mind at ease.

One more question (for now, at least): how long after dividing up your potatoes do you let them scab over before planting? Once again, I've read/heard different things. Some say 3-ish days, some say 2 weeks.

 

[jerryse]

32 and should reach 60 by 6 PM. Rain tomorrow.

 

[gtaus]

I got the cattle panel archway installed between 2 raised beds.

Something like your cattle panel archway is also on my short list for this year. What are you going to plant to climb up the archway? I am thinking some climbing beans, or cucumbers for me.

I say something like your cattle panel archway because I might make my archway out of pallet and reclaimed wood that I need to use up. That would be the framework for the arch, but I suppose it would have more of a flat top. Then I would attach some wire to the wood for the plants to climb on. I have some shorter sections of 2X4 fencing that I think might work well.

I wonder if some old chicken wire would work? Might be a little harder to pick the fruit when ready to harvest. Maybe use some chicken wire on the sides going up, but then use the 2X4 wire across the flat top? I'm just trying to use up what I have laying around behind the garage before I go out and buy a cattle panel.

Another thought is to just rip some boards into narrow slats (instead of wire) and build the trellis all out of wood. My raised beds are 4X4 feet, so it would not take many slats to fill in a trellis. I do like the looks of a wooden trellis. Might have to look into that idea a bit more.

Anybody out there built a wooden trellis for climbing beans or cucumbers? Would like to get an idea of how far apart the spacing should be if using wood slats. Any thoughts appreciated.