I finally started hardening off tomatoes and peppers this week. Last year I decided to start fewer plants inside, and purchase more at the local greenhouse… but I ended up buying seeds anyway. It is just so hard to resist starting plants inside! I already put in all of the cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi – and seeded radishes and carrots. The rest of the garden should be seeded within the week, so all that’s left will be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

They look pretty good; if the weather patterns hold most of these should be able to go into the ground next weekend. I do have a row cover and some fabric in case temperatures drop into the 30s later this May.

It’s that time of year again!

10 weeks until Minnesota’s average last frost. We like to put stuff out earlier than that if the weather permits. I have a lot of plans for the garden this year – including growing the flowers for our wedding this September! I’ll have to post more about that later. I also ordered 100 grape vines, and Chris ordered some nut trees so I’m sure this summer we will be busy planting.

There is a nice little nursery just down the road, so to save some time I am planning on just purchasing a lot of transplants from them. There are a few varieties that we just can’t pick up locally though: heirloom tomatoes, fancy peppers, funky-colored cauliflower… so I took out the shelves and grow lights and set everything up in our spare bedroom again.

There seems to be a lot of debate on using coconut fiber vs. peat moss as a seed starting medium. I read a few posts on gardening forums, and people have strong opinions about both – on which is the most environmentally friendly, and which performs better. I haven’t made a decision yet, but I did decide to put both to the test this year with our seedlings.

I picked up some Hoffman Seed Starter from Bachman’s. It is made of peat moss, vermiculite, and limestone. I also picked up some Burpee Eco-Friendly Concentrated Seed Starting Mix from Target, which is made of coconut fiber.

Half of the pots are filled with peat moss (the green pots in the picture above), and the other half with coconut fiber (yellow pots above). I prefer the consistency of the coconut fiber, and it seems to be better at both retaining moisture and draining than peat moss. We’ll just have to wait to see which one the plants prefer!

I grew some Purple Sprouting Broccoli last year, but, just as I feared, it never made any of its famed, delicious broccoli heads.  It did grow to be quite the plant.  So I took the greens for eating, chopped the stalk low to the ground and buried it in logs and snow.  Here it is after digging it out yesterday:

Thats enough for me to pretend like it is already Spring.  And here is an area where Puck and I walked to as the sun set.  The plants are mullein gone to seed:

So I’ve been busy this spring and my garden plot and seedlings aren’t what I pictured before we started this year. But thats ok. You can see the row I’ve had planted for quite a while.

Welcome back to VEGarden!

The sun is shining and though temperatures are still in the 40s, we have hit some 60º F days – spring is just around the corner! And this means that it’s time to start planning the garden!

So, the first task: starting seeds.

Chris prepared the soil mix: 3 parts peat, 2 parts compost, 2 parts water, and a handful of cottonseed meal. He sifted the peat through a screen to remove some of the large lumps – this left him with a very nice, smooth soil mix for making blocks.

When we got out to the garden this morning, the guy who had plowed was out there with his tractor tilling for us. The ground is much more workable than it was before, and we’re lucky to have him helping us out a bit.

Unfortunately, someone came by and ate a lot of the corn and squash seeds we had planted… and we can’t really tell what got eaten – there are just empty shells where pumpkin seeds once were, or pieces of corn with the germ eaten laying all around. SO… I think we’re going to have to add some more seeds back in, and maybe add more rows to the three sisters.

Our transplants are sick of their small homes and are more than ready to go in the ground. The tomatoes are starting to yellow – I’m thinking they may have gotten sunburned. But they seem really healthy, so hopefully they’ll come around.

Today we planted 200 more brassicas and the 20 Great White tomatoes. It’s a long weekend, so we’ll be out there Sunday and Monday – hopefully spending long days out there and getting the rest of our transplants in. We had a new friend helping us today – it was a pretty good time for all!

We haven’t gotten any rain for two weeks, which is really frustrating. We have been watering the transplants, but we can’t stretch the hose any farther into the garden. MAYBE it will rain Tuesay… we’ll see.

That’s about a third – maybe even less than a third – of our seedlings. They have become family, and I hope they all make it into the ground. (Except for the okra in the very front left corner – Puck snapped it in half while running too close… oops!). I always forget the camera when we go to Morning Sky Greenery, but I’ll try to remember to bring it tomorrow.

We started hardening off the tomatoes, peppers, okra, eggplant, and brassicas. They spent about 1 1/2 hours out in the sun and wind – sheltered as much as we could shelter them. Now we increase their time outside every day, and hopefully get the brassicas in the ground next week and the tomatoes by Memorial Day.

Very unfortunately, the hand tiller that we had planned on borrowing for the summer needs to be repaired. So I reserved the biggest tiller that our local hardware store has for rent, and tomorrow Chris is going to spend the entire day – 8 to 5 – tilling as much as he can possibly till. An acre is A LOT of land to hand-till in one day, and the tiller is also fairly expensive to rent… and since it runs on gas, there’s an added expense.

I hope Chris can survive the day! Unfortunately I have other work to do, and quite honestly I don’t think I can manage a tiller of that size very easily. But the land has been broken, so it won’t be as tough as it was when we tilled up the back yard for our home garden. The immediate plan is that enough of the garden will get tilled for our three sisters planting (corn, beans, and squash/melons): our weekend project!

I got a phone call last night with the incredible news that our new till-guy was on his way out to prepare the garden! We met him out there Tuesday evening, and he had some good advice for us, and pointed out a low spot that will likely stay fairly wet. We haven’t gotten rain for a few days, so it was dry enough for him to till.

We’re planning to go out today – we haven’t seen it yet! Chris’s graduation ceremony and after-party are today, so the pictures will have to wait. But at least we’re moving forward!

I planted two flats of sunflowers (144 total) last week. We’re sending some of these home with our weekend guests, but a bunch of them will go into the garden as well. These are Skyscraper, Lemon Queen, and Autumn Beauty – I just got a dwarf variety in the mail the other day. I also broadcast basil seeds in three flats. Next year we’ll have more time to prepare earlier!

Here’s a picture of our dining plant room. It rarely looks the same two days in a row, with all the repotting and shifting of plants from the greenhouse and back to the greenhouse.

We didn’t realize how impossible it was going to be to get someone to work only an acre of land. The farmers are too busy, and their equipment is too big for an acre. Most people just laugh and think we’re crazy. We have been playing a game of phone calls talking to people who can’t/won’t help us and then refer us to someone else who can’t help.

I called Midwest Wildlife today, and he said he would come by and look at our acre on Tuesday evening. Of course, he said that it’s getting to be too late, it’s going to take some time because it’s wet, and that this was something we should have done last fall. But we didn’t know we would be gardening on an acre until just under two months ago!

At the very least, we’ve learned some valuable lessons: prepare your land in the fall; don’t depend on outside help; buy farm equipment; plan WAY early. In a few years we’ll have our own farm equipment, and I’ll be posting signs saying that we’ll help anyone and everyone who’s in the position we are currently in!

We are going to have lots of okras this year which is exciting and slimy. I hope there enough people willing to buy and eat them. We don’t eat gumbo ourselves, but I like fried okra a lot and we’ll have to find some other relavent recipes. Here is a picture of the some of the okras we have that are thriving.

As you may have saw in an ealier post we had more okras prout that we knew what to do with. We ended up planting extra and giving some to Morning Sky Greenery.

Sadly, with my finishing up college, (sadly, I have to finish up college) I haven’t had time to devote to our seedlings. I haven’t planted any lettuces or herbs either and I know we are WAY behind. I have to keep telling myself this is a trial run and we didn’t even know we were getting into until a month and a half ago.

We have lots of tomatos that need to be replanted and have resorted to the quick and dirty solution of plastic cups from the grocery store. We also have some sad okra that won’t make it due to neglect:

Good news is we may have finally found someone to plow our garden for us. More as that develops…