First Beds

The first crops are in! Earlier this week Mike tilled the first bed, and I planted 21 brussels sprouts seedlings and 22 cabbage seedlings. The bed was beautiful, actually, after I'd covered it with fall leaves in October. I think I overdid the amount of leaves, but they're working for now as a mulch around the edges of the bed.

Yesterday Mike tilled the second bed, and I planted two rows each of kale and bok choy. I'm excited about the kale, as I've got five varieties: Tuscan Lacinato, Dwarf Blue-Curled, White Russian, Red Russian, and Green-Curled. I've been planting Black Summer bok choy for years now; it's my all-time favorite for looks and taste, even though the China Choy variety is perfectly fine too.

The bed had extra room (how often does that happen?!), so I also put in the Copra onion plants from Fedco and all my leftover small onions from last year. We'll see what happens!

In the top photo above, you can see the garlic planted last fall, as well as a few transplanted volunteers from last year's garlic bed. I always have tons of volunteer garlic; you'd think I wouldn't need to plant any new. Actually, I haven't bought garlic for planting in ages: I just use extras from the harvest because there are so many!

Everybody Jump Up!

A few weeks ago I planted quite a few trays with seeds—several perennials and peppers and tomatoes. That's not unusual for this time of year, but I was trying to get a lot done before a 10-day road trip. I'd asked Son #3 and my brother-in-law to water the plants while we were gone and to move the trays to the lights in the basement once the seeds germinated.

Now that we're back, the seedlings are up! How encouraging it is to see all those fragile little seedlings push out of the soil! I'm always astounded at the magic of nature, how the tiny cherry tomato seeds will eventually grow into vines that stretch to eight or more feet, how those stalks will send out tons of suckers and branches and leaves that can cover my hand, how they'll produce clusters of 10 or 15 fruits as big as marbles (the shooters, of course!).

The germination (i.e., success) rate was pretty excellent this year. I planted four trays of peppers, including hot peppers and Italian sweet peppers, and nearly every insert has a plant. The tomatoes did even better, since I put two to three seeds per insert in those trays, and most of them came up. Now they're happy under the lights (just a few inches above them and with the fans going), and I'll be transplanting to larger pots soon.

Speaking of which, I've already begun making the large newspaper pots I need for transplanting tomatoes. So far I've got five trays of 11 pots each. That's 55 tomato plants, but I expect I'll need at least twice that. The peppers get transplanted to plastic pots that work well for them but not as well for the tomatoes.

The garden stores and magazines always seem to produce much sturdier tomato plants than mine—they're a bit leggy and long before they get planted in the garden bed in May—but I haven't noticed that it matters. In 15-plus years of growing tomatoes, and usually 50 or more plants each year, I've seen maybe 10 of mine keel over. I doubt their legginess was the problem, yet the ratio is good enough for me.

Another encouraging sign when I returned from the trip: the brassicas, which were up before we left, are growing well under the lights and the broccoli especially look happy and sturdy. The weather was really warm while we were gone and has since cooled down, but that didn't stop me from beginning the hardening-off process for them this week. I set them outside on the deck in the sunshine for a few hours at a time, then either move them to the (covered) porch or into the house again. You've got to gradually get them used to the outside air—the temperature that fluctuates, the breezes, the bugs—before planting them in the garden beds, so that they're better equipped to survive the transplanting and the new environment.

The hardening-off process is similar to developing a child's immune system. You don't expose newborns to all manner of germ situations because they'd not protected from them yet. You start with Mom and Dad, who wash their hands a lot to handle the new baby. Gradually they stop washing their hands every single time, and they also introduce Baby to Grandma and Grandpa and the siblings, then friends and extended family. By the time Baby is a year old, she's developed a strong enough system to handle a cold bug (albeit not happily!). It's the same with plants, only probably a bit faster.

Cleaning and Coughing

So the seeds have been ordered, and most of them have arrived. Yet before planting can start, the basement needed cleaning. Ugh.

For some reason, every time we clean the basement we get sick, and this year was no different. It's probably all that dust and dirt that accumulates over the summer and fall, which we stir up as we clean.

After a long afternoon of sweeping, vacuuming, rearranging, tossing out old junk, and generally getting the basement in tip-top shape for seed planting, Mike and I both ended up with a cough. Which turned into the flu. With fever, sore throat, stuffy nose, congestion, the works. And it came around a second time for both of us, and a third for him. What we do for our vegetables!

But the place is clean (yay!) and I started right in on planting. I like to make seed pots from newspapers, and bought a groovy tool several years ago that works great. I can make lots of pots in just a couple hours and fill two or three of the trays I use. A bunch of years ago I bought up 25 or so cat litter trays from our local Wegmans for less than $5 apiece. That was one of the best purchases I've ever made for the garden, because they're still going strong 10+ years later. I can fit 35 pots in each tray, and I use them for brassica, corn, squash, melon, parsley, hollyhock, sunflower, and other seedlings that don't much care for root disturbance when planted outside. The trays are really sturdy, deep enough to water the pots well, and withstand the rigors of hardening off. I'd be lost without them!

Another cleaning chore awaited me, though; in fact, it awaits me all spring: cleaning trays. I don't know why I'm so anal about it, because I really do hate this chore. But all my organic resources tell me it's essential to clean—with hot water and soap—all the seed-starting trays and pots, so I do. I scrub the cat-litter trays for newspaper pots, then watch movies while making the pots. I scrub the black seed inserts and trays I've bought over the years (I have stacks and stacks of these things!). And I scrub the three- and four-inch pots for transplanting (more on them later). At least I finally gave in to wearing rubber gloves to protect against scratches from those sharp corners on the inserts.

So now the brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts) and kale and bok choy are planted, and all of them have germinated. I talk to my plants all the time, actually, and don't care what anyone thinks about it. Years ago our kids took tae kwon do lessons, and their master would say, "Everybody up!" or "Everybody very good!" They brought those phrases home, and I've been using them on the plants ever since. They seem to like the encouragement!