I've been busy making as many necessary purchases as possible for the 2018 growing season. Along with the mushroom spores and inoculation equipment, I've completed and received my 3 seed orders from MI Gardener, Pinetree and Vesey's. I ordered seed potatoes to be delivered the first week of May, from Eagle Creek Potatoes. I decided to try some new varieties this year, including a mix of fingerlings, as well as 5 kg seed each of Sieglinde, Kennebec, Roko, and Shepody varieties.
I finally tried some of the sweet potatoes we had harvested in September. They were still firm, storing perfectly and were completely delicious. Much sweeter and tastier than the ones you get at the grocery store. Unfortunately, I waited too long to order slips this year and they are sold out. Instead I bought some sweet potatoes at the grocery store and put two in water, and two in soil to try to grow my own slips. I'm trying both methods since this is my first time growing them. Once I see which method works best, I'll use that method going forward.
After a about 10 days in the soil I had one slip on one of the two potatoes in the tray, the other has yet to sprout. The ones in water have provided 3 slips from one potato and the other has a spot where you can see a slip will be growing soon. So far, both methods have been successful. We'll see by the end how many slips I get out of each method. Once they are large enough, I'll pull them off and put them in water to root and wait for the potato to grow more. Hoping I'll have at least enough to plant out one 4' x 8' bed by June.
My first order for fruit trees has gone out, including two pecan trees, three varieties of Asian pear, two Goji berry bushes and three Seaberry (Sea Buckthorn) bushes (one male, two female). These will be shipped from Greenbarn Nursery the first week of May. Hoping to add some kiwi vines and some gooseberry bushes from Cornhill Nursery after those are planted. Trees cost anywhere from $40-100, depending on the variety and fruit shrubs and vines are usually $20-50. At that cost, filling up the food forest would be very costly. My plan is to propagate everything I can in order to fill the food forest with plants as cheaply as possible, especially the sea buckthorn. Sea buckthorn is a nitrogen fixer and will serve the purpose of not only providing nutritious berries for sale or personal use but will also feed the soil to benefit the other trees, plants and shrubs that surround it.Onions, shallots and leeks were planted from seed the first week of February. I've struggled previously with growing large numbers of onions from seed with such limited indoor space, though I do usually have very good luck with the onions themselves, growing to a decent size and storing very well. The exception was last year when I forgot about the tender seedlings on the deck, the very first day I started hardening them off and I completely fried the lot. Red and white onions, three varieties of shallots, and leeks all gone in one careless afternoon. Lesson learned, the hard way. We really missed them throughout the winter, but I have a renewed determination to grow fantastic ones this year. I usually seed onions thickly in 5" pots, let them grow as much as they can and plant them, one by one, once the ground is workable. Very time consuming and tedious work, although the results were good, I still didn't get huge onions.
Over the winter I've been watching Charles Dowding on YouTube, who is quite the amazing gardener and he's totally sold me on no-till gardening. This is pretty much what I did last year, more out of time constraint and necessity than intention, but it worked well and I'm happy not to have to do the extra work. I am also happy to sell my hardly-used Mantis tiller and buy fruit trees with the proceeds! So, yes, back to Charles Dowding. Charles plants his onions in trays with smaller cells, about an inch in diameter, putting 5-6 seeds in each cell. When it comes time to plant them out, he doesn't separate the seedlings, just plops one of the plugs with 5-6 onions in each hole. He then advises as they grow you should harvest green onions until there are 3 onions in each hole, then let those bulb up to harvest for storage. It sounded brilliant to me, so I'm trying that method on for size this year. So far, they seem to be growing well in the small cells.
I started peppers at the same time as the onions, which will seem early to some, but I do a radical pruning once they're about six inches tall, so the extra time is useful to grow them back up to a decent size before planting them out. I grew so many peppers last year and had such a fantastic bumper crop that we enjoyed in so many ways. This year I added even more pepper plants to the garden plan, including Big Red, Lipstick, Golden Marconi, Early Jalapeño, Anaheim, Ancho, Sunbright, Chocolate Beauty and Super Thai, as well as new varieties: Coral Bell, Golden Cal Wonder, Serrano Chili, Tabasco, Banana Peppers and Pasilla Bajio.
March, 2018
I'm looking forward to this being the last brutal month of winter. Unfortunately, it seems to be focusing on the brutal part. By end of February, the snow was near gone, we'd had a lot of above zero days where most of it had melted. As of today, March 12, we've had 3 storms since and at least 2' of snow. My fruit trees that were almost completely visible are now more than half-buried again.
Some good things though, we've found resources to get both our birch trees for the Shiitake mushroom area we plan on installing, as well as wood chips for the food forest. We purchased enough spawn and equipment to hopefully inoculate 50-70 logs with Shiitake spawn. We'll be clearing a spot in the tiny forested area we have on our property and arranging them there, along with the 7 logs we inoculated last spring at the mushroom course we took. It will be a lot of work but will keep me busy while the rest of the garden dries up. Then if all goes well, we should have some shiitakes for sale and lots for our own personal use by next summer.
Currently the food forest is just a tiny orchard with a handful of small trees: two heartnut, one mulberry, three cherry, two elderberry, two pear and a chum (cherry / plum cross). The trees are planted on mounds due to our heavy clay soil and there is grass in between them, so I currently have to mow the orchard. Once the two pecan and three Asian pear trees are planted that will make a total of 16 trees in the orchard, along with several smaller shrubs planted in between (goji, sea buckthorn, haskap, blueberry). The plan with the wood chips is to hopefully get contractor's paper laid down as a biodegradable weed barrier, and then cover that with 5-6" of wood chips. The wood chips will break down over time, the way they do in a forest and my heavy clay soil should, in only a few short years, become a rich, dark humus that will be easy to grow in and that will continue to suppress the grass and weeds.
I'll also add in other layers to the forest, including more small shrubs, lots of ground cover (strawberries, nasturtiums), grape and kiwi vines, blackberries and raspberries, perennial flowers, herbs and greens, red wine cap mushrooms, and lots of self-seeding annual vegetables and flowers. You can probably see at this point why they call it a "food forest". All of this will replace the lawn and be much more attractive and productive than the lawn ever was.
I started tomatoes the first week of March. I had a few seeds left each of Gardener's Delight, Black Cherry, and Amana orange, so I sowed the last of those seeds. New varieties I'm growing this year include Sweetie cherry tomatoes, Opalka, Orange Roussolini, and Black Sea Man. I also planted more herbs, flowers and greens including lemon mint, lemon balm, dandelion greens, sorrel, rosemary, parsley, dahlias, marigolds, chives, cilantro, nettles, and chamomile.
Last to be started this month were the brassicas, which will hopefully be able to go in the ground at the beginning of May. Arugula, bok choy, several types of kale, red and green cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower were seeded along with a number of other herbs and flowers. At this point, there is no longer any room under my three grow lights, so I won't be planting anything else until the end of April, when I seed cucumbers, melons and squash. By then I should be good to harden off the cole crops on the deck.
Overall, it's been a long, tough winter, but that makes the thought of spring that much more inviting. Another few weeks and we should be full into the swing of things. Lots to do this spring and summer, I'm just getting started. Stay tuned!
