Filling the Green House

Filling the Green House is a lot like moving into a new house.  You have to unpack everything and start re-arranging everything to fit.  Throw in transplanting, mulching, keeping everything watered and you can easily walk out to "Just check the plants" in the morning and find yourself ready to fix lunch by the time you walk back in.  Here's the progression of filling the house...

This is the first year we have configured the green house this way and I already love it.  It is actually two 6' X 10' green houses joined on a base of 2' X 12' timbers.  We get the timbers from my husbands' work.  They are used for scaffolding and once they develop cracks, they have to be discarded--our gain.  The tomatoes are potted in kitty litter buckets that we find at our local re-cycle center free.  I like these better than round because they fit closer and save space.  The three gallon pots were purchased used from a commercial greenhouse.  Everything is mulched with oat straw.  I started doing this three years ago and have cut the watering down 50 to 70 percent.  For some of the smaller pots that are difficult to stuff the straw into, I use the chipped brush that we make using our chipper shredder.

Two more jobs to do here--trellis the tomatoes with cables hanging from the rafters and hopefully get a drip irrigation system in place mostly to take care of watering if I'm gone.  I like to fuss too much to not hand water if I can.

Raised Beds

I garden in the back yard.  It's a decent size but I have to share it with two storage sheds, a line of 60 foot tall spruce trees, a few rabbits and three dogs.  Add the challenge of modeling clay for soil and you see the need to get a little creative for space and location.

We built raised beds to eliminate the challenges of rabbits, dogs and clay.  Okay, it also made it really easy to weed as well.  It's nice to go out in the morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and be able to stand upright to weed your strawberries.

These containers have evolved over the past six years and have been moved around the garden to test the best place for the light and space.  It's nice to be able to relocate a fully established 3' X 8' garden bed to another location without ruffling a leaf! 

The biggest change came after a devastating hail storm last year.  In the space of 10 minutes, my beautiful garden looked like a victim of a mass attack by lunatics with butcher knives.  Everything was slashed to shreds.  We set to work the next weekend and came up with this...

The shade cloth deflects heavy rain and hail and a bonus is we've noticed that the plants are less stressed during really hot sunny days with the little bit of shade.  It also helps to keep the birds away from the strawberries although this year, a few have figured it out so we are going to have to put full netting over the strawberry beds.  Forward thinking, we are also in the process of making green house covers for the beds to extend the season. 

Just a note here--you can see through these pictures that I can grow just about anything in the containers in these raised beds.  Admittedly, some plants have done better than others but they do grow.  I will talk more about these containers in a separate post.

Looking for a Home

I did it again.  I always start my seeds too early then find myself in a scramble to get their final homes ready.

It doesn't help that I want to re-configure (Again.  My husband inserts) the location and set up of my greenhouses.  While the weather is still trying to decide what it's going to be every 15 minutes, it's a good time to move things around and get the raised beds ready for planting.  Here's the final set up:

We joined our two old green houses together.  Set raised beds along the south facing wall of the green houses.  Moved the vertical bean garden and herb garden to form a boundary between garden and dog yard(still negotiating with dogs on that one as you can see.)

Next step is mixing up soil for lots of 5 gal. buckets.  This is a big change.  I have been growing my tomatoes and peppers in the black tray tubs pictured in the first photo.  There was a lot of wasted space trying to fit the trays into the foot print of the greenhouses.  I figured out I could get more plants into the same space by going with buckets.  The only drawback is creating all the new soil because I make and mix all of my own.  Enter one of the best tools in my garden:

Yep.  I have a little cement mixer that has never seen a speck of concrete inside it's drum. This is a trick I learned from a commercial green house I worked at for several years.  The owner used one of these to mix up all of his potting soil.

It took a couple of days to mix and fill all of the buckets I needed for tomatoes and peppers but now that they are filled, I can rotate them out for other plants and just have to fold in some new compost and supplements in the years to come.

Here's a tip on finding buckets if you plan to try growing in containers-check with your local recycle location.  Ours is more than happy to save kitty litter buckets for us free of charge.  The square buckets utilize space better.  I sweeten the deal by dropping off extra zucchini and tomatoes to the gentleman who runs the center during the summer.

It's finally warm enough to send the children out to play in the back yard...

Yes, they look a little bedraggled and no, there is not enough soil in the bucket but this is where Garden Triage kicks in--the tomatoes are transplanted, in the green house and I can fill in the rest of the soil later!

The Pepper Revolt of 2016

The seedlings have been growing up nicely--except for peppers.  This season is an epic fail straight across the board in germinating and growing peppers.  I have restarted the seeds twice and nothing!  Logic tells me that 8 different varieties bought from at least 5 different sources during 4 different years don't just all get together in my seed box over Christmas and decide to go on strike for the 2016 growing season.

Alas, that is exactly what has happened.  So, now that I have laid awake nights beating myself up and going over what I could have possibly done I have gone philosophical and decided to buy the basic peppers I need to survive the year and order all new seeds for next season. 

Not to be a quitter, next year, I'm throwing every last seed that failed me this year into the ground and saying, "There, prove me a liar!"

Starting from Seed--Waiting for Spring

February 6, 2016

Waiting to start seedlings is hard!  Experience tells me that if I start now, I will be scrambling to find space for all the gangly plant teenagers that just can't leave home to make it outside in the early Wisconsin spring.

I am an over-protective Plant Mother.  Seed starting for me is one part mother nurturing, one part science geek and a big part wanting to know where my food comes from.  Okay, seed starting may have a little control freak thrown in for good measure.

As mentioned, I'm not good at waiting so I pre-sprout all of my seed for early transplanting.  I started doing this because I had some older seeds and didn't want to be surprised when nothing came up.  Pre-sprouting was also a little like a science experiment which relieved the boredom of winter.  Much to my surprise, almost everything I planted sprouted and earlier the packets suggested. 

Over the past five years,  I have tuned up this part of seed starting to make it easier to keep track of what I'm planting but still get that head start you need in the shorter Wisconsin growing season.

This year, I'm sprouting my seeds in a notebook!

I took small squares of paper towels, sprayed them with water, added seeds then tucked them into plastic card sleeves.  Each sleeve had a number and that number went on a list of the seeds I planted.  I set the notebook on the counter in my bathroom and waited.  It was easy to flip through the seeds and check for roots.

Once roots started showing, the seeds went into pots with the same ID number on the side.  That number is going to be the plant's football jersey for the season.  Wherever it goes the number is going to follow and I won't have writer's cramp.

Little Sprouts, Little Pots

Well, the notebook seed nursery worked.  I just stashed it on the counter in the warm bathroom.  Hey, it's warm, near water and the spot gets visited regularly.  It reminded me of the garden experiment my elementary school teacher had us do with lima beans pressed up against the glass in a jar with construction paper.  With a little water in the bottom, the paper wicked up just enough moisture to keep the seed watered and pretty soon, a little root started followed by the first green leaves.  Multiply that by well over a hundred seeds and you have the beginnings of my garden in a notebook.

The carrying the numbers from seed to pot to planting is probably the best garden hack I have come up with.  It's so stupid simple I walked right by it for years.  I'm still just at the seed to pot stage right now so we'll see how it translates to the plants' final destination.

So now comes the tedious part, transferring the sprouted seed to a pot with starting mix to keep the growing going.  My UK friends call this pricking.  A pretty good term for using a teeny instrument to move a seed to a pot.

A little side note here...

I was pretty relieved to find out that a huge number of UK gardeners start almost everything from seed.  I do it because it's cold and boring during the Winter and I love fussing with the plants.

Back to the potting...

Over the years, I have tried to apply my favorite motto, "Work smarter, not harder." to my gardening.  That means I have come up with some streamlined  ideas when it comes to potting a large number of plants.  I have already talked about the numbering system to ID the plants.  I have also changed a few things about how I transfer the seedlings. 

First, I quit using the thin little planter packs that you buy in the garden store.  They are usually organized in 4 packs or 6 packs or worse all one unit of 50 - 72 spaces.  That idea did not mesh with my ID number following a plant from seed to soil.  Small bathroom drink cups fit the bill.  They are just the right size and fit nicely in plastic food trays with a smaller footprint.  That means you can tuck them in wherever there is space, warmth and light.

Simple-you put some mix in the container, number it, poke a sprout in and set it in the tray.  So, I was about halfway through this process when a new garden friend, Craig LeHoullier AKA NCTomatoMan, shared his trick of starting all of a seed variety in the same starter pot and separating them at the next transplant.  Fewer pots, less of the special seedling mix and less real estate. 

A note about seed starting mix vs. potting soil.  It really does make a difference.  Give the plants a fighting chance by starting with the right mix.  I personally try to stay away from the peat based mixes and the little "peat nuggets".  Consistent moisture is a big deal with seed starting and peat makes that a challenge.  I use a Coir fiber (coconut husks) and peat mixture.  It has always worked well for me.  Although I knew to water the seedlings from the bottom only, a new tip I had shared from several sources was to put a thin layer of fine vermiculite on top of the seedling mix in each pot.  It blocks the fungus gnats from getting into the soil and infecting the seedlings.  (look up Damping Off)

That made the job a lot easier.  Now we wait.