Week 12 It's Beginning to Look Like Spring

Well the week ended with some weather more like spring, sunny and near 70F. Doesn't appear the spring weather will last as it looks like a rainy mid week and quite cold last part of the week. Ran across the following articles about this Spring's weather.

Water, Water, Everywhere…

An Elusive Spring

A Tough Spring for Farmers

As far as gardening goes this week I managed to get the perennial flower beds cleaned off and the garden ready for tilling. The garden soil is still too wet to till but maybe in a couple of days. Did manage to trim the Kockout roses. Thought about cleaning up the raspberry beds but they are still too dormant. Will need a few more days and then should be able to see what is alive and what is dead. With the toll the dry hot weather of last summer took on the raspberries don't expect much of crop. Just hope to keep enough plants alive so that they can be used to restore the plantings.

Manage to move the transplants from the AeroGarden to small pots. This will allow the plants to become adjusted to soil and prepare them for the Earthboxes. Below are some tomato plants removed from the AeroGarden and before potting.

In the next two pictures are the potted tomatoes, also the some peppers and eggplant. They are are planted in 4in pots that I found for 49 cents each a couple of years ago. I scrub them with soap and hot water, then soak in a 25% (v/v) solution of bleach for several hours. Then I rinse an let dry in the sun for a day or two.

Also in the above photos a couple of pots containing some new perennials I ordered for the garden. They arrived this week and decided to pot them up for a couple of weeks, before putting them in their place. The next photo is of all the transplants.

Next a look a the Earthboxes containing the cold weather crops. First the kale, then the lettuce and finally the spinach.

The yogurt cup around the one newly planted lettuce provides wind protection as the lettuce, kale, and spinach are all spending their days and nights outside on the deck.

The row of spinach in the lower right of the picture will be harvested later today and new spinach seeds planted in its place. Hopefully there is time for one more planting before the hot weather arrives and the spinach bolts.

Lastly the indoor tomato continues to progress.

That's all for this week!

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Week 11 Is It Spring?

Not much happening on the garden front, sort of in a holding pattern. The weather continues to be cold and wet. The wet is a good thing, the cold not so much. The Des Moines Weather Service has been posting some interesting statistics about this year's weather in Iowa on their Facebook page. Here is one of the posts.

Okay statistic fans, some more climate numbers coming your way this Sunday morning:

The precipitation totals so far this year from January 1 to April 20 are pretty amazing:

Des Moines = 10.74" ranks 5th highest total during this time. 135 years of climate records. The highest total is 12.37" from 1945. It's also interesting to note that the top two highest individual precipitation totals during the above time frame are from the past two years. April 14, 2012 with a total of 3.43" and April 17, 2013 with a total of 3.14".

Waterloo = 11.24" ranks #1 for total precipitation during the Jan 1 to April 20 period. 118 years of climate records. The next highest total is 10.80" from 1998.

Mason City = 11.51" ranks #1 for total precipitation during the Jan 1 to April 20 period. Records date back to 1890. The next highest total is 9.93" from 1998.

Ottumwa = 13.80" ranks #1 for its total precipitation. Records date back to 1896. The next highest total is 12.88" from 1973.

Here is some data from my rain gauge:

Jan 1 to Apr 20, 2013 total precipitation = 10.82" beats 2012 of 9.13", 2011 of 5.87", 2010 of 5.85", 2009 of 5.06", and 2008 of 5.13" (first year I collected data)

Just so you can compare the historical average total precipitation for northern Iowa during the Jan - Apr period is 7.12"

Looking at historical weather data from various cities there are many years when Jan - Apr period is wetter than average that the growing season experienced is hot and dry and just as many years when the Jan - Apr period is drier than average that the growing season is wetter than average. So who knows what will happen we will have to wait to see what type of growing season we have. One other tidbit is in more than 80% of the years when we have average precipitation during Jan - Apr we also have average precipitation during the growing season. I suppose this could lead one to conclude that this growing season will likely not be average it will either be hotter and drier or colder and wetter than average.

Some pictures from the garden. First the kale you can see some of the plants are developing their second and third leaves.

Next the lettuce and spinach spending some time in the sun.

Now the indoor tomato plant. In the second photo if you look carefully you can see a small green tomato developing.

Also growing next to the tomato is a trial variety of cucumber.

Lastly my transplants are growing and about ready to be shifted up to larger pots. Plan on doing this during the coming week.

Well that's the update for this week. Going to dig out my better camera and lens and see if I can obtain some better photos.

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Week 10 - Some Progress

Well with nearly 5 inches of rain, 1 inch of snow, and temperatures in the 30's and 40's it hasn't seemed much like spring this past week. The bright spot the rain was greatly appreciated.

I have not done any outside gardening yet. Had planned to plant some potatoes but may pass on that and plant some winter squash instead in the area I had reserved for potatoes. The outside garden will consist of a couple of kinds of squash, some pumpkins, and gourds. The rest of the garden will be in containers namely Earthboxes. Of course can't be without the perennial garden, hope to get it back into shape after a couple of dry years.

Now a progress report on the indoor garden. Only one head of the first crop of lettuce remains, the others have been harvested, eaten, and replaced with the second crop. Still have two plants in the AeroGarden one to take the empty spot and the other the location where the remaining first crop plant is located (large plant).

The spinach continues to grow despite our continued harvesting. I think two rows of spinach in the Earthbox is too much for us. In the future will only plant one row, more about this in the future.

The kale is also doing well. There are two varieties planted in the Earthbox one on each end. Both varieties were planted at the same time. The variety on the left came up in about 36 hours. The one to the right took more than 4 days. Strange there can be that much difference in germination between cultivars.

Because of the cold temperatures the spinach, lettuce, and kale have been spending the day inside rather than out on the deck in the natural sunlight.

The indoor tomatoes continue to do quite well at least one of them any way. All the tomato plants are roughly the same age but you can see the one is doing rather well with lots of blossoms.

If you examine the other plants it looks like they either have been through a war or are infected with some type of blight. After careful observation I determined the cause is a type of blight called Fergie. When you are not looking she bats and hugs the small plants. Also if you look carefully you will see a cucumber plant in the middle front of the box. Received a trial package of cucumber seed called munchers. According to the description the two-three foot vines produce an abundance of 6 inch cucumbers. We shall see.

The seeds I planted last week have started to emerge. The celebrity tomatoes, row 3, are a little slow but the rest of the tomatoes have emerged. The eggplant (row 8) have just started to emerge and the peppers (row 10) should be doing so in the next day or so. Peppers always take longer to germinate than other seeds.

Well that's a look at the garden for this week. Lets have it warm up and be more spring like! More next week.

 

 

 

 

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Week 9 It's time!

I was outside the other day walking around looking at the state of things and discovered some blooming crocus.

There is a gardening rule that when the crocus bloom it is time to start warm season seeds like tomatoes, peppers, etc indoors and out in the garden if the soil is ready then it is time to plant the radishes, peas, onions, etc and set out the cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower plants. You can tell if the soil is ready when you take a hand full of soil and squeeze it. If when you open your hand the soil crumbles it is ready, if it stays in one lump it is too wet and you will need to let soil dry some before planting. The cabbage, broccoli, etc. may need to be covered a night or two if the forecast low is for less than 26-28F. The best strategy is to cover the plants until the last frost date. Many people use large metal cans or gallon milk jugs with the bottoms cut out. The best cover is something call Hotkaps. These are hard to find and can be costly. You can see and learn about Hotkaps here. The only way to buy them that I have been to find is to order them directly from the Hotkap website, 20 regular sized for $12 + shipping.

On Friday of this week I planted tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds. I use one of my AeroGardens and a special seed starting insert. I numbered the columns so I can keep track of what is planted where. The little brown plugs are inserted in the hole and seeds are placed in plug. The plugs are made of a special sterilized peat and have an indentation in the large end of the plug where the seed is placed.

First the plugs are soaked in water for a short while. Then inserted into openings. During the soaking the plugs expand and when inserted they are big enough they will remain in place and not fall out. Also the plugs are long enough so when inserted in the AeroGarden tank they stick into the water.

Here you see some of the plugs with seeds. Don't need all the rows so am using every other row to get some space between seedlings. One seed per plug and one variety per row this in theory gives six plants of each variety. Since I only need two plants from each variety I will have some extra in case some of the seeds fail to germinate. Also may need an extra plant once in awhile as something happens to plant after it has been planted in an Earthbox. Here is a list of what I planted:

Row 1 - Defiant Tomato, medium size red

Row 3 - Celebrity Tomato, medium to large size red

Row 5 - Golden Sweet Tomato, yellow grape

Row 6 - Red Pearl Tomato, red grape (I think this is the best tomato variety I have ever planted)

Row 8 - Nadia Eggplant

Row 10 - Block Party Pepper

As the resutling transplants are set in the Earthboxes I will provide more information about each of the above varieties. When all the seeds have been planted, each of the plugs is covered with a small amount of potting soil.

Then the planting tray is placed in the water tank and placed on AeroGarden assembly as you can see below. Now all we have to is wait till the seeds germinate. The AeroGarden takes care of the light, fertilizer, and water and keep everything at the right temperature.

The lettuce and spinach continue grow quite nicely. We have harvested quite a bit of lettuce and spinach. You can see in the photo below that I have replaced some of the harvested lettuce with new plants.

With the warmer temperatures the lettuce and spinach have been spending the day outside on the deck. I do roll them back inside at night. While lettuce and spinach can take temperatures as low as 25F they need to be conditioned so that they are use to the temperatures (high and low) and also they wind.

This week my kale seed finally arrived in the mail. The seed had been back ordered for over 8 weeks; didn't know there was a large demand for kale. I planted two varieties in the Earthbox below. They are Red Winter and Dwarf Blue Curled Vates

Here is some information about the kale varieties I planted.

Red Winter Kale - More tender and delicious than other kales. Dark green, oak-shaped leaves have dark red-purple veins. More tender and delicious than other kales.

Dwarf Blue Curled Vates Kale - One of the most attractive of all vegetables in the fall garden. Low, compact plants with finely curled, bluish-green leaves. Usually stands winter weather with some protection. Good cooked or fresh in salads. Grows best in cool weather. Can be grown as a spring or fall crop.

Below are some pictures of my indoor tomato crop. More next week!

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