Peas...

Peas! Yea! I had weak germination out in the garden. Maybe because I didn't soak them first? Maybe because I started too early? Maybe because the seeds were two years old? I soaked more pioneer peas yesterday and put the swollen peas in today.

Update

Today was a day that begged for outdoor time, but it also rained 2 inches last night. So rather than finishing preparations on the cover crop area which would involve lifting heavy shovelfuls of soil, I focused on surface chores. This garden has a major weed seed problem, so even though landscaping cloth does all kinds of bad things to soil, I've decided to use it this year. It's only practical to put it down under crops that need a lot of space, so today I installed strips of cloth where I plan to plant tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.

Even though we are still a couple weeks away from our 90% chance of last frost, I went ahead and put the tomatoes and tomatillo plants in. The starts I had been keeping in the house were starting to get really weak looking. They all have one or two true leaves, but they were starting to yellow, and a month of solid grey days left them pretty leggy. I know it's colder than they like, but the landscape cloth should help warm the soil, and we'll protect them if we get frosty temperatures.

Also, and this brings up a bit of a controversial subject, I used miracle grow on them. Up until this year, I was pretty much anti-synthetic anything. Very strictly organic. But over the years I've learned to get a little pickier about my convictions. There are very good reasons to be strictly organic, and I am striving to be so, but I also want a very productive garden this year. I'm putting my all into composting, and I know that in a few years this soil will be really great. For this year, we tried to find a cost-effective and logistically feasible way to import some compost or manure, but failed. Insecticides and herbicides won't touch this garden, but N, P, and K, from both organic and synthetic sources will help give it a jump-start. 

Yesterday I scored a huge load of grass clippings from a neighbor. Those went on the strawberry patch. I hope they don't give me a major slug problem. I've used grass clippings in this way before and had GREAT results. Great weed control, great soil moisture retention, good nitrogen source. We'll see how the berries like it.

And just for documentation's sake, here's the greens garden. The garlic is still the most exciting thing here. The peas are about an inch high, but I had really bad germination on a couple older seed packets. I'll try to infill. The spinach, lettuce, and chinese greens are up, but barely. I hope it's just the cold, grey days we've had. There are a couple kale plants that sprung up from stray roots.

Shiitake (first harvest)

OK, I do believe this counts as the first of the garden produce, unless I can count chives. These shiitakes were about 4 inches in diameter - and smooth as butter. mmmmmmmm.

Fascinating food timeline...

A friend of mine turned me on to a food timeline (Thanks Seth) researched and compiled by Lynne Olver.

I thought I'd look up the origins of the food I'm planning to grow this year and come up with my own garden timeline:

7000 BC. The oldest food crop I am growing is beans.
6000 BC. broccoli
5500 BC. lettuce
5000 BC. cucumbers and squash, potatoes
3000 BC. peas, carrots, onions, and garlic
2700 BC. rhubarb
2400 BC. canteloupe
900 BC. tomatoes and tomatillos
850 BC. celery
300 BC. beets
1st century. strawberries and raspberries
7th century. spinach

Shiitake

A friend and colleague of mine, Luke McCormack, and his wife Carla, host a mushroom plugging party every year and thus introduce bunches of folks in State College to the possibility of home mushroom growing. And this is how I come to have this beautiful log starting to sprout this year's crop from a log I plugged in the spring of 2009.

Luke gets a whole bunch of oak logs and orders the mushroom spawn from www.fungi.com. Everyone grabs a log, drills holes all over the log, jams spawn in the holes, and then puts a wax coating over each plug. Fast forward a couple years, and shitakes start blooming all over the log - and all over town thanks to Luke and Carla.

And on the fungal thread, next time you have 20 minutes, watch Paul Stamets' TED talk on the possibilities of mycelium.

Potato planting time

Potatoes came today from High Mowing Seeds. Four friends and I shared an order of 3 bags of potatoes, Yukon Gold, Red Norland, and All Blue. That gives us about 6 potatoes each, enough for a 12 foot row - or in my case three 4-foot rows. I think we might have wished for a little more, but maybe a 12 ft row is all any of us can really dedicate to potatoes. Regardless, the split did allow us to each have 3 potato varieties, which we wouldn't have done on our own.

As recommended, mine are cut and drying in preparation for planting. I'll probably try for tomorrow, because we have rain in the forecast again starting Friday - another 4 day stretch.

I'm planning to cover these seed potatoes about 4 inches, then add more soil as the shoots grow, hoping for a deep bed of potatoes. I also plan to interplant lima beans between the potato rows. This companion planting idea might repel potato beetles. We'll see.

Impatient gardeners love garlic

Nothing gives me more hope than my garlic patch right now.

The wire mesh suspended over top of the patch is meant to help hold the leaves up. I thought I remembered someone saying this helped prevent damage in the head that could cause rot during storage, but now I think they were talking about onions. Anyway, it's there now, and I think I'll leave it as an experiment. Maybe I'll use it on onions next year.

Nobody walked through this patch. There are a couple rows of a variety I got at the Boalsburg Farmers Market whose leaves grow along the soil surface instead of straight up. At least at first. If I ever remember what it is I'll edit the post.

Gardening is not instant gratification

There is such a thing as starting too soon. Not that I did, I'm just sayin'...

Seeds in cold ground can take a long time to germinate. I know, 'cause I've been watching my pea row everyday for 2 weeks since I planted them April 3rd. Could'a soaked them ahead of time, should'a innoculated them... but no, I wanted them in the ground.

They went in the same day as the Spinach, Komatsuna, China Choy, and Bok Choy. And then it proceeded to rain everyday for two weeks, and stay in the 40s and 50s. Lettuce, chard, and onions went in a week later (April 10).

But even with the maples, forsythia, daffodils and hyacinths blooming, lilac and raspberry leaves budding, rhubarb exploding from its nubs, these seeds are really making me search for green in a sea of raked soil.

In a great show of optimism I put in my second planting of these winter greens this evening, and searched, and searched for signs that something might be coming up. And once I was able to ignore the blown off lime green norway maple flowers littering the bed, I think I saw a couple cotyledons. The hairy fringe of the tips of a pea vine might have made it to the surface. No promises though, it might have been a halucination.

Here's the garden today, April 17th.

The 2-sided fence will support vining plants this year, but we don't plan to go the rest of the way around or add the wire bunny protection until next year.