the shelf with the red cups on it is mine

The shade cloth is now up in the greenhouse.  When I went it was a dreary rainy day - not much light getting in on the south side.

Two Soiled Trays + One Aerogarden Seed Starter Tray

DONE - well almost - and now sitting on top of the florescent fixture which is nice & cosy warm

I decided it would be very fitting to plant my tomatoes during Earth Hour; but I got a call from my friend Barry and we talked gardening in the dark (on phones that had batteries that were charged from before the hour began) ... fitting?


I didn't start planting until 9:30 pm on the button and was in bed by 3 am ZZzZzZz ... I still need to label the cells and this won't happen until I can take the plastic lids of the trays (I like to label straws and slip bamboo skewers inside as the plants grow).   Mind you - they are all numbered on my Master List ... and I was wise enough though to mark the bottom of each of the two large trays holding all the little dirt-filled cells so I'd know which end of them was where ... AND ... I eventually realized that I needed markers poking out of the cells I was about to plant ... in both trays ... since it was hard figuring out after the seeds were covered which were planted and which were waiting to be ... and I was doing double duty on two trays that looked identical as well as doing the aerogarden seed starting tray which were marked going the opposite way to the soiled cells (sounds like they soiled themselves - I know - but it was I who soiled them ... 'and No ... they don't need a diaper change')!

I kept myself on my toes for over 5 hours adding serious depth to the number 11 growing on my forehead between my eyebrows.

Two shots of the seed starting tray for the aerogarden.   There are 70 sponges with organic growing medium in a styrofoam bed floating on water which I'll add organic fertilizer to in two weeks. 

 

Once the sprouts are up, I'll remove the plastic and the lights are on a timer for tomato growing so I can actually go away for two weeks at a time (which is why I got this because theres a Bienniale Conference I like to attend that is always held at the end of March)!  And once the tomatoes are planted into deep cells and hardening off, I'll plant herbs in the aerogarden and they'll last me 4 months.  One day I'll get the shelf unit so I can hang it on a wall and regain some precious counter space.  This year I am paying close attention to how well the seedlings do in the aerogarden and in soiled cells (as well as at the community greenhouse). 

I got a BIG one

I just had this photo e-mailed to me from my greenhouse watering buddy ... the whippersnapper there is doing well.  Thanks Gary!

4' Monster Lights

Well they are up!  Those lights I bought on a whim that dreary day sometime in early February when I found myself in the local hardware store asking about florescent grow light set ups.  The first person I asked didn't have a clue what I was talking about and I must say I was somewhat relieved because I hadn't written anything down nor made any definite decisions about it was I thought I wanted.  Then around the corner came this other guy who didn't know I'd just been served and he asked if there was something he could help me with.  I was just trying to be polite and explained that since I didn't really know what I was talking about it would be pretty useless trying to explain what I needed for my 40+ types of tomato seedlings (yes back then it was 40+ and now it's 56+).  Seems he was some sort of an aquarium expert and he said he knew what I was talking about and I left with a $153 receipt for an order he placed by phone to his supplier after he took of for about a half hour on me.

About two weeks later I got a call and had to go pick the 2' x 4' four-tube monstrosity of a fixture up that  I've been walking past it in my hallway for a few weeks now.  Today I finally decided to see if I could at least begin to try to see if I could put some of the bits together and get it to light up.  No problem.  I even got the little on & off remote gizmo I thought was a timer thing rigged up to it and it works too ...  so I suppose I can keep that bedside so I don't have to get up to flick the switch off & on before I go to sleep and when I get up in the morning.

I put the whippersnappers in my front window (squint and you can barely see them at the far right) with the eggplants & peppers.  There is plenty of room for the sage (one just came up so it's been put under the light) ... and the basil seeds and edible flowers I planted yesterday will go under too as soon as they sprout!

Almost Ready

I visited the greenhouse today and took a few little seedlings from my cups to bring home.  

I've added the little batch of parsley and a few other wanton seedlings to the collection hanging 

under the florescents in my kitchen.  

I am going to pot up some eggplants and peppers growing under the aerogarden lights to bring to the greenhouse and put in a south-facing window at home and see how they all do.   They are all really going gangbusters under the aerogarden lights. Time to leave the nest guys.

And finally I got the chain from the hardware store that I might need  to hang my lights ... just in case I can't just lean them on something so they light the shelf I am setting up on a table in a south window upstairs ...  a little redundant since this new monster has four 4-foot tubes ... but I'm thinking I might be able to use it to just augment the sunny sill.  I'll have to make sure the timer is set so my home doesn't glow from afar in the middle of the night.

I've hauled the new lights upstairs and I've lined up cells in trays ... everything this year is being planned around 56 varieties of tomatoes ... two trays with 72 cells each - heheh - that means each tray gets the whole shebang and more.  Oh the anticipation of seeing all 56 seedlings together and deciding what will go in the remaining 16 cells.

I planted three little self-watering potlets of sage.  I call them potlets because they are so small that I just 'know' (I think) that I'm going to have to pot up within the month which I don't really think is the best use of my time ... but they are self-watering and quite cute ... if I remember from last year, sage is quite small & cute so I am hoping to be able to get away without potting up!   Intellectually risky business - this gardening!  

I like planting a few seeds in deep cells and clipping the one or two weakest seedlings when they come up (often I wind up gently wiggling them out and planting them in another pot ... and I know I said I don't like potting up - I just realized that's what I am doing ... hmmm ... it felt good saving the little guys and almost as good being so thrifty and super good giving them away because they're extras ...  and I really like bottom watering & fertilizing (which I'm just getting the hang of with the deep cells under the aerogarden lights now.  The tray takes a bottle and a half of the container I am using now ... I was enjoying using the squirt bottle to moisten the tops of the dirt but heck sometimes that's just too much work so I've experimented and found what it takes to do it solely from the bottom.  Each day means adding a little more ... but I've got the hang of it now that I took the time and did that experiment.)

unidentified tomato seeds sprouting

Last year I saved some seeds ... or rather I had every good intention of saving seeds but partway through I must have gone to bed and totally forgotten about them (oh - I remember now ... I was waiting for them to get all foamy and when they got that disgusting I was so grossed out I just put a lid on the jars because I think there were fruit flies and whatnots in with them by this point) ... well I found the jars about a week ago and was about to soak them so they could be put in the dishwasher and I decided to number them and soak some of the seeds and redry the others after getting them unstuck from the jar bottoms.  I numbered the baggies I put them in and now they are all sprouting and I can't remember what they are but I am really hoping there's an Elberta Peach coming my way again this year.  I'll know if one of the tomatoes plants is really fuzzy (heheh) fingers crossed!

so enough about the whippersnappers ...

I counted my tomato seed packages yesterday and gave them their own 3-ring binder [it's red (for tomato red) --> I'm using a big brown binder for the seeds I've planted and am following the progress of <-- in dirt (get it) ... and I just put my notes and info for the greenhouse in a yellow (sunshine-driven) coloured binder].  If I don't do this, I just know I'll wind up at school someday with seeds instead of grade sheets ... I use the school colour (blue) for those binders now!  but I do digress now don't I ...

I wrote out a planting plan yesterday and lined up my pots ... I sorted my seeds and got them all back into their little slots from which they'd strayed during last year's planting frenzies ... and I counted them all ...

AND I have 56 different kinds of tomatoes this year (including the 'whips' ... I came by 21 types last week when a fellow & self-proclaimed tom addict, too, and I traded ... so now I've got yellow, red & black grapes, green tomatoes, orange ones, fuzzies and potato leafs, determinates and indeterminates and some the size of blue berries - there's one I'm going to put in sugar and dry and one I'm going to hang upside down indoors so I've got tomatoes ripening on the vine until December and a few I'm going to make sauces and pastes from and there's a bunch for the freezer ... and those for eating ... I am so hAppPPpy

YES of course there'll be beans & peas and lettuces and zucs and pumpkins and violets and naturtiums and calendulas and basils and all that BUT there's going to be a main attraction at the zoo this year ... my basizillions of tomatoes (I sure hope it's going to be a good year for them) ...

Oh I am just so hAppPPpy

give 'em some fish fert & they grow an inch?

Not exactly an inch nor 'give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile' neither ...  but those whippershappers are really living up to their name ... I measured them yesterday morning and the tallest were 4 inches.  This morning the tallest are 4.5 inches.

I've just potted 4 whippersnappers up and I'm taking them to the greenhouse to see how they do there.  I'm giving two away to volunteers - maybe they will have different  outcomes (and if theirs are better I'll ask what they did so I can learn more).  I really buried them up to their ears and left about 2 inches so I can even add more soil once the stem grows again ... I am believing this will help them develop really strong roots and super strong stems!  No more coddling ... they'll take what they get at the greenhouse (and I won't be around to see what that is unfortunately as I am trying to stay away and let others on the Watering Committee do their jobs - guess it's a little like letting kids go off to Nursery School ... except I've got a bunch back home if anything happens - so I care ... but not so much really).

Letting the tray down 2" & fertilizing day

I weakly fertilized everything again today (first fert for whips which range from 1" - 4.5").

FINALLY a tiny cayenne pepper

seedling(s) poking heads out of seed coats (I just carefully pried two off)!  So now there's a total of three actually.

Some eggplants are about 4 inches tall and the sweet peppers are doing almost as well.  The Jalapeno Peppers aren't too much smaller than the rest.  I've now watered twice using the Schafer Fisheries fertilizer.

The Whippersnappers are doing so well - I'll have to transplant really soon and lower the trays as they are touching the florescents already.  I wonder how the little beheadling will wind up doing?  I'll make sure I label it so I know.

14 of 15 Whippersnappers UP

Two more whippersnapper tomato seedlings just popped up overnight. I now have 14 in total - out of 15 planted. And the little beheadling is going to make it! I thought he would (well not right when his head came off and the seed coat with the two leaves in it were laying in my hand - but rather when a couple of days later it looked like something green was bubbling out of the end of the stem top! He's sporting two true leaves now - so it looks like those first two (fake) leaves must have been what came off and the little central area where the true leaves come out of wasn't damaged. I'm no scientist - but that's what it looks like to me.

Photos to follow at some point - later ... yeah yeah - I know (trust me - he's cute)!

the little beheadling

I don't want to speak too soon BUT the little beheadling seems to be growing a leaf out the top of the stem now!  Weirder things have happened - right?

This is not the beheadling but a poor photo of some in another pot (Pot #3) that have already begun to develop their first true leaves!  That only took 10 days!

Here I am acting quite surprised at the whipper's when my eggplants & peppers have been going great guns for a couple of days now but they were planted a whole week earlier so the whippers ARE doing well (I won't foist poor photos of eggplants & peppers on anyone right now ... dang I wish I could figure out how to use this camera ... I'm an experiential learner ... and possibly even a flukin' fraud whose whole profession is about to take a tumble)

Whippershappers - two steps forward & one back

In the 1st Pot I inadvertantly beheaded one of my sprouts trying to help the seed casing off :( ... (that makes 3 instead of 4 in Pot One) in the 2nd pot there's another little new sprout struggling out of a seed case (I put a water drop on it so it will soften and maybe that will help it :)  (that makes 2 in Pot Two) and in the 3rd pot there's another little sprout coming up too (that makes 4 in Pot Three) ... Total 9

I made a note to myself to soak the seeds next year before they go into the soil so that maybe the seed cases are less difficult for them to emerge from (three cheers for the 10-Year Journal from Lee Valley because I am actually using it for things like this and can find notes to myself at this time of the year without too much scrounging on my belly around on cold cement floors in the garage where I tend to store a fair amount of obscure & random gardening stuff)

more whippersnappers UP

Friday
In the first pot, there are 4 sprouts, in the second there is now 1 sprout and in the third pot, there are 3 sprouts.  Total of 8 whippersnappers so far!

All of the other seedlings are doing well.  No hot cayenne peppers yet.

Thursday

Five whippersnapper (tomato) seedlings are up ... and I do mean UP as well as up. I have been eyeing the florescent light in my kitchen for quite awhile now thinking it either needs to come down or I need to use it for seedlings. So guess which idea won out. I've rigged a light plant tray up underneath it with twine and it is providing light now for my seedlings! I knew I ordered those two extra grow florescent tubes for a reason! Whippersnappers are usually up before any of the other tomatoes (not just because they are the only ones I've planted so far) but because they are early determinates. This type of determinate can be grown in containers because it is a low-sprawling vine which means I can grow it under lights indoors for a fair length of time before it needs to go outdoors. It will take off quickly once it is set outside and produce numerous sweet, pink-red, oval cherry-size fruits. The reason I know this is that I have been following other tomato growers blogs during the past couple of years and taking notes so that I can try what they have had successes with

lots UP

jalapenos UP, Cal Wonders UP, Buran Sweets UP, Black Beauties UP, Rosa Biancas UP, Cippolinis UP - waiting on Cayennes & Whippersnappers now (so sorry for blurry little photo - it's taking me ages to learn my new camera ... this is a result of a dirty lens) HA ... too tired after exploring all the other possible options that I'm letting it be as it is ZzzzZZzzz 

more seeds in & some seedlings up

I was at the Trinity Bellwoods Greenhouse on Saturday for a Plant A-Long that Barbara and I held with some of the volunteers.  I planted more Hot Cayennes, Early Jalapenoes, California Wonders and Buran Sweet Peppers to see what differences there are between my seedlings at home under lights and those planted in the greenhouse without florescents.  I also got some sprawling and upright ground cherries from Maria (in the foreground right wearing the purple shirt).  I bought some this year as well - so these will be ones to watch.  As well, I planted arugula and two types of parsley that Barbara (with the red scarf at the right) had soaked overnight for us.  You can see some of my 14 red plastic beer cups in the tray to the far left.  Hala, in the background at the left, made a self-watering tray using threaded cotton strips and is tying a tray underneath the shelf to catch drips and provide the plants with air circulation.  It's an experiment and it will be interesting to see how well it works.

Back at the Ranch @ Home

front two rows of cippolinni's have been up 3 days 

as well - rosa biancas have been up for 2 days

... behind black beauties have been up almost a day!

I was reading some tweets today about dwarf tomatoes having been planted so I went through some old posts on you grow girl and realized I needed to plant my whippersnappers today (5 in each pot).  I put them on top of the aerograden light for warmth to germinate and will put them on the hanging rack I've strung up under the florescent in the kitchen as soon as they break through the surface!

Seedy Saturday/ Sunday - Day 1

FINALLY

I hauled pots & trays and bags of dirt out.  I've been henpecking around my seed package binders for the past month ... organizing & reorganizing them in planting order and in order of years (yup this is my third year so I can say that now) ... getting each packet back to where it should be - luckily I found the final seeds planted in the garden last year neatly placed in sleeves of a little book almost right where they should have been ... after almost unpacking the entire garage and I found what else I was looking for exactly where I brilliantly put it - so no I didn't foolishly pack my heating mat way at the back of the garage behind a ton of things - it was right on the treadmill (where I should have been during the past month and where I should have found it immediately).

I'm learning.  This year I poured the soil and water into a big dish and used a trowel to scoop it into deep cell pots AND the whole mess was done in the tub so after it was all done I just took the hand-held shower and sprayed the tub clean!  It certainly looks like I posed the Conversations with My Gardener by Henri Cueco book on the side of the tub but no - it's where I was last reading it - in the tub ... when I realized it was there I figured it should be in the shot.  And of course, you all know why I didn't take a before shot - huge clumps of brown soil doesn't translate well in a bathroom photo, etc.

I also wrote out my planting plan with a little legend at the bottom ahead of time so that there was no searching for missing pen & paper with muddy fingers not coming back to the pot and mistaking what went where when, etc. (third year gardening - remember)!  From left to right, I planted two rows of hot peppers (cayenne and jalapeno); two rows of sweet (california wonder and buran sweet); two rows of eggplants (black beauty and bianca rosa) and the last two rows are all chippolini onions. 

  

And now my little warm wet seeds are all snug in their cells.  I put 4 into each.  I'm hoping two will survive and that I can transplant one of the two survivors into a second tray (of course nothing living will get kicked too far off the island).  Oh - and I marked the bottom lower left corner of the actual deep cell tray so that if I flip it around during watering I won't be making any mistakes about which plants are hot peppers and which are onions!


Gardening has really been creeping into these past couple of weeks.  Wednesday I attended a lecture at the Toronto Botanical Gardens by Mathew Wilson called How to Garden in a Changing Climate. Saturday we got our shelves at the greenhouse.  Today I went to Seedy Saturday on a Sunday.  This week, Wednesday, I'm looking forward to going to Lulu Lounge and getting a copy of Grow Great Grub for the greenhouse at Gayla's book launch.  Saturday I'm attending a plant a-long at the greenhouse and helping finish our cold frame (if only just to put Kyla's book in the book bin). 

Seed Buying Spree

I've spent the better part of the day on-line looking at old posts and scouring seed catalogues. I know I have to start planting some seeds soon so I decided I'd make sure I wasn't sorry later for not having done my research on time.

Looks like I'm just coming in under the wire for somethings (ie, I think pepper seeds could have been planted last week)! I won't get any done until at least next weekend but at least I'm not too far behind some of the other obsessives!

I really wanted
Koralik tomatoes
again for my roof
(I got this plant
from Julianna
last year and it
was packed with
decorative clusters
of little red cherry
tomatoes).


I found Koralik seeds at http://www.tomatofest.com/ ... and I wanted Whippersnapper because it's a really early tomato (Julianna was eating hers in May last year). I was glad to find it at http://www.terraedibles.ca/ (the rest of the order just happened - I'm a shoppa-seed-a-holic and there is no cure - thankfully).

$45.40 Tomatofest - 2010 Tomato Order

Koralik $2.95
Costoluto Genovese $3.95
Fargo $2.95
Fuzzy Bomb $3.95
Piccolo $3.95
Pink Accordion $3.95
Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe $3.95
Red Fig $2.95
Sweet Pea Currant $3.95
Tim's Black Ruffles-Tomato Seeds $3.95
Yellow Ruffled $2.95

Subtotal: $39.45
Tax: $0.00
Shipping and Handling: $5.95
Grand Total: $45.40

$32.15 Terra Edibles Tomato (and Chard) 2010 Order

All seeds were $2.50/package.

Black from Tula
Bloody Butcher
Cossack Pineapple Ground Cherry
Hillbilly
Isis Candy
Riesentraube
Sicilian Saucer
Whippersnapper

Chard - Five Colour Silverbeet

Shipping: Mail - Canada: $5.95

GST Tax: $1.42
PST Tax: $2.28

TOTAL $32.15