Last night we had a storm just miss us to the South — there was a strong wind from the Northeast but we only got about 2″ of snow. Today was quite nice, up in the 40s and mostly sunny by the afternoon, and most of the snow melted. These daffodils merely scoffed.
If you can observe the sunlight and shadows around today, you’ll see what’s going to be shaded on about 9/15 — the approximate date of the first frost around here. If something or a patch of ground gets a lot of sun today, it will most likely get a lot of sun for the entire growing season. If something gets less than full sun today, and whatever you plant there needs full sun as most annual vegetables do, it’s growth will be restricted, especially towards the end of the growing season. The warming of the hemisphere lags the return of the sun, so there’s always going to be much more sun available at the beginning of the growing season than at the end of the growing season.
DW today planted, mostly in newspaper pots:
D’s sunflower seeds (unknown)
Oat grass for the cats (Olds)
Zinnia Lilliput (Livingston Seed Co.)
Basil Genovese (Livingston Seed Co.)
Thyme (Livingston Seed Co.)
Sage (Livingston Seed Co.)
Parsley (Livingston Seed Co.)
Zinnia State Fair Mix (Livingston Seed Co.)
Cosmos Bright Lights (Livingston Seed Co.)
Cosmos Sensation Picatee (Livingston Seed Co.)
Chives (Livingston Seed Co.)
Dill Bouquet (Livingston Seed Co.)
Cilantro (Livingston Seed Co.)
Ground Cherry (Jungs)
Marigold Crackerjack Mix (Livingston Seed Co.)
Rosemary (Livingston Seed Co.)
Today I transplanted 28 tomato seedlings from the little plastic containers in which we started them into the newspaper pots made with a Pot Maker.
That was not the best way to do it. Next time, we should plant the seeds in the Pot Maker pot, and plant fewer seeds per pot, like two in each, so less thinning will be needed and we won’t have to pull multiple seedlings out of those plastic pots and try to separate the roots. I like the Pot Maker pot, but it isn’t large and should really be the first pot for seedlings.
I’d like to find a larger pot I could make myself from material that will decompose in the ground. Maybe newspaper or corrugated, old oatmeal boxes, other cardboard boxes.
Fertilized the tomato and other seedlings with Miracle-Gro today for the first time. There’s quite a forest of them now, we have to think about thinning. Clearly, I am not a “pure” organic gardener. I believe that the benefits of “chemical” fertilizers outweigh the costs, especially when the plants are still inside. I think arguments against fertilizing vegetable seedlings you’re going to transplant to the garden are arguments for ideological purity and have little to do with practical reality.
I don’t fertilize the whole garden plot, but feeding individual heavy-feeding plants is worth the cost. I think the best way any gardener can have a better garden is to improve their garden’s soil using organic methods.
Barring emergencies, I draw the line at chemical herbicides and pesticides.
Naturally, after I used the fertilizer, DW told me that she had been planning to sell them as organic tomatoes to her employer, where she works in the kitchen. Oh well.
I think the echinacea is starting to come up today, and there’s probably a pepper coming up. I’m not sure if the stevia is up or not. There are some seedlings in their pots, but they could be weeds.
I cut down that big elm tree I’ve been dreading today. It had about a 24″ diameter where I cut it, 4′ up (bigger lower down). It came down exactly where I wanted to, so that was good. I was a little nervous about it — that’s a lot of tree, and if I had messed it up there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about it except fix whatever it broke on the way down. You should have heard the boom when it hit the ground! We’ll get a lot of bad firewood out of it.
I want to try cutting up at least some of it with a bow saw. That makes more sense to me with lower-quality firewood — cutting it by hand means less of an investment in fossil fuel and money in the firewood.
Ending and Beginning 