Branching Out's Seeds and Sprouts

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After weeks of unseasonably cool weather we are being treated to a couple of days way above average, and now it is almost too warm to be out there pulling weeds. We expect to be at 24C (75F) both today and tomorrow, so I am watering my carrot patch and crossing my fingers in the hopes that the heat might make them pop. The chickpea and golden flax starts that I planted out a month ago are looking good!

 

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Given that it is nice and cool in the basement I am spending a few hours bumping up tomato seedlings from tiny 3/4" cubes of soil. I saw a video that suggested using blunt 'tongs' to grab the small soil blocks, and it seems to work like a charm. The next size block is 1 1/2". I don't think the seedlings will be able to stay in there for more than about 1-2 weeks, but it will allow me to fit them all under my grow lights for a little bit longer. After that I will likely bump them up to 4" pots.

 

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Finally getting older and smarter. Have started consciously locating and setting aside snips and trowel BEFORE I empty the bucket of weeds into the compost or green can. It is amazing how the passing years bring wisdom.

 

[digitS']

Branching Out,

Usually, I am just finding produce stickers in the compost.

Last year, there was a spoon ! DW did not want it back in the house.

 

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Big week during what was a mostly warm sunny stretch. We picked up a huge load of compost from our local green waste facility and used it to prep a new bed that I am getting ready for tomatoes. The area was grass before, so I had placed cardboard on the lawn for 2 1/2 months to block the light. When I removed the cardboard the grass below was looking quite dead thankfully. Next my helper kindly dug a whole bunch of holes to accomodate 2 gallon pots; the pots were then filled with soil amendments like half finished compost (homemade, using kitchen scraps, yard waste, rabbit manure and bedding, and lots of eggshells), alfalfa meal, kelp meal, some of the purchased compost, and oyster shell meal. We finished off by covering all of the bare dirt in thin layers of wet newspaper ( just to further discourage any lawn grasses from coming back), and topping it off with a nice layer of the compost that we had picked up. We were so tired in the end; it took us two days to recuperate.

The tomato seedlings will go in towards the middle of June. My current thinking is that at planting time I will cover the patch with Bio360 black film with holes cut in the film to reveal each black plastic pot. Then (theoretically) I should be able to just remove a pot, pop a the tomato seedling in the hole, and then use the amended soil from the 2 gallon container to back-fill around the seedling. If this works it will help a lot, as most of the heavy prep work is being accomplished now during mild weather. Digging holes is not nearly as much fun in mid-June, when the weather heats up.

 

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Tomato experiment: while bumping up seedlings last month there were a few small starts of early, cold tolerant tomatoes that had popped up-- and that were in excess of what I needed. I decided to take the tiny 1-2” tall tomato plants and pot them up in tall 6”cups, filling the containers only half full so that there will be room to top them up as they grow. On March 26th I put them outside under the overhang of the house in a sort of over-sized milk jug set up, with the 6" pots set in several inches of compost inside the large opaque jug. Essentially I wanted to see if they could survive unattended. The varieties are Andrina, Kalinka, and Uralskiy Ranniy.

It has been almost six weeks, and the tomato plants are now beginning to grow. Everything that I have read suggests that their tomato production may be stunted given the long stretch of cold weather that they were exposed to. It will be interesting to see how they do once they start fruiting.

 

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This little lady bug spent the whole afternoon on our sundeck, basking in the warm light.

 

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I am tomato-sitting for a neighbour who is out of town for four weeks so I figured that I would take some photos so that I can tracking the growth of the 54 seedlings, shown in the photo on the left. There are also quite a few trays of my early or dwarf tomatoes which are the large plants, shown in the middle photo.

The photo on the right is my peppers, which are having some time in the fresh air on warm days too. They mostly hang out on the back steps where there is blue sky above-- but no direct sunlight, so I don't scorch their leaves.

Our night time temperatures will only be about 12C(53F) for the next two weeks, so we have quite a ways to go before the plants can move out to the garden. Have decided to get one more 3' LED light bar, and hang it from the ceiling in the utility room. All of the tall peppers and tomatoes will go under the light, on a 6' long folding table; I will rotate them, and have them outdoors as much as possible as well.

 

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I was thinking about you Baymule, when I had to cull one of my Doukhobor tomato plants that was looking infirm. Not sure why I have such a hard time turfing plants-- but sometimes you just have to let go. I figured if you are able to let your horse go, I certainly can let this pathetic tomato plant go!!

 

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Seeds of Diversity, which is the Canadian version of the Seed Savers Exchange, is coordinating three nation-wide community grow-outs this year. One is for ground cherries; this trial is in its second year I believe. One is for BEANS-- how cool is that?? (I have network beans, Jack Holloway beans, and my own beans to grow-- so couldn't participate in that). And one is for dwarf tomatoes, to find suitable cultivars for northern climates, and to collect and share seeds broadly -- in part to encourage folks in apartments and condos to grow tomatoes at home, on their balconies or terraces. There are 240 growers participating in the three different trials this year, and I am very excited to be part of their Dwarf Tomato grow out.

As part of the project they sent me 15 seeds of Rotkappchen, a tomato from Germany also known as 'Red Riding Hood'. It is an early dwarf tomato that only grows to about 2' tall, and that performs best when grown in a 1 gallon container. My instructions are to plant all of the 15 seeds, and to keep the ten strongest seedlings. So far 7/15 have sprouted, so they are all keepers. Currently the plants are about 3" tall, and very sturdy; the stalks look like small tree trunks. For this project they ask for a 20' isolation distance, which seems reasonable given the potential broad distribution of the seeds. I am to save lots of seeds over the course of the summer, for sending back to Seeds of Diversity. It feels so good to be part of a community initiative like this one, and that the opportunity presented itself when I was trying to learn more about early dwarf tomatoes is really good timing.