What Are You Planting Today, This Week, This Month?

[Beekissed]

I was watching a vid on the Back to Eden gardening wherein he stated that all our bedding plants that are started at a nursery or that we start indoors, when planted out into the garden, will stop in their growth for awhile in order to adjust to the soil cultures there because we start our seeds in sterile soils. Said that when they are shocked like that it temporarily weakens them and the plants even put out chemical distress signals due to the shock and this attracts predatory bugs and slugs.

That makes a lot of sense and it works the same with baby chicks raised indoors in a more sterile environment that are suddenly turned out into a coop and soils that hold myriad bacteria and molds when they are juveniles, then become sick with coccidiosis. That's the reason I raise my chicks right on the soils in the coop, using the deep litter from the adult flock...they then get the same early exposure they would get if they had a broody mama.

Back to the plants...I had started my own indoors last year, using leaf mold from the woods nearby, some composted leaf matter from the coop, mixed with a high grade starter soil from the nursery. That was the best attempt I have ever had at starting seedlings indoors in my whole gardening life.

I had misjudged the number of tomatoes I needed last year and also bought some from the local nursery that were much bigger than those that I had started indoors. Mine outgrew those started at the nursery and continued to do so, though many were the same kind of tomatoes I had planted from seed. They continued to outstrip the nursery stock, producing a thicker,more healthy plant that produced more fruit.

I know there are too many variables to judge about that result to even say the statement from one horticulturist must be true, but I'm inclined to believe the science behind it because it holds true for so many living things, and will once again this year be mixing my starter soil with the local bacteria and fungi found here. I want that early exposure.

 

[ninnymary]

BeeKissed, I am following your posts like a bee to honey! lol I am finding this whole back to Eden thing fascinating. What he says just makes sense. I'm curious though, does he follow up his statements with more scientific facts or are they just his personal experience? I admit I haven't finished the video yet.

I do want to start looking for wood chips. I think they would look nicer than the rice straw that I currently use to mulch with. Can the chips be redwood? Or are they too acidic? I think I can find redwood chips more easily but I'm not sure if they are ok to use.

I attended a tomatoe class where the seedlings were grown to 18" and then were planted deep and watered. They used the dry farm method and never watered them again. Plants were healthy and produced abundantly with great tasting tomatoes. He said because they are planted in large flats that the seedlings grow up and don't get bushy but tall.

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

I don't water my tomatoes either...once you start, you have to continue and you have to water deep so the roots grow deep. We are on a well, and though it's a good one, we just can't see risking using it on the garden when the summer is already dry. We tend to just mulch them good and let them do their own thing...in a normal year of rainfall or even slightly dry, that works well.

Mary, in later video interviews with him you get to see all the other things he has discovered down the road and many years later.

Now, I got to see a vid of his chickens in one of those later interviews and where they live and wasn't a bit impressed, rather disappointed that a man who knew so much about good stewardship of the land didn't seem to have a clue about good stewardship of those birds, but that doesn't take away from his gardening chops. It's sort of like Joel Salatin....disappointing to meet him face to face and see how he tends his chickens and to view his avarice, but his pasture advice is spot on.

As he went along with this method he has tried planting things that they say won't grow there, won't grow in the shade, won't grow in that area, etc. and found that just about anything he planted grew despite the warnings.

Here's one follow up vid:

 

[Beekissed]

Can the chips be redwood? Or are they too acidic? I think I can find redwood chips more easily but I'm not sure if they are ok to use.

I think they answer that question in the vids, but I think he just puts more emphasis on the wood chips having a lot of leaf matter in with them, as you would find in freshly chipped up trees.

I think redwood takes a long, long time to decompose, doesn't it? I'll tell you what I did...as soon as I watched that vid and decided to try it, I called local tree trimming businesses(not so local to me, the nearest is 20 mi. away) to see where they dump their chips. They have to pay to dump them in a landfill, so they are always eager for free places to dump them.

The service I called has a place at his place where they dump them over the hill but it's too far over for recovery, so he offered to dump any that he has when doing jobs out my way at my place. And he even knew exactly where I lived when I told him...and NO ONE can find us back in this holler, no matter how often and how good we explain how to get here...said he owns a place out our way. I saw that as a good sign from God that I should be doing this method, for sure!

You might call around and see if any tree services will dump you a load of freshly ground up trees this spring and that way you will get them free and have a good variety.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

What kind of problems are you having with the Miracle Gro soil?

This bag smells really strong, like chemicals. Sometimes it is black and things seem to grow fine, but when it is a brown color it does not seem to work as well and this bag is brown. I transplanted the other day using it and when I watered all the water kind of went up and stayed and then went down. It might be fine, but my friend in Kansas went out and got compost from a tumbler type bin, mixed it with peat moss and her plants look great, so I want to see what my compost will do and save money from buying potting soil if possible. If I have to buy, then I read good things about the Black Gold and the FoxFarm and they do not smell and I guess I just want to stay away from anything with artificial fertilizer.

 

[ninnymary]

Beekissed, I will call around. It seems like everyone around here wants to make a buck. I doubt if I can get them for free. I once was in chinatown looking for fish heads to put in the hole of my tomatoes. They didn't have any but I was willing to settle for some guts. Well the guy took them out of the trash can and charged me $3 for them! He was going to throw them away for pete's sake!

I'm sure that our waste dump probably has them. They sell different soils and mulches there. Maybe they won't be so expensive for a truckload. How tall are your tomatoe starts when you plant them? The farmer that uses the watering once method uses 18" tall plants. Well you can't find them that tall at a nursery. But if yours are normal nursery size maybe it will work for me. I'm really a big chicken to try it though. Tell me how you plant them.

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

I plant mine when they are anywhere between 4-6 in. high and let them do most of their growing out in the garden. I plant them with a little humus from the coop and woods in the hole, and the soil around their roots, hill them up good so that the dirt almost touches their lower leaves and then I mulch that mound well~usually with old hay~ so that it keeps the moisture in the soil and the soil loose...but we have very clay soil here so it eventually hardens up a good bit at the surface. It can still be broken up by hand, though, even then.

I'm hoping this wood chip layer will keep the soils even more loose and retain the moisture there even more, until it can compost down enough to make new soil in a layer over my old, acidic clay.

We can't plant anything like tomatoes, peppers, squash, cukes, etc. out in the garden until mid-May and the threat of frost is finally over.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

My Cherokee Purple tomatoes are sprouting. The pots with compost have weeds. The Miracle Gro seeds are not up. I have a lot of lettuce, kale, cabbage, bok choy, onions and collards. I have some seeds outside in a box in the sawhorse greenhouse and that will be interesting to see if they sprout. I made my list of what I am going to plant and I have everything ordered and looked through my seeds. I have a couple things to order tomorrow.

 

[Smart Red]

Nothing right now. Glad I didn't try starting anything earlier. Without heat everything would be frozen anyway. I fear I lost my Gypsy tomato plant two nights ago when the temps went down to -14 (F). Even with a small heater, the sun room doesn't stay very warm in that much cold.

 

[digitS']

• Seed is up for onions in the greenhouse;
• Snapdragon seed sown in soil mix, yesterday;
• Mix going into containers for a soak with pepper seeds sown, tomorrow;
• Top of refrigerator cleared.

It was a task getting the top of the fridge cleared. I don't know what you use that space/horizontal surface for but I've used it for 10 months each year to collect paid bills. Fortunately, less paper of that sort arrives in our mailbox in recent years. Unfortunately, I didn't discard anything in 2013-2014!

Some old service contracts & information has gone in a higher cabinet ... the aluminum foil and newspaper has covered the fridge, I'm ready for the cookie box of soil and snapdragon seeds which has had 12 hours to drip in the greenhouse! Feel like the real growing season has begun!

Steve