Geraniums are Up

Geranium seedlings

Those plastic cookie trays turned out to be fantastic for seed propagation. (Just what I needed, another excuse to eat cookies.)

The geraniums sprouted in just over a week with sturdy, strong seedlings. Germination rate was excellent with nearly every seed producing a seedling. Now is the tricky time for me, getting them to the next stage when they make true leaves.

Propagating Geraniums

I do this in two ways...from seed and from soft tissue cuttings. For the latter I use bulb jars, just because they are small and attractive. I pinch soft, green tips with a few leaves off my favorite plants and keep them in the little jars of water until they are well-rooted. Then I plant them in containers of earth. This winter I am using four-inch pots, as space is an issue.

The first one I did last fall is blooming for the second time.

Seeds are started, usually earlier than this, but March is acceptable, in cookie containers. Beck likes the cookies that come in clear plastic, snap lid containers so I have saved several over the winter.

I fill the bottom half with seed starting mix, moisten with warm water, firm the evenly spaced seeds, about six to a box onto the surface of the soil and cover with just a dusting of dry seed starting mix.

Then I snap the boxes shut, write the variety and date on the label and set in a sunny window. When the seedlings are large and robust they can be transplanted to the container of your choice.

Most of the geraniums I have now were started from seeds over the years. In fact last fall I had so many more than I had room for that any that were scraggly and worn out got the frost treatment. I felt bad about it and kept bringing in "{just one more" but I did manage to toast a few of them.

And So it is Spring

Lettuce is up in the barrels, as are a few beets and some other stuff...can't seem to remember exactly what I put in there one cold day..oh well, I will figure it out when it comes up.

The tarda tulips my Canadian friend gave me last year are blooming eagerly. They are simply delightful and I think of her whenever I see them.

Liz's BF did both gardens with a big Troy Built horse rototiller yesterday. The soil is beautiful, smooth and dark and rich. I planted a few radishes and beets this morning just because I could. I used Pinetree garden seeds mixtures as I love surprises...or at least garden surprises...and trying new varieties.

I am scaling back tomatoes this year though. After last year's blight I am gun shy. We planted 52 tomato plants and only ended up with a dozen or so fruits because of the blight. This year I will plant in barrels and just really nurture what I do grow...rather than going for a large volume.

Anyhow, back to planting, and writing this garden blog after a long winter hiatus.

High summer

And everything is weird. It rains almost every day. Always enough to shut down the haying. Never enough to actually get the plants wet. I have had to water all the bucket and pot plants all summer.


The winesap apple set lots of fruit, but most of them are falling off now. They seem to have been pollinated, so maybe it is a characteristic of the type of tree. I don't really know as this tree has never set any amount of fruit before. I am not even sure it is a winesap, as I don't remember which tree was which. Peg had them...the other was a black astracan ( a historic variety to which there doesn't seem to be much reference). I am hoping even a third of apples that are left hang on to the tree. We are not set up to do anything about insect control, but they would make nice applesauce I think.

I am going to pick whatever zucchini is out on the vines today. We will be gone when it matures and I don't want to waste it. If I find enough I will cook it with some of our homemade breakfast sausage, baby rainbow carrots and rice for dinner tonight.


The sunflowers are way over my head now. Geraniums and petunias grown from seed are beginning to flower. It is always so exciting waiting to see what color they will turn out to be as I usually plant mixes.

Cobweb hens and chicks

The jury is still out on the Dolce Flambe petunias. They are an interestingly delicate combination of white, pink and yellow, but are not very eye-catching from a distance. I am waiting to see if they become more showy as they develop more flowers. Meanwhile there are a lot of things blooming now and we and the hummingbirds are much enjoying them.

Jesse's Giant Sunflowers

Liz and I put the last of the tomatoes into the ground today...not that I don't have more plants, because I do...just no more room. I will try to get at least some of the rest into containers....in fact I need to go out right now and do that.

I also hoed the whole upper garden and hilled up the potatoes up there. Some of the winter squash was eaten right down by something so I just put tomato plants in the empty holes in the mulch. There are baby squash on the greyzini already! Beets are up. Indian corn is knee high, which is amazing as it has been in less than two weeks. Merveille de quatre saisons lettuce is forming heads even though I have it planted in half a fifteen-gallon barrel. This lettuce is great stuff...seems to stay sweet and crunchy forever. I will certainly plant more when we are done with this bunch!

Cats in the Garden Pond two by two

And in my freshly tilled soil everywhere. These darned little barn cats wrecked my first planting of beans, which I replanted yesterday. They are always knocking over the water garden plants and trying to catch the gold fish and koi. The only one that doesn't drive me nuts is Kashette.

If you think that wheelbarrow is going to keep us out of that nice litter box you just tilled up, think again!

Defense against the dark (cat) arts

We didn't do it...and that's our story and we're stickin' to it

Yesterday after night milking the boss took the skid steer with the stone bucket on it and dug over my old sheep pen garden patch. It is so fertile up there (after years of housing sheep) that a cow parsley plant will have a root as big as my wrist in a few months. The soil was very dry and worked up beautifully to a fine, crumbly texture. Wish I could plant today, but it rained a little last night and our soil is such that if you touch it when wet it compacts to the consistency of hardened cement.



While he dug I weeded my squash and giant sunflowers and put a little Sevin on the squash. Cucumber beetles are practically wiping it out. I have been gardening every minute that I am not milking cows, bookkeeping, cooking or writing...and there has been darned little cooking or bookkeeping going on around here. I do flowers one day and food the next. I couldn't get very forward with the food gardening though until the boss got my ground ready for me. Soon as it dries out, full speed ahead.

Geranium and petunia seedlings, just planted and waiting for some sun.

Walking onions

Top, or walking onions

Are starting to set tops now. As soon as these harden off you can plant them either in pots or in the ground to propagate as many as you want. They will self sow as well, which is how they earned their nick name.

Peas in bloom

May happenings

Wild violets

Speedwell

Beans are partly planted. Now if only the cats would stop digging them up. More lettuce up. Spinach up. Some squash and a row of big head sunflowers in. Planted some Hosta, var Striptease that Alan bought me for Mother's Day. Also have a new echinacea, but I have to decide where to put that as it is going to be tall. The lawn needs mowing.....

Do Not

Buff Orpington hen nibbling the last of the indoor lettuce

Dig up the Asiatic lilies you planted last year in the course of making a hole for the gladiolus for this year.

(Dang it!)

Garden stuff happening now:

1) Four gold fish made it through. They seem to be mating. The sun fish will probably eat the fry.
2) Planted: lettuce, spinach, carrots, dahlias, cannas, mixed flowers, peas, beans (Slankette, the best variety I have ever found) Scarlet runner beans, 4 O'clocks, lilies of the valley and gladiolus (in the place where the Asiatic lilies were-duh)
3) Lettuce is up. Spinach too. And peas.
4) Need to buy another seed flat and get a lot more tomatoes going. Set out some squash seed just in case.
5)Started some new water cannas. Hope they grow well.

Not much posting

Nearly the only garden things that are going on now are tiny geraniums popping up, spindly threads of petunia seedlings and a couple of lusty little tomatoes peeping out of cut off a Mountain Dew bottle in the living room windows. As I write it is snowing up a squall and the wind is whistling up December. They can't drown out the gurgling rings of red-winged black bird calls though, or silence the insistent bugling of northbound geese. Still I am having a hard time working up any enthusiasm for gardening, even to the point of starting a few more petunias. It is just too persistently cold and dreary.



However, the one bright spot on the still-winter stage is the indoor lettuce. After I took this portrait, I plucked a few leaves and ate them. Yeah. Good stuff

Seeds are coming up

Salmon geraniums....ultra sweet tomatoes...it is really too early to start tomatoes here, but the seed is about five years old and I wanted to germination test it. It is fine! The indoor lettuce is big enough to pick for sandwiches and we are. We had company the other night for supper and I had fun saying that I was going to pick lettuce for dinner in the middle of February!

Fall planting

Planted rainbow carrots, lettuce mix, fall lettuce mix, mesclun and peas on the 16th

From the diaries and from home

From Charles Thurwood diary 1874 Fort Plain, NY Warm and showery and I worked fro Ab Dunckel worked in the hop yeard and in the afternoon we had thunder showers and rained very hard and our colt got sick and Dunckel came down at night 20 eggs

From Hattie Lippencott diary 1928 i went to church but not SS school as Amelia and Addy came to dinner. They went to church also. Mate came over. We went to church in the evening.

Here at Northview in 2007;

I wrote about how much I enjoyed black locust trees in bloom in the Farm Side this week and a friend called to let me dig a couple in his daughter's yard. Liz and I went and got them and Alan planted them for me. ***Update-the darned things died within days. Have to try again this fall.



The lovage is nearly as high as my head and coming into bloom now. Other, smaller herbs are also doing well. Mulching with straw brought all the thymes through the winter and the variegated pineapple mint finally made it through as well. The so-called yellow lilac I have been nurturing for years is finally going to bloom. Doesn't look too spectacular though. The garden pond is fully functional, at least in part because I broke down and used algae killer on it. Makes for much clearer water. There will be a water lily in bloom today, plain white, but pretty just the same.



The boss dug me up some ground with the skid steer so I got more tomatoes, beans, and some squash in. Not nearly as much as I would like and the cats already broke one tomato off, but I am glad to have a few things planted anyhow. It is about as nice a season as New York has to offer

Here in 2007

All the little wild flowers I planted and the calendulas and forgetmenots, dahlias and such are up and in the two leaf stage. There are lily pads open on the garden pond, irises are ready to bloom soon, and lettuce ready to pick. I really need to get the tomatoes and hot peppers out but haven't yet. The sitting porch is ready for sitting and blessedly cool in the afternoon.

I was wondering why the hummers suddenly vanished but a look down the driveway made it all clear. Acres and acres of wild honeysuckle open now..they don't need my sugar water. As I sat looking out at the porch yesterday two vultures flew by and I actually saw the top of them rather than the bottom because they were in the air channel over the river. They look quite exotic from above.

Good link on planting by the moon

Makes sense to me.

Planting, not writing

Too busy with planting to write about planting. Put in some flowers today. Lettuce in barrel is up after only about three days. Just amazing. Spring is far ahead of where it was last year at this time. Despite constant cold wet weather grass is coming up fast, leaves are just beginning to show on the trees and flowers are coming up all over.

I planted banana seeds today. No idea if they will grow, but it seems like a fun idea. At least it was warm enough today to run the filter in the garden pond.

The men put the disks on and disked down the old spreader field.

2007

*Chives are up and thriving*

April is nearly over and it is still very cold and wet. Far too muddy to plant anything in the ground although I have started half-barrels of lettuce and rainbow carrots. The men started field work, but the rain shut them down. Rain across the midwest has suspended planting there as well, promising high prices for grains this fall if it doesn't change and soon.

Too cold

It is too cold for much gardening. The rhubarb is up out in the main garden, but barely. More seedlings are coming up in my flats, but not growing very quickly. Spring is waiting for something, and whatever it is hasn't come yet.

April showers

Snow that is....spring is really struggling to take a hold here. We are getting a lot of cold rain interspersed with squally snow. Our maple man brought us two gallons of syrup yesterday and said the run this year was poor, maybe half of normal. I am not surprised as the weather has been very unsettled since early on. Cardinal creeper came up in about three days, the amaryllis that Alan and I grew from seed will bloom again soon, not much else exciting on the garden front....just marking time.

One last nice day

A fairly warm night last night and nice this morning with a colorful dawn and lots of bird song.

The jelly bean tomatoes came up yesterday already. Amazing! Rain is supposed to come in tonight with a heavy storm and wintry weather to follow. Bah!