More Seeds Planted for Kitchen Garden. Seedlings. 3.24.16

Today I planted tomato seeds.  This year I want to experiment with grafting tomatoes onto performance enhancing rootstocks.  I tried this about 5 years ago, but was sidetracked. 

Several rootstock varieties are available for tomatoes, also grown from seeds.  The improved rootstock gives much more vigorous growth, much better productivity, and confers disease and nematode resistance.

I have some old seeds of Maxifort rootstock.  I don't know how well they will germinate at 5 years old, but the seeds can be expensive so I will give them a try.

This year I bought "Supernatural Hybrid" which is also a performance enhancing rootstock.

Tomato Seeds planted 3.24.16

All of the tomato seeds are from previous years, so they were no cost at all.

I planted seeds for the following:

Both rootstock varieties.

Roma
Jersey Boy Hybrid
Supersweet 100 hybrid
Sungold Hybrid
Sunny Boy Hybrid
Better Boy Hybrid.

It looks like I'm not so enthusiastic about Heritage varieties this year.  I may get some out and try, depending on how this experiment goes.

They are planted in the usual seed starting medium in 6 packs, on a seed warming mat.

Kitchen Garden and Herb Seedlings.  3.24.16

Kitchen Garden Seedlings.  3.24.16

Meanwhile, the seeds from last week have all germinated -

Dill
Edible Chrysanthemum
Thyme
Japanese eggplant
Catnip
Chamomile
Johnny Jump Up

The catnip seeds were about 8 years old so I planted thickly.  I want to attract cats to my yard to eat voles and rabbits.  Catnip is also a good nectar plant for beneficial insects and bees.

I let the original okra seedlings dry out.  Too much trouble to grow such a vigorous plant indoors, so early.  So now starting again.  When they size up, I can plant them in the sunroom until outdoors is more summery.

The peppers are blooming.  I started them too early.  They look good in the sunroom.  They had spider mites.  I treated with "Dr. Earth" which seems to have done the job.  I am skeptical about such products but I do not want to spray carcinogens around.

Sweet and Chili Pepper plants, started in January  3.24.16

More peppers and other plants.  3.26.15

These peppers probably need larger containers now. There are so many, that will be a project.

Walking Around. 6.19.15

Ladybug  Browsing Aphids on Apple Leaf.  6.19.15

"Black" calla lily. 6.19.15

 Walking around.  I thought I heard teeny tiny  screams coming from an apple leaf  - looked down and saw a lady bug munching through a field of aphids like a Tyranosaurus rex munching through a field of bunny rabbits.

The "black" calla is kind of elegant.  This one is 3 years old.  Got the usual winter treatment, dry out in fall, store in garage, then move back outside in Spring and water / fertilize.

Butterfly on Tiger Lily.  Nice.  Lilies don't seem to survive at the Battleground place.  But this one did.

Squashes have flower buds.  Corn just might be knee high by the 4th of July.

Sal's Fig seems to be the best adapted to the Battleground place.  I don't know yet about the best adapted at Vancouver - Chicago Hardy, King, and Lattarula are in their first in-ground summer at Battleground.

Good demonstration of how much faster Four O'clocks grow from last year's roots, as opposed to this year's seedlings.   Today I noticed another plant coming up from last year.  Long dormancy - they must need a lot of warmth to awaken.

Tiger Lily with  Butterful.  6.19.15

Squash and Sweet Corn Garden.   6.19.15

Main Crop Fig Buds.  Sa'ls Fig.   6.19.15

Left:  Four O'clock from 2014 root.  Right:  Four O'clock from seed.   6.19.15

Home Orchard. New Trees.

Order came from Raintree Nursery late last week. I kept them in the box in chilly shaded sheltered north location for 2 days. Planted some today. I expect this to be the last "big order". No doubt there will be small additions. This pretty much completes the mini orchard I planned. Nicely packaged. Most are sizable trees. Raintree also had nice bonus plants, gave me a choice.  Nice job. I read not to be alarmed that persimmon roots are black. Sure enough, they are black. I read that the heartwood is also black. I won't live long enough to see that. This is Nikita's Gift. A Ukranian hybrid between American and Asian Persimmons. I think it's 3/4 Asian and 1/4 American, not sure about that.  Nikita does not require pollination.  This was the smallest tree in the bundle.  Saijo Persimmon. Pic from Raintree.  According to the catalog, this is the only Asian persimmon that can be relied on to fruit at the Raintree Nursery.  I think they are higher altitude than here, and a little cooler.  This variety is astringent until ripe.  Saijo does not require pollination.   Nice size whip - 5 ft tall, as thick as my ring finger.  Sweetheart Sweet Cherry. Pic from Raintree.  Self pollinating sweet cherry.  There may be flower buds on the tree.  Would be nice, and quite unusual, to get a taste the first year.Vandalay Sweet Cherry. Pic from Raintree.  Also self pollinating.  Also appears to have flower buds on the tree. Most other sources don't show it looking so black - more wine red.  If so that's OK.

There were also other items - grapes and a raspberry.  Two pears.  I heeled them in, in potting soil for the smaller items, and in my pile of leaf compost for the pears.  They should do OK for a few days.  Too tired to plant more.

Some small trees needed rearranging to plant these.  I dug out my Petite Negri small tree and moved it up the hill, south of the house.  It's now is a chicken wire root basket.  I think the tunnelling animals ate a lot of the roots.  I have some concern about that.  Maybe the basket will help.  Also, dug out a near dead or dead apple tree, unidentified size and type.  In its place is one of the little jujubes.  That made it possible to have the 2 new cherries next to 2 tart cherries in a 2X2 format.  Even though none of them are said to require pollination, it's there if needed or helpful.  The 2 persimmons are north and east of the rest of the trees, since they may grow larger.  That way they wont shade other trees.

I planted volunteer lemon balm from the Vancouver house, next to these new trees.  For honey bees, and beneficial insects, and maybe the flavor will deter some pest animals.  Maybe.

Clover

Clovers are regarded as forages or lawn weeds. When I was a boy, when the earth was green and great mastodons lumbered across the Illinois plains, lawns in my neighborhood and town were mixtures of grass and clover, with occasional dandelions and other weeds. Then came herbicides and fertilizers, and most lawns were converted to monocultures of grass. All of the images below are via wikimedia commons, searching on "clover" and "clover bee".

All clovers are nitrogen fixing, when working with their Rhizobium bacterial friends.  Might be a good idea to buy inoculated seeds, or buy inoculum.   Depends on who you are reading.

Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens) is considered good for lawns.  Dutch White clover is compact, keeping to a smaller size than most other clovers.  It does not require watering, stays green longer than grasses do, and does well in poor soil.  Dutch white clover improves the soil.  This clover is a perennial legume.  Dutch white clover is the type that grew on that ancient Illinois lawn of my boyhood years.  It turns out that before herbicides and fertilizers, clover was included in high quality lawn seed.

The prompting issue for me, now, is to have lots of nectar production for honey bees.  Of course.  White clover is known as very bee friendly and produces a clear, excellent honey.   Even without wanting to make honey, and even without beekeeping, however, the role of clover in soil conditioning and possibly attracting beneficial insects, and nurturing neighborhood bees, makes it a good addition to the lawn.

Part of the "rebranding" of white clover as a weed, was that bees were so attracted to it.  The thought was that, to reduce risk for bee stings, we should eradicate clover in our lawns, keeping them toxic, environmentally wasteful and damaging, and unhealthy, but pure and pretty to some eyes.  Multiple websites, especially grass seed companies, lawn care companies, and purveyors of fine chemical toxins, continue to promulgate the idea that clover is bad.

Red clover (Trifolium pratense)   is regarded as marginal for honey bees, because the flower shape doesn't allow for good nectar retrieval by honey bees.  Even so, they are beautiful to look at, and other beneficial insects can be attracted.  Red clover is a short lived perennial, lasting 2 or 3 years.  .

Red clover with bee.  Apparently, honey bees may not get much nectar, but they can collect and use pollen.  I don't know if some honey bees are better adapted than others, for red clover.  Other types of bees might benefit.  There are other choices, so it might be best to aim for those.

Ferdinand bee from the story of  Ferdinand the Bull.  My favorite book.  And this image is inked onto my right calf.  Looks like this bee is on a red clover.

Crimson clover, Trifolium incarnatum.  "Incarnatum" refers to "blood red".  Not the same as red clover.  A good producer of nectar for honey bees, and the bloom time is after fruits, and before white clover, which makes for a more extended nectar season.  Trifolium incarnatum is an annual herb, and does not regenerate when cut.  So I imagine it would make a good green manure for raised beds, as well.

If I plant in Spring, I may not get much, if any, bloom and nectar, for the white and crimson clovers.  All in good time. The first year of beekeeping is about learning, and improving my environment for them in future years, and seeing what works, and what doesn't work.

White there are already occasional clover plants in the orchard and yard, they are rare.  Probably due to nuking with "weed and feed".  I want a more productive ground cover.  Today I went around the little orchard area and lawns, with a garden rake and packets of white clover seeds.  They can be obtained on Amazon and other places.  I raked the mole hills smooth, spreading the soft  soil around.  Then I sprinkled Dutch White Clover seeds thinly on the prepared patches of soil, and raked a little more.  The first frost is expected in one or two weeks.  I don't know if these first seeds will survive and grow,  If they don't, I'll replant in Spring. By then there will be more molehills, too.   I will wait until other plants are growing, and if no clover germination then, I'll replant.  I feel like I've made another step in the process of creating a more natural and useful area for honey and other bees, beneficial insects, the soil, and the plants and trees.

Moving Orchard Mason Bee Houses

Each year I add new houses for the Orchard Mason Bees.  They fill up almost all of the holes, so I know they are proliferating.  Now to take some to the Battleground place, where there will be lots of trees to pollinate.

One is home made. The other was bought. I should not have kept it so old, they say they should be replaced to reduce disease. Still, they did well and reproduced well last year.

Kitty cat is vaguely curious but only in that "I don't care" cat way.

Packed with bubble pack to avoid rough travel. I think it's OK this time of year. Earlier in the season bumping and shaking is bad for them. Will install them in a little while. I read, ease or southeast exposures are best. This winter I'll have to make some new bee houses. A bee house is a piece of untreated wood, big enough for 5/16th's inch holes, 6 inches deep. Although these are 4 inches deep. There are many different plans. The bees don't care about the details.