Winter Gardening, continued

Planted some seeds in the first "Conastoga" bed. That includes spinach, icicicle radish, napa cabbage, bak choy, seeds from garlic chives.  Pic from Bok Choy, ink and color painting on paper by Wu Changshuo (1844-1927)

I found some unplanted sets for egyptian onions.  I don't need more, but not wanting them to go to waste, so planted them.

Also, in unprotected bed, Laburnum seeds collected last week from Laburnum tree. So those seeds were exposed for winter, and stratified in situ. Those are along one edge of iris bed. Along another edge, Chinese chive, my Illinois strain.

Fig cuttings

These are started 2 to 4 weeks ago.  Depends on the cutting.  The Lattarula is covered on 3 sides with the start of roots.  What fig hobbyists call "root initials".  The Marseille black is not there yet.  I check every other day.  If the paper towel is looking moldy, I rinse the cutting and soak a fresh piece of paper towel to replace the fouled one.  Seems to be working.

Here are 4 cuttings in containers.  The Atreano was making top sprouts, so I potted it up.  It has initials but no roots.  It will need careful nurturing. The Sal's fig was a branch below soil level, that had tiny roots before I pruned it off, and when I removed it from seed starting medium I knocked off most of the roots.  Now it has tiny green buds swelling, so I think it is surviving despite my efforts.  The LSU Tiger cutting had roots about 2mm long, so time to plant that one in seed starting medium.

Today I scratched Plant Success (that again) into the top inch of each of these containers.  I don't think it will hurt.  It might help.

Of these, the Atreano, the LSU Tiger, and the Atreano were sent by generous Fig Forum members.  Response to my sending out cuttings last month.  Nice gardener neighborliness, from a distance..

Winter Gardening for Spring Vegetables

This is a start for gardening for the year.  The raised bed is the standard 4ft by 8ft raised bed that I've been building.  This is the 4th one so far.  The difference now is, I wanted a cover, to warm it up a few degrees.  Pus, protection from deer and rabbits once the cover is in place.

The cover consisted of:
6 2ft rebars.
12 copper brackets with nails
3 10ft long vinyl pipes
2 sections of 4 ft wide chicken wire
row cover.

All but the row cover came from the big orange home improvement store.  The row cover is from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  The chicken wire is held in place by plastic bale twine, recycled.

With row cover in place.  It looks like a conastoga wagon without the wheels.  The row cover wasn't quite wide enough, but I'll get some clothes pins to hold it to the chicken wire.

The rebar is easily removed, in case I don't want to keep this arrangement in place.

The tallest portion of the hoops is about 4 feet tall.  That height will be plenty tall enough for most vegetables, including tomatoes and okra.  But those are for May or June planting.  Here, I planted Oregon Giant snow peas, which grow 3  or 3 1/2 feet tall.  The packet states sow as soon as ground can be worked, so here we are.  Before planting, I sprinkled Plant Success mycorrhyzal inoculant on the surface and worked it in.  Probably more important, I used legume Rhizobium inoculant from Territorial Seeds - made a slurry in water, swirled the seeds around in the slurry, let them soak 10 minutes, then planted and watered in with the rest of the slurry.

Also planted, after adding Plant Success as sort of a "good wishes":
Boston Red Beets 1/2 row
Mini Bok Choy, from New Dimension seeds. 1/2 row
German Giant radish, 1/2 row.
French Breakfast radish, 1/2 row.

There is room for a row of spinach and a row of mesclun.  Room fills up fast.  May need to build a second raised bed for more winter vegetables.

As always this is an experiment.  I don't think it's too early.  I planted radishes and other cold tolerant vegetables in late January, 2011, and they grew nicely.

Hardwood Cuttings

No pics today - forgot camera.

This is an almost-all homework weekend.  However, I did a small amount of garden inspection.

Also applied rooting hormone to some hardwood cuttings.  I didn't expect them to root yet, at all.  And they have not.  I carefully removed the cuttings from the ground, and applied rooting hormone, then carefully placed them back into the ground.


Illustration is Laburnum, from commons.wikimedia.org.   The cuttings I'm experimenting with:  Linden "greenspire", Mulberry "Illinois Everbearing".  I also took 3 small hardwood cuttings from unnamed Laburnum, scratched the bark, and applied rooting hormone before placing them in the same raised bed.  Plus one cutting from Brunswick fig.  Because I can.  The fig cutting did not get rooting hormone.

None of these is "needed".  Just seeing what might happen.  I also collected some laburnum seeds.  Might plant those if I don't forget them.

Ukranian Beekeeping Stamps

From wikimedia commons. 2001  Ukranian stamps

Ukranian beekeeping stamp, 1994 and subsequent issues.

Also this one, 1999.