Update on Potato Seedlings. 3.24.2021

 Today I repotted the potato seedlings.  Germination was actually pretty good. I had planted about 3 seeds per cell.  Germination was about that, or slightly less.  From the 6-pack plus 2 cells, I planted 16 plants, and discarded a couple of runts.

The potatoes still seem delicate, and quite a bit behind the tomatoes and most of the eggplants, and a bit behind most of the peppers.  There is quite a wide range of vigor, and some have different leaf appearance and coloration.  Maybe this up-potting will give them a big boost.

Spreading Wood and Chicken Bone Ashes for Mineral Supplementation. 3.24.2021

 Yesterday I spread a small bucket of woodstove ashes in one of the tomato beds and one of the sweetcorn beds.  I had to pull back the leaf mulch for the tomatoes.   I hand-tilled and turned over the corn bed.  That one is in the footprint of a former raised bed.  The raised bed was one that I had built the first summer here, 2012 or 2013.  I don't know whether being where a raised bed was, is good for the soil or not.  The soil here is low in calcium, good in potassium, low in phosphorus, low in magnesium.  The wood ashes are a combination of trees that grew here that were cut and burned for firewood, and the bones that resulted from making dog food from chicken thighs.  Those will be high in calcium, phosphorus, and trace minerals.  Potassium too from the wood ashes.  It kind of averages out to a decent mineral supplement for those vegetables.  Plus, the soil here is very acidic.  The ashes are alkaline, so moderate that.  I apply a dusting of ashes, and let it mellow for two or three months before using.

Potatoes should not be given alkaline supplements, so I did not apply in potato areas.

The bone fragments are still visible, but after burning them they are soft and fragile like chalk.  They break down very quickly.

After rains, turning the soil and tilling in, the minerals will be pretty evenly dispersed.

 

Plums blooming now. 3.21.2021

 It looks like all of the Asian plums and plum hybrids are blooming now.  They seem to have a lot of overlap.

Hollywood Plum.  I grew this from a cutting, from the Hollywood plum I had in Vancouver. It stays fairly small.

Crimson Pointe (I think), ornamental plum.

The white flowered branch for this plum is Beauty.  The tree also has a graft from a very dark skin and flesh pluot, farmer's market, that I grew from seed.  It has never fruited, but it blooms.  This tree was originally "Ember", a hybrid Asian/American plum that never bore either.  I had grafted it on a Hollywood rootstock, which seems to work fine.

This tree is Methley.  The tree is more than 8 years old - I replanted it from my old front yard in Vancouver, where it had grown for a couple of years.  The pollinating Hollywood (again) branch seems not to be there now.  It also has a branch of Shiro also in bloom.

This is Flavor Supreme Pluot.  I don't know if it bloomed before.  I planted this a couple of years ago in the front orchard.  It's too much trouble to water and weed that area now.  It has continued to grow anyway.

There is also an unknown plum, possibly grown from seed, that was here when we bought the place.  I went crazy grafting other varieties to it - Shiro, Hollywood (of course), Ember, Hanska, La Crescent.  I don't think any of those Hansen plums (Ember, Hanska, LaCrescent) has ever borne a single fruit.  They bloom every year.  Still, it's a pretty tree.  

Nadia plum X cherry hybrid is next to the highly grafted tree.  Nadia is also blooming.

Daffodils. 3.21.2021

 Each fall I plant bags of daffodils and other bulb seeds.  Most bloom the first year, then a lot of them disappear.  Some persist for many years.

And some hyacinths, which are looking nice this year.

Up-potting Tomato Seedlings. 3.21.2021

 I repotted the first dozen tomato seedlings.  There are still some left that I will give Ning.  I have a theory that when their roots start winding around in the container, their growth becomes stunted.  Or maybe its just the seedling medium. Anyway, after up-potting them, they usually take off and grow fast.

I am not a pack rat.  But I do save some things, like some of the plant containers from previous years.  The multi-packs are handy, maximum use of space.

Before repotting.  I don't know where that pink container came from.  Probably flowers last year or the year before.  I like to label each cell, directly instead of with a label I'll probably lose.

The roots are pretty nice looking.  It still amazes me that a tiny seed grows into a nice tomato plant that grows bigger and bigger and makes tomatoes.

Twelve tomato plants, ready for their next step in life.