I started the day off harvesting some Swiss Chard ‘Green’ for lunch… My Mom used it in Filipino dish called Nilagang Manok, which literally translated means Boiled Chicken. I really love Swiss Chard, including the stems which remains firm when cooked. They are not stringy like some Bok Choy stems.

After lunch, I when to the garden and did a bunch of seed sowing. A few years ago, I experimented with winter sowing. I used milk jugs as containers, but didn’t have such good luck. I think the base didn’t have enough soil and it dried out too quickly. This winter, I’m going to use 6-8 inch pots as the minimum size. I also used standard 1-gallon containers. I filled the pots lower than if I were to plant a plant in them. This will leave some protection when the seedling emerge. I used plastic covers with elastic sewn in the edges to cover the pots. These were pretty cheap; I think the box came with 12-18 covers for $1. This will keep the soil from drying out and I think the elastic may even help keep the slugs out… which is another problem I had previously. I sowed the following seeds:

– Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearl’
– Alyssum ‘Gold Dust’
– Zinnia (Fall 2005)
– Mystery Flower (maybe Gazania Daisy?)
– Sunflower Lemon Queen (old seeds that I found hidden away in storage)

I wanted to get rid of some really old seeds like the Sunflower above and I also found two packets of Radishes from 1984!!! I emptied the two packets (Radish ‘Red Deveil B’ and Radish ‘White Icicle’) into a 12 inch pot… I don’t really expect them to grow, but if any are still viable, here’s their change to grow.

I planted a 10 inch pot with lots of Cilantro seeds that I harvested last year. I hope the Cilantro grows densely so we can harvest a lot. I then replenish one of the 3-gallon GeoPots that we harvested the Purple Bok Choy from and planted a bunch of Lettuce ‘Wildfire Mix’ that I bought a few days ago. I still had a bunch of seedling, so I potted to into large cell-packs to plant out later.

I’m not sure where to plant the other new plants I got, so I divided the small-packs of Kale ‘Rainbow’ and Kale ‘Siberian’ into 3 inch pots, so they can grow a bit before I figure out where to plant them. I was surprise how healthy the young seedlings were. I was able to divide the Kale ‘Rainbow’ into 17 individual pots!!!… and I’ll give some away to friends and relatives.

I also started grafting, since our Asian Plum tree near the storage is starting to bloom. I grafted four total today and will do more later:

– Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’ (Graft 2012-01)
– Plumcot ‘Burbank’ (Graft 2012-02)
– Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’ (Graft 2012-03)
– Apricot ‘Canadian White’ (Graft 2012-04)

I hope these take.