Broccoli, Mustard and Elephant Garlic Planted 

After dinner, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about how to grow Dragonfruits, I have 3 existing varieties, two recently grown from cutting that I acquired and a bunch that I grew from seeds year ago. I’m. Now contemplating where in our garden I can plant the Dragonfruits so they don’t stay small in their pots.

Afterwards, I did some late night planting in the back yard before I got freaked out by mysterious noises.

Broccoli and Mustard Sown

I planted some Calabrese Broccoli and Yanagawa Tanaka Mustard seeds into 3 inch pots which I will divided later (my new preferred method of growing seeds).

Elephant Garlic

I also broke apart an Elephant Garlic that I bought from the grocery and planted the 9 bulblets into 3 inch pots.

Elephant Garlic Broken Up

I’ll plant these out into the garden when they start sprouting a bit. 

More Brassica Sowing

More Brassica Sowing

Sowed a few more Brassica seeds:
– Bok Choy ‘Joi Choi’
– Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
– Kale ‘Dinosaur’ (G2/2010)
– Arugula (G2/2012)
– Kale ‘Red Winter’

Late Night Salad Planting

Today’s harvest was a variety of Lettuce and Parsley for a Lettuce/Parsley Salad.

Today's harvest: Various Lettuce and Parsley for a Lettuce/Parsley Salad.

This inspired me to sow various Salad Greens seeds that I want to use up since they are old or getting old (and I can’t just throw them away).

I planted:
– Mustard ‘Crimson Red’ (2012)
– Celtuce (2013)
– Garland Chrysanthemum ‘Maiko’ (?)
– Lettuce ‘Grand Rapids’ (2010)
– Lettuce ‘Simpson Elite’ (2006)
– Lettuce ‘Marvel of Four Season’ (2010)
– Lettuce ‘Mighty Red Oak’ (2006)
– Lettuce ‘Romaine Paris Island Cos’ (2004)
– Corn Salad ‘Bistro’ (2007)

Salad Green seeds planted.

I really not counting on a lot to germinate, but if I get a few plants out of these, that’ll be good.

Tomatoes and Peppers Sown

I did a bunch of Tomato and Pepper seed sowing this evening.

Tomato Seeds

Here’s a list of Tomato seeds sown:
– Brandywince Red (2010)
– Hippy Zebra (2010)
– Sungold (2013)
– Green Zebra (2011)
– Speckled Red Roma (2010)
– Red Zebra (2010)
– Red Pear Cherry (2007)
– Velvet Red (2013)
– Vintage Wine (2010)
– OSU Blue (2011)
– Large Barred Boar (2011)
– Copia (2010)
– San Marzano (2010)
– Sweet Carneros Pink (2011)
– Lemon Boy (2013)
– Federle (2013)
– Yellow Pear G2 (2011)
– Rutgers Select (2010)
– Tiny Tim (?)
– Red Robin (2010)
– Sungold (2013)

Here’s a list of Pepper seeds sown:
– Chinese Giant (2012)
– Sweet Banana (2010)
– (Orange Bell) (2013)
– Carmagnola Rossa G2 (2008)
– Golden Marconi G2 (2010)
– (from Tomatofest 2012) (2012)
– Gypsy (2012)
– (Sweet Long Red from Trader Joe’s) (2010)
– Garden Leasder Monster Bell (2012)

March 6, 2013 Gardening…

Everyday when I go out in the garden, I check the seeds that I’ve sown to see if anything new have sprouted. As I was walking by, I noticed that the soil in the two trays with the Wildflower and Flower Garden Mix was uneven. I think the birds have been using this as a bird feeder! Argh!… I’ll probably have to sow more seeds and put these trays into a dome or in the patio.

Carrot (Blend of Color Mix) Sown

After harvesting some carrots yesterday, I was excited to sow more seeds. I planted a square 3″ cell pack with Blend of Colors Carrot Mix. I’ll have to search online to see if I can get just purple Carrots.

Homemade Cactus Mix

I was running out of Cactus Mix, so I mixed up some using 4 parts regular potting soil, 1 part play sand and 1 part perlite.

Lithops lesliei Albinica Sown

I used this mix to sow Lithops lesliei ‘Albinica’ seeds into a 3″ pot. I can’t wait for these to grow.

Snow?

I’ve been watching the fruit trees to see what fruit tree is about to open it’s bud so I can start grafting onto it. So far the Asian Plums have bloom and the flowers are starting to fade. It looks like it’s been snowing.

Stark Saturn Peach in Bloom

The Cherry and the Peach trees look like they will open within a week. The Stark Saturn Peach graft has already bloomed ahead of it’s host Elberta Peach.

Thai Basil

After heading back inside when it got too dark to garden, I plucked the leaves off a bunch of Thai Basil I bought at the Asian Grocery… and saved a few cuttings to hopefully root. I’ll make a Basil Eggplant dish with the leaves tomorrow.

Busy Gardening Day…

It was a busy gardening day. I started by planting a few Green Onions bottoms with the others I planted last week.

Planting Green Onion Bottoms

I start grafting onto our two Asian Plum trees:
Bubblegum Plum (which I’m really interested in tasting, so I grafted it in two locations)
Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’

People Watcher

This bird kept watching me as I was grafting scions onto our Plum tree. I thought it would fly away if I moved, but even after I walked around and climbed the ladder, it just stayed there. It eventually flew away.

I wanted to graft some Cherry scions, but I couldn’t find any good sites to graft onto… So I left it, and I’ll check our Cherry tree later.

Planting Swiss Chard, Beets and Mesclun

I had some plant that have been in cell packs since the fall, and they are still alive, so I planted the Swiss Chard into 5 gallon fabric pot and Beets ‘Chioggia’ into a large Daiso pot. I had two leftover Flat Leaf Parsley which I planted into a 3 inch pot for now, until i find a permanent place for them in the garden. Hopefully, these plants will grow big despite being left in their cell packs.

I also did a bunch of seed sowing. I sowed all of the Zesty Salad Mesclun Mix into a medium Daiso pot. I don’t think these grew well in the past and I just wanted to get rid of the seeds.

Sowing Spring Greens/Flowers

I planted the rest into cell packs:
Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearls’
Agrostemma ‘Milas’
Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
Bok Choy ‘Purple Choy’
Kohlrabi ‘Early White Vienna’
Bok Choy ‘Summer Boy’

Kiwi Leafing Out

A couple of the Kiwi plants have started to leaf out. I was worried that they died in the winter at their new location, but they seem to have pulled through. They was a couple dead/dried out branches which I trimmed. The rest of the blue bin where they were was empty, so I decided to plant a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas.

Sowing Sugar Snap Peas

Afterwards, I did a major trim of the European Plum tree in back of our storage. There were tons of dead limbs and limbs that sagged down. I tried to clear the bottom so we had walking space and just get rid of too much of the mass. I think it looks better now and hopoefully will grow better. Unfortunately, the Kirke Blue Plum that I grafted to it dried up.

Lotsa Seed Sowing…

I know I’m late sowing my Tomato, Pepper and Zinnia seeds, but I’m going to plant them anyways. I know they can catch up.

Lots of Seeds Sown

Here’s a list of what I planted:
Continue reading

Another Busy Gardening Day…

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.