Leap Day 2008 - Birds, Sunflowers, etc

My sister Pat suggested this posting, and since it has warmed up to a balmy 9 degrees, I figured, what the hell.

When we first moved to our home on the Cook Road, the garden was located where it is now, but it had been neglected for several years. I took most of the spring to cut brush and a few 6-8 inch trees to open it up. There was also an old collapsed sheep wire fence that had to be dug out in places, along with rusted sap buckets, which I assumed that the previous owner had used for plant covers, and just left them when he got sick of gardening. After much effort and brush burning, I finally managed to till up the 50X50 plot where my present garden is.

There were a million things I had to do around the house and garage, and knew I wouldn’t have time to do the type of gardening I wanted to, so I finally sowed the whole thing to sunflowers. I figured it would be easy to till between the rows, which I laid out at 3 feet apart, and I would be able to keep the garden in shape, and move the rocks which had shown up when I tilled. This worked out very nicely, and I had a splendid crop of sunflowers going in no time at all. The sunflowers finally blossomed, and I found out later that my garden had become a land mark. Various folks told me that when they were given directions to somewhere in our area, one of the instructions was “go down past the sunflowers and turn left (right, whatever).”

Later that summer, we had a family gathering for some reason or other, and my sisters were always coming over to get together. My sister Penny from Syracuse was staying with us, and sister Pat was a regular visitor (and beer drinker). One morning I got up and looked out to check my sunflower crop and couldn’t believe my eyes. The girls had went out either in the evening or early in the morning and painted faces on all the sunflower heads with black spray paint. They had done a thorough job, and the sunflowers sported smiles, frowns, and every nuance in between. What made it even more ridiculous was that the flowers would face the house early in the morning, and then slowly turn during the day to follow the sun. At noon or so, they would all be facing the road. I was sure that my neighbors were convinced that I had finally lost my mind completely, and I spent a lot of time naming the guilty parties on the numerous occasions when my unusual sunflower patch was mentioned.

These days, I still plant a patch of sunflowers, which always remind me of the above nutty sunflower story. When I plant them, I till up a spot and broadcast a handful or two of the seeds we have been feeding the birds over the winter. I run over the new seeding with the rototiller (shallow), and thin as necessary when the plants come up, a quick and easy way to plant with little risk of failure. I don’t have any pictures of this episode, we did not own a digital camera when it happened. There are probably a few of the old-fashioned pictures around, but I have not figured out how to successfully scan them into my picture folder.

To compensate for my lack of plant pictures, I am attaching a picture of a very unusual bird which comes to our porch feeder. I have not been able to identify it from my field guide, but maybe one of my readers can help out.

Transplanting 2-22-08

Well, I have been a little slow on blogging for the past few days, I threw my back out again and find that getting in and out of the computer chair was painful and would have to be delayed. I am about cured (again) so here we go.

Some of the plants I started on various days were ready to be transplanted to individual cells, and I moved 18 of the marigolds. Unfortunately, I have a couple of bags of really crappy potting soil, full of small stones, twigs, etc, and I really do not like the stuff. It is labeled “Hyponex” and I will be very careful not to buy any more. I try to get “Shultz”, which is the best I have found in the past, do not know why I didn’t get it the last time I bought some, but – live and learn.

Anyway, I am enclosing pictures of the plants ready to be moved, some that are not ready to be moved, and one of the nine-packs with the transplants in it. I will keep the transplants in a dark spot in my cellar for 24 hours and then move them under the lights. Please note the labels in the transplant pack – I cannot emphasize enough how important to accurately label EVERYTHING! If you don’t you will have a lot of grief when you put stuff in the garden, flower beds, whatever and don’t know how tall it is going to get. Labels take care of that problem. It is snowing again, so I do not think I will be moving anything outdoors (today, at least).

“Wiseacre” tells me that when I start including pictures that hopefully I will as good at photography as my sister Pat. Sorry about that – ain’t going to happen. I do what I can. I doubt Pat wants to come over every few days and take plant pictures for me.

February Freeze - No Planting!

Well, there is not a hell of a lot of planting going on around here. The explanation is obvious on my thermometer, which registered -11 this morning. That is fairly brisk. I am going to try to insert a picture again, got the directions from my sister Pat and also a helpful note from “Wiseacre”.

The marigolds I started are doing nicely, but have not developed any true leaves yet. If you are new to this business, the first set of leaves a plant develops are the “Seed Leaves” and then the True leaves (which are miniature versions of the mature plant leaves” come along. Some sources say to transplant when the little plants have two sets of true leaves. Personally, I have never been able to wait that long and if the plants are up to a good handling size I transplant them. I move the little plants into 6-packs and use potting soil instead of the seed starter mix. I soak the hell out of the nearly full six packs and use a narrow spoon for the process. I simply punch a hole for each plant with the handle of the spoon, move the little plant in, and firm it up with the bowl of the spoon. After I get the six pack full, I use the spoon to top off each cell. I leave the plant in a dark spot for about 24 hours, and put them back under the light the next day. It is critical to handle the little plants by the leaves only. If you grab them by the stem, you will cruse it and the plants will die. I usually spoon out a clump of plants, separate them with my fingers and the spoon handle and transplant them one at a time. It will not hurt them to be handled pretty casually as long as you don’t let them dry out. I usually give them a dilute shot of miracle grow solution when I am through transplanting.

The picture I am trying to include is of Shirley standing under an awning that mother nature provided us, free of charge, a couple of weeks ago.

Help me Out

In my blog posted Feb 6, I said I would include a picture. If you see the blog the picture is noticeable absent. Would one of you more experienced bloggers explain to me how to do that? I have my pictures stored on my computer in the "My Pictures" folder. Thanks.

The Seed Starter Bug Strikes Again

Well, the old seed starter bug jumped up and bit me again. I don’t know why I can’t resist it, but I can’t. Anyway, I started another batch of Marigolds on the boiler on Feb 6 (today), and will move them when they get up. I am down to my last 3 or 4 packets so I will have to slow down a little on my experiment. I consider the possibility that I will have a cellar full of flowers and the ground will still be covered with snow.

In my last post, I mentioned moving my plants under a light, and a nice note from “Wiseacre” reminded me that shedding a little light on the light situation (heh, heh) might be in order. I use (as does Wiseacre) ordinary fluorescent shop lites over my plants once the seeds germinate. I tied strings on the chains provided with the lights and suspend them from nails driven into the floor joists in my cellar. The strings allow for infinite height adjustment, and this is critical to the process. I try to keep the lights about 4 or 5 inches above the plants and this seems to produce the short, stocky plants I want. If you get the lights too high, your plants will get “leggy”, all stem, no leaves, and be very weak when you want to transplant them. You do not need to buy any fancy “grow lights” or anything else the garden suppliers try to sell you. For about $15 you can get a 4 foot shop light, complete with bulbs, and from there you only need a place to plug it in. I keep my started plants down cellar where it is cool, and later on in the spring when I start running out of room in the cellar, I will move the bedding plants into a table in the garage where I can close the door if it looks like a frost is coming. They will do nicely there until planting time.

My main tomato is “Big Beef”, which is getting a little hard to find, but is available. This is a nice large tomato, doesn’t crack at the top and I have had no disease problems with it. It is also the best tasting main season tomato I have grown. When I was going through my seed packets I discovered that I had 8 packets of tomato seeds of various varieties. The answer to this mystery is my wife, who cannot walk past the seed rack in Wal-Mart without picking something up. If I planted all the tomato seeds she brings home, I would not have to worry about anything else in my garden.

I will try to show a picture of our “Awning” provided by mother nature when the ice formed, and then melted (then froze again) on the edge of our roof. Nothing to do with gardening, but kind of neat (it doesn’t take much to amuse me).