Jayne's Urban Paradise

[JayneR13]

Courtesy of the local seed library, for the food pantry garden.

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[GoDawgs]

Nice assortment! Yay for the seed library.

Yesterday morning the tracker for my Pinetree seed order showed no change in location so I was pleasantly surprised when it showed up in the mailbox around noon. Hooray! The lost has been found.

[JayneR13]

You should see the pile I have for both gardens! There will be lots of variety, for sure. And I'm glad your Pinetree order showed up. Spring is springing and we need to get moving!

The rest of my antenna showed up this morning as well. Yay! Now just to get a party together to get it mounted and get me back on the air! With a much further reach than before too.

[MissS]

What a nice library you have. I wish that we had one but there isn't much interest.

[JayneR13]

They put in a LOT of work! That's the hard thing: finding bodies. Orgs around here are screaming for volunteers.

[JayneR13]

I know Spring is springing when the grime on my windows is really obvious. Washing windows is definitely a spring chore. Another necessary chore was run to the pantry garden, check on things, and inventory. Knowing exactly what I have helps with planning and of course, PA needs my shopping list.

I took soil temperatures of course, both sun & shade. Not much difference below ground. Definitely not time to plant or sow! I actually had one reading of 39F.

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Surface temperatures just to see. Big difference between sun and shade.

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My new hori has been properly baptized. I like it!

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Garlic is indeed up, so I uncovered and side dressed. Here’s hoping for a big harvest!

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[JayneR13]

And what is this? Garlic is up at home too!

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And there’s tulip sign! I hope the rabbits don’t eat them. It seems they’d have found them by now though. Hopefully those aren’t famous last words.

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Lilac buds are fattening and just starting to split! I love my lilac tree. It was part of why I bought this house. Apologies for the blurry picture.

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Yup, it’s coming! Since the weather has stymied my antenna raising project, I can start seeds this weekend. Soon I’ll be able to prune the blackberries and start moving the stuff that needs to be moved. I can’t find the hostas yet and this isn’t a good time to transplant. But soon! Yay Spring!

[GoDawgs]

Well, shucky darns. When I first saw the hori photo I thought maybe you had found your lost one. But I'm glad the new one is to your liking!

Yay! Signs of spring! And off you go.

[JayneR13]

It snowed overnight! Not a lot and it’s melted now, but the temperature was 39F with wind chills in the upper 20s. Yay! Not!

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What to do, what to do? Start seeds, of course! The grime is on the windows and planting time will be here soon. Of course, by then I’ll have washed the windows. For today, my old mushroom monotub has proven to be a great way to start seeds. Wet paper towels inside of old food containers inside the tub. The tub is on a heat mat and there’s a single grow light above. Warm & humid but not so much so that mold develops.

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Varieties are:

Tomatoes:

Amish paste
Saucy lady
Firebird sweet
Black Brandywine
Defiant
Mountain Rouge
Mountain Merit
Big Dwarf
Marion

Tomatillos:

Rio Grande Verde
Purple (OG)

Brussels sprouts:
Long Island Improved

Zucchini:

Long white of Palermo
Costata Romanesco
Ambassador
Golden/Golden OP
Gray

Cucumber:

Diva
Space master 80
Picklebush
Little Potato
Lemon
Morden early

Miss Yin has chosen her portion of the bed from the middle. She doesn’t mind sharing her bed with me. She’s come a very long way in in the 18 months since I brought her indoors. A long way indeed!

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Happy gardening!

[MissS]

Gosh you are ambitious there. I'm a bit envious. I don't start seeds until at least April 15th. I just don't have the room for all of them to be growing and getting big indoors.

[JayneR13]

I like my seedlings big enough so the rabbits leave them alone, for one thing. It does get messy when they get bigger, especially the squashes and cucumbers, but I deal with it. And since I've noticed several gardening shows on Prime that weren't free last year, I'm obviously itching to go! But yeah, we're supposed to get a good snow on Wednesday, 6" or so. It'll melt quick but still! There's no way I'd plant outside now. So inside it is!

[leftylogan]

I just read something about the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance program being cancelled. Was that something you utilized for the food pantry garden?

[JayneR13]

I just read something about the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance program being cancelled. Was that something you utilized for the food pantry garden?

Yes. That program purchased food from local farmers for food pantries. It also funded Farm to School programs. I’ve also been informed that funding for Feeding America has been cut and we will receive 0 fresh produce and precious little else. This is bad. We get most of our food from them and I have no doubt that PA is scrambling to find other sources, both food and funding.


In better news, I decided to give my seeds a check to see if any had sprouted. It’s only been three days, I said. Surely nothing will need potting yet, but it doesn’t hurt to check, right? Each of those pots has multiple seeds. I’ll winnow down and repot over the next few months until planting out. Extras will be distributed to pantry clients. Basically, the only seeds that haven’t sprouted yet are the tomatoes. Local resources matter even more now.

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[JayneR13]

Yes it’s true that we got snow overnight and this morning’s wind chill was 18. Inside, the seedling racks are filling! So far I’ve got 26 cucumbers and 18 zucchini for the pantry. Tomatoes and tomatillos are just barely visible.

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My stuff. Four Costata Romanesco zucchini. I also promised some tomato seedlings to one of my fellow volunteers so we’ll see what comes up. He needs container plants, so that’s micro & dwarf varieties.

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The Aurora Borealus may be visible here tomorrow. I hope I get to see it! Happy gardening.

[JayneR13]

It may not look like much or be the easiest to see, but garlic is coming up at the pantry garden! There's green spots in all five rows! PA informed me that a donor couple who gave every year for the pantry to purchase foods used in Latino cooking were very happy to see this, and to learn of my plans for this year's garden. Happy donors are good!

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Seeds have germinated and seedlings are still emerging. So far I have 26 cucumbers, 18 zucchini, 26 tomatoes, and 9 tomatillos. This is in addition to the 151 cloves of garlic I planted in fall. We'll see if that four year old onion seed comes up! And I'm sure PA will remember the onion sets I asked for on my shopping list.

Yay! Spring is springing! Now to deal with the EBTKS box. @ValsBackyardHeirlooms, is that's the Val in KS, will be receiving next week! What a lovely package of seeds! Wow!

ETA: I JUST SAW A SPRING ROBIN!! YAAY! Now to get something out for them to eat!

[GoDawgs]

When are you going to be able to safely plant those cukes and zukes out in the pantry garden?

[JayneR13]

Frost sensitive stuff usually goes in Memorial Day weekend. Our last average frost date is Mother's Day but we know that's just an average. Memorial Day is the we're sure it's over date. Hopefully the soil temps will be amenable!

[JayneR13]

The seedling racks are filling up! I have one more that isn't pictured too. Count for the pantry is:

Cucumber: 26
Zucchini: 18
Tomatoes: 46
Tomatillos: 9

I'm planning 4-6 dwarf tomatoes for myself, 4 Costata Romanesco zucchinis, and 6-8 Brussels sprouts (Long Island Improved and Catskill.) Until my garage is finished, that's the extent of my garden this year. I also promised 11 tomatoes to one of my fellow pantry volunteers, who grows them in containers by his apartment. PA and I went gardening shopping yesterday and picked up, among other things, some fence posts and twine to give the Florida weave a try. He says he can get plenty of tomato cages donated so we agreed there's no need to buy them. Since I reclaimed the rest of the garden, we bought 2-25# bags of fertilizer. Hopefully I'll use all, or at least most of it! And the soil structure is much improved from tilling the wood chips and other leftovers in last year. So here's hoping for a good harvest! The pantry has been informed that there will be neither produce nor meat coming from Feeding America this year due to the cuts at the federal level. So, what we can do locally is even more important than ever.

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Spring is springing but the soil in my raised beds is still frozen, and I can't clean much more from my garage until the city takes the first bin full. What I want to know is: where did I get all of that stuff?? One would think I've been living here for 19 years, or something. So, since it's going to be a nice day, washing windows and curtains it is.

Happy gardening!

[JayneR13]

It’s been a lovely day in my corner of urban paradise, so I went out to do some yard work! City collection starts tomorrow so I might as well get started. First I cleaned out the blackberry mess from my half circle. The least pleasant chore first, right? I cut these way back so the valiant rose can get a head start. The day lillies are also up.

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My garlic is up. This section is from cloves I saved last year. It’s up nicely.

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The Krasnodar Red is doing ok. The white, however, has either been dug by critters or simply didn’t survive. I got these varieties from Seed Savers Exchange and it’s the second time I’ve been unhappy with their garlic. I planted 11 cloves of each.

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My chives are up! They volunteered one year and stayed.

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My tulips are up! Yay! I’m looking so forward to seeing them bloom!

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The first pass at cleaning out the beds that need to be moved for the garage project. The sides came up intact, which gives me hope that I can reinstall these beds when the garage is done. Sharp eyes may notice that I’ve dug only about half of the soil. The other half is still frozen.

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While digging I kept an eye out for any usable strawberry crowns. I found nine and replanted them, three in each of three areas. They grow or they don’t. I haven’t had much luck growing these in raised beds. Perhaps they’ll be happier in ground. My neighbor grows hers in a tight spot in her driveway and gets a good harvest every year. A little bit of fencing will be required.

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Tomorrow, sand & stain my deck and the associated fence. I like to do that before the hedges grow in, especially the blackberry. Happy gardening!

[MissS]

You sure have been busy out there. My soil is still to wet after the rains we had. The ground squishes when I walk on it.

That was a very nice save on the boxes. It's a big expense to replace them.