Seedlings & sowings

I just realized that what I thought were weeds, might actually be the groundcherries! They look like weeds, perhaps because they are, in fact, considered weeds by many. And if I recall correctly, groundcherry was growing rampantly out on Plan B farm when I was visiting last year. Also, groundcherry is closely related to the tomatillo, which I remember at Everdale confusing with pigweed (before closer inspection). So I may have inadvertantly weeded out some of my groundcherries, but I've saved what I think are two tiny seedlings. The only thing that made these seedlings stand out to me from the other weed seedlings were their fuzzy stems, which I know tomatoes have as well.

Yesterday I began double-digging my fourth raised bed. It's the biggest one so far, and I only got about a third of it fully loosened. That was enough for the time being; I really just had to get two large tomato plants (one Sweetie and one Scotch Bonnet) and several oversized Simpson lettuce seedlings into the ground. Between the two I transplanted a bunch of white globe onion seedlings, which are a companion to both tomatoes and lettuce.

Today I sowed cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut squash, sweet dumpling squash, Pride of Wisconsin melon, and butterfly milkweed. I'm bringing the cucumbers and pumpkins inside during the night since it sounds like they require higher soil temperatures for germination than the other squash (according to the not-so-informative seed packets).

I tried to pick up a rain barrel today from a nearby Freecycler. Unfortunately, it was about 4 inches too wide for my bike trailer, so I had to leave it there. It was big and beautiful – a real functioning rain barrel, not just any old barrel – and it would have worked amazingly. Alas, I just don't have a big enough wagon, and I don't yet know of a local fossil fuel-free wagon producer. ;-)

I was working outside virtually all day today, and that was a mistake. I didn't realize today was a smog day in Toronto. I should have taken a clue from the characteristically orange-tinted sunlight, but I just wasn't thinking. As a result, I've felt a little sick all evening, especially after mowing the front lawn with garden shears. This is the first time I've ever noticed the effects of smog on my health so acutely.

Seedling Swap

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been spending most of my time practicing with Meta and Chris for the Cowboy Mimes' second show last night. My amazing friend Kelly from Everdale kindly drove my big-ass keyboard to the gig at no charge, and it was a good chance for
us to swap seedlings. I gave her some of my many sweet pepper seedlings, and in return she gave me a zucchini, two varieties of tomato (beautiful, large mini-plants they are), and an unusual kind of eggplant that's produces orange-coloured fruit (I'll find out the name).

My own tomatoes are doing very poorly. None of my groundcherries have germinated, and only two of my ruffled red tomatoes have sprouted. All my seedlings seem to be growing very slowly, despite the amount of sun they get. Perhaps it's still just too cool at night? Or maybe my potting soil is too dense and the roots don't get enough oxygen? Beats me.

What do people think about transplanting seedlings into 100% compost, just to give them a boost? Maybe I'll experiment.

Hulless happiness, germination damnation

A while ago I ordered some different grain seeds from Salt Spring Seeds, a heritage and heirloom seed supplier on Salt Spring Island, BC. I was looking for hulless grains in particular – grains that have naturally loose hulls that can be separated by rubbing or shaking. Most grains these days need to be hulled, which is generally done mechanically, though I'm sure there are many non-mechanical ways of accomplishing it, too (this is why I must spend some time visiting some traditional cultures). Since I'm interested in self-sufficiency, I'd like to grow grains that require a minimal energy investment. A rudimentary search for hulless barley and hulless oats (the only hulless grains I've yet discovered) led me to the catalog for Salt Spring Seeds, so I ordered from there.

I got the seeds a couple days ago, along with golden flax and Indian Blue corn I'd also ordered. It wasn't a new moon recently – rather, quite the opposite – but it's getting late in the season, so I thought I'd forgo the cosmic calendar this once and sow seeds anyway. Meta also thought it would be nice for some morning glories to swallow the backyard's ramshackle fencing. So I sowed.

It seems I haven't been doing a very good job getting my tomatoes and sweet peppers to germinate. In case you were wondering, none have germinated yet, and it's been several weeks for some of them. I don't know why I thought it would be okay for my ungerminated tomatoes and peppers to spend their nights at or below 10ºC. I guess I forgot to read the instructions. I read some guidelines today, which clearly state that peppers germinate best between 24ºC and 29ºC (at least above 18ºC) and that tomatoes germinate best between 21ºC and 27ºC (and never below 10ºC). Maybe that's why most greenhouses have heaters, hey? Yet the concept still seems kind of wrong to me. :) I suppose I should really just stop trying to grow tropical vegetables in Toronto.

So I sowed the last of my pepper seeds and a bunch more tomato and groundcherry seeds, and this time I've brought them inside to germinate. One of the articles I read suggests putting the trays on top of the fridge. I think I'll try that and see how it goes.

Damping off damping off

After reading farmer Jon's posting in which he mentioned some of his seedlings were damping off, I realized that this was exactly what was happening to my seedlings. I was wondering why my poppy, valerian, and lavender seedlings weren't becoming expectedly big and strong with the warmer sunny weather of the last few days. Instead, they were getting scrawnier and eventually just collapsing and disintegrating, which sounds like exactly what was happening to some of Jon's seedlings.

I think my potting soil was poor. I'd water it, and it seemed to stay moist for a long time. When it finally did dry out, it was extremely dry, crusty and chunky, not fluffy like it was when I first filled the flats. All in all, it didn't seem like a very habitable place for a baby seedling (as nutrient-rich as it may have been). I may also have been watering too often. They say to let the soil dry out completely before completely saturating the soil with water again. This makes the soil inhospitable to the damping-off fungi that like to attack seedlings.

I realized that I really should have sifted my compost rather than just crumbled it through my fingers. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just didn't feel like going to the trouble of making a compost screen. So I went to the trouble this morning, and I made a great little sieve (I only needed to make the screen part shown on that page, not the frame it sits on). I found a ½"-gauge screen by the railroad tracks (I actually went there specifically to look for one, too; I also found a perfectly good cooler). I sifted all my potting soil, and already it felt much softer and less chunky.

But I knew I'd need to do more than sift it, because if I grabbed a fistful, it would still stick together in clumps that wouldn't break apart very easily. It seemed I needed the equivalent of peat moss for my potting soil to make it act more like a sponge. But peat moss is a non-renewable resource and its use promotes the loss of wetland habitats. An alternative to peat moss is coconut coir, but it comes from India, so that's out of the question. The more common alternative is vermiculite, but it's mined and its production is very petroleum-dependent, so it doesn't interest me either.

I went back to HtGMV just to make sure they really did say to use one part compost, one part garden soil for making potting soil. Yup, that's what it says. But then I realized that the compost they're referring to is the hypothetical compost that I would have made last year - from vegetable remains, compost crops and yard waste - whereas the compost I had delivered to my backyard seems to be very much manure-based. It's rich, dense and pretty homogeneous. By contrast, compost made from leaves, twigs, stalks and veggie scraps would be (as I recall our garden compost as I was growing up) much more powdery, fibrous, and heterogeneous. Which is possibly why it eliminates the need for a spongy ingredient like peat moss. This is all very speculative, of course.

If only I'd had some of that "other" compost to use for my potting soil! But as luck would have it, today just happened to be one of the city's "Environment Days" where I knew they gave away free leaf compost, and it just happened to be within a 25-minute walk from my house, too. Clearly, it was meant to be. I grabbed the biggest knapsack I had, lined it with a couple oversized plastic bags, grabbed a shovel, and headed down. I got there, and there was barely enough left between the tufts of grass to scrape an oversize load into my knapsack. I'll leave you to imagine how uncomfortable the walk back home was. At least it wasn't raining.

I added the sifted leaf compost to my potting soil, and it seemed to improve it a lot. It had just the texture I was looking for. So I resowed most of my seeds, plus tomatoes, groundcherry, and spearmint, using the new soil (I think it's still within 7 days of the new moon) and we'll see if it works a little better.